Las Vegas Raiders: Biggest what-ifs of Derek Carr’s career
Las Vegas Raiders: Biggest what-ifs of Derek Carr’s career
What if Jon Gruden was still the head coach?
After the 2017 season where Jack Del Rio and the Raiders fell short of expectations, mark Davis leaped at the chance to hire the coach he had been chasing for a decade in Jon Gruden. Davis rolled out the red carpet for Gruden and handed him an insane 10-year, $100 million contract to lead the Raiders in Oakland and Las Vegas.
The second Gruden era started off horribly as he gutted the roster, traded away two of the team’s best players in Amari Cooper and Khalil Mack, and oversaw a 4-12 season. Things were trending up over the next two years as the offense went from 28th overall to 10th best in 2020 but the Raiders could not outscore a horrid defense and missed the playoffs.
2021 looked to be the culmination of Gruden’s rebuild as the team started off 3-1 before the bomb was dropped in the form of racist and homophobic emails from Gruden’s time as an ESPN analyst. The Raiders tried to ignore the story and kept Gruden on for one more week but as more pressure mounted and more emails leaked, they eventually let him go ahead of Week Six.
The Raiders would go on to make the playoffs for the first time since 2016 before losing to the eventual AFC champion Bengals in the wildcard round.
The bigger question around what would happen if Gruden was still the coach is not about 2021 as a wild card berth was a fitting end for that team. The bigger impact is what happened this season as Carr struggled in Josh McDaniels’ offense and is on his way out of town after a difficult year.
If Gruden was still the coach, it’s fair to assume that Carr would have taken a step forward in an offense he was comfortable in with a teammate in Davante Adams whom he helped have an incredible year. Perhaps the Raiders do make the playoffs with Gruden this season but either way Derek Carr is likely the quarterback for the foreseeable future under the same regime.
Gruden and Carr had a solid working relationship and after some initial misgivings the head coach became enamored with what Carr was doing with his offense. Gruden and Mike Mayock likely would have been given at least another season to atone for their draft mistakes and we would be going into 2022 with one less hole on the roster.
Perhaps Carr would have played out the remainder of his contract in Las Vegas and retired as a Raider but is now destined to finish his career elsewhere.