Derek Carr Q&A: Raiders QB reflects on rookie year, expects division title in 2015

Tom Pelissero | USA TODAY Sports

NAPA, Calif. — A year ago, Oakland Raiders quarterback Derek Carr was a rookie sitting behind presumed starter Matt Schaub on the depth chart. Then, Schaub struggled amidst elbow problems, and Carr got the surprise nod to open the season.

The Raiders started 0-10 and finished 3-13, leading to the franchise’s latest coaching change. Carr’s numbers weren’t off the charts — 348-of-599 passing (58.1%) for 3,270 yards and 21 touchdowns with 12 interceptions and a 76.6 passer rating — but he showed encouraging signs.

Carr recently sat down with USA TODAY Sports to talk about why he needed to take his lumps as a rookie, why nobody knows exactly what the offense will look like under new coordinator Bill Musgrave, why these Raiders can end a 12-year playoff drought and more.

Question: You have one season under your belt, but now there’s a whole new coaching staff, new coordinator, new offense. How do you feel heading into Year 2?

Answer: I don’t like using the word ‘comfortable.’ I try to make myself not comfortable all the time. But it’s definitely a different feeling coming in, because you know what to expect, you’ve seen it — it’s just you’re running new plays now. It’s a copycat league. The mental part — the biggest jump was last year. This year, you’ve got to learn some new terminology. That doesn’t take as long, because you’ve already seen it — but this is just called something else, and maybe it’s just a little bit different way of doing it. Coming out here, we’re just really playing football, and now it’s me getting just knocking the rust off of getting the timing down with certain receivers, and that’s what camp is for.

Q: What kind of self-scout did you in the offseason? What did you see?

A: I had a whole bunch of things I knew I needed to work on from self-scouting. I knew on certain routes what I needed to do and ways to use my eyes and shoulders and manipulate coverage. There’s so many things on my list. I want to be perfect at everything, knowing I’ll never be perfect at it, but that’s my goal. It was nice to have an offseason where I played a full year, I’m the starter, I knew what to work on, and now I’m coming in and getting better. That’s a blessing, because you see the NFL nowadays — it’s like they say, ‘not for long’. You don’t see that a lot with rookies, unless they’re a first-round pick. I was just blessed enough to be right on that edge where they picked me in the second round. It was nice to get a full season under my belt and be able to come back as the guy, not any question. Because last year was hard. I didn’t know where I stood (in camp). I thought I was going to be the backup until further notice, and then all of a sudden, bam, I’m starting.

Q: I talked during the offseason with Blake Bortles and Teddy Bridgewater, who went through that transition in the first month of the season. There’s a danger there if you get put in before you’re ready, especially on a bad team.

A: It’s different for every person. People would ask me all the time when we were 0-8, 0-9, 0-10 — ‘Is this hurting you?’ For me, my personality and my character, no, it wasn’t. I needed that experience. I needed to be out there and get my face beat in. I needed to see, ‘That throw doesn’t work.’ I needed to see, ‘Oh, that does work. Oh, that’s good, I can do that. Oh, I did that in practice, let’s try it in the game. Oh, it worked?’ For me, it was great. We were 0-10. I can deal with any kind of negativity. That was never a problem. I think that’s why coach (Dennis) Allen felt he was OK with me. I think that’s why coach (Tony) Sparano stuck with it. Instead of making me wait and play a year or two down the road, they said, ‘He can handle it. It’s not too big.’ I’m sure that’s what they saw in Jacksonville. I know Blake. I keep in contract with him. I’m sure that’s what they saw in Teddy. ‘These guys can handle it.’ Because if you really look back in preseason Week 3 (last year, you’d) say, ‘There’s going to be no rookie starters.’

Q: Maybe Johnny Manziel in Cleveland …

A: Maybe Johnny, because they were battling and all that. Then you come around, and we’re all playing throughout the whole year. I think that’s what it was — they saw that we could handle it. Everyone knows with a rookie, you’re going to take lumps. Even with a first-, second-, third-year guy, you’re going to take lumps until you gain that experience. But for me, it was nice to get out there and get the experience and do it. I’m a guy that has to do it.

Q: Your new coach, Jack Del Rio, said two things about you that stood out: You throw a nice deep ball, no matter what the numbers suggest, and you know protections really well. Those are two things I wouldn’t expect coming from the offense you played in at Fresno State.

A: Protection-wise, Coach Flip (then-quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo) and Coach (Greg) Olson — I give them a whole bunch of credit, man. They taught me how to pick up blitzes. They taught me how to see rotation, how to see fronts. And not only them, but before that, I had my brother (David, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2002 draft). I watched NFL film with him since I was 12. He taught me. He taught me protections. He said, ‘Do it this way. This is how it should be done.’ When I got to college, my coach let me handle everything, from calling the plays to changing protections to checking in the run game. He let me do absolutely everything at the line.

Q: In your last year? Or the whole time you were there?

A: My sophomore year, I did it a little bit. Then when we got to my junior year, it started happening more frequently. My senior year was, ‘OK, just go. You know what you’re doing.’ And I think if I had Coach (Dave) Schramm the whole time, it would’ve been (that way) from the start. It really helped me when I got here. I remember the first day we did two-minute my rookie year, and Coach (Olson), I went up to him and was like, ‘You want me to call this?’ And he looked at me like I was crazy. He’s like, ‘What?’ I’m like, ‘I’m used to calling the whole game. I can handle some two-minute.’

Q: How often do you talk to your brother now? On a daily basis?

A: Oh yeah. Usually on camp days I don’t, obviously, with how long the days are. But I text back and forth with him. Honestly, the last thing I sent to him was a wipeout surf video that I couldn’t believe. That’s about how our conversations go. If football comes up, we talk about it. He sent me a picture of his new golf cart-surfboard kind of deal. You put your clubs on the board. I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s awesome.

Q: Your new coordinator, Bill Musgrave, has always favored a lot of movement-type passing concepts, bootlegs and whatnot. Last year, he was with Chip Kelly in Philadelphia, and I suspect we’ll see some of that stuff here. What’s this offense going to look like?

A: Who knows? Really, with how smart (Musgrave) is, it could look like whatever he wants. I could be out here running the veer if he wanted to, because he’d figure out a way to do it and get the right people the ball. I don’t know if me running the veer would be best for our team, but I’d make it work. Honestly, who knows? He’s in his lab, doing his thing. We can come out tomorrow and run something completely different. In a general sense, they’ve installed so much football, that we can go out and do whatever he wants. He wanted to make sure we installed everything that he could possibly think of that he could grab from the hat.

Q: Coach Del Rio told you guys at the first team meeting he wasn’t going to speak about this franchise’s struggles over the past dozen years. He wants everyone to focus squarely on the vision ahead. How, if at all, have you seen the culture evolve since he took over?

A: A lot of credit goes to Coach Allen towards the end, Coach Sparano at the end of the season. They really were changing the culture. As we all know, things don’t change overnight. It took us a long time. Then you’re seeing an 0-10 team at the end of the year beat three playoff-caliber teams. You’re like, ‘OK, hold on, wait, that’s not supposed to happen.’ But we were growing. We were changing stuff. We were getting rid of stuff that wasn’t going to happen anymore. There were times in there where we could’ve cowered away just like maybe some teams in the past did. And that was not the case. We were going to change a mentality of how we worked. I’ve been a part of winning teams, championship teams on all levels — obviously now except in the NFL — but I know what it takes to win, and it’s hard work. That term is used so loosely. You see Instagram posts: ‘Working hard.’ It takes real hard work where you are straining to continue to get better. That’s how you change a culture, and that’s what we were doing, and as soon as (Del Rio’s staff) came in, that’s the first thing we did: ‘We are going to go to work. We have a lot of work to do.’

Q: Last year, I recall noticing there were a lot of lulls in practice. Now, the tempo seems faster, and I also noticed guys engaging with the crowd after big plays, having some fun with it.

A: I remember times where I’d be out here, and I was like last year, ‘Man, this doesn’t feel like practice.’ Because at Fresno, we were intense, man. We were competitive. There were fights all the time, just from people competing. I’m not saying that’s right — I’m just saying they were competing so hard, you can just feel the tension back and forth. Last year, I didn’t really feel that. We weren’t going through the motions, because from the beginning, Coach Allen was working on (it). And it built to that. It wasn’t overnight. But you have to be yourself. You have to enjoy this. If we just came out here in shirts and ties and with our sunglasses on and didn’t talk to each other — that’s what it felt like.

Q: Now, coaches are playing music in meetings, too, which seems like a way to capture the limited attention span of all these young guys.

A: We can’t just sit still. If you get a young kid, they go to the doctor’s office, the first thing they do, they sit down, get their phone. Not even young kids, that’s everybody now. Playing music in meetings — we keep the energy all day. That’s why when it’s time to go to sleep, you’re out, because it’s been high intensity all day.

Q: What’s your realistic expectation for this team in 2015?

A: Win the division. That’s the first thing Coach (Del Rio) came in and said. He said, ‘I played against you, I’ve seen the talent we have, I’ve seen the talent we brought in. We’re going to put our number one goal as win the division, because there’s no way we shouldn’t.’ He said, ‘I’m only going to speak like this one time. You guys had us beat in Denver. It was a home game, in Oakland. You guys were up on us in the first quarter. You guys were giving it to us. And all of a sudden, for whatever reason, you guys just fell apart and we finished.’ He said, ‘I’ve seen the talent. I’ve seen it.’ That’s our expectation: win the division, give us a chance at the dance. Just give us a chance.

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