Catching WFT fans up on where Carr stands with the Raiders originally appeared on NBC Sports Washington
If you're a football player who can tie your shoes and throw a solid spiral, like, most of the time, then chances are you've been mentioned by at least one Washington Football Team fan as a potential solution to the franchise's seemingly permanent problem at quarterback.
Derek Carr can do both of those things, and there's plenty of evidence that he does the second thing quite well. Therefore, his name is thrown out very often as one passer that Ron Rivera should go get.
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But how gettable is Carr, who — and this is a fairly crucial detail in this whole situation — is currently employed by the Las Vegas Raiders? The answer to that isn't so black and white (or, in this case, silver and black) but there are some bits of information that Washington supporters should know.
Currently, Vegas is in a major transition period. The organization recently fired general manager Mike Mayock, and next up, it'll have to decide whether to keep interim head coach Rich Bisaccia on the staff as the true head coach for 2022 and beyond.
Now, whoever comes in to replace Mayock will soon have to figure out what to do with Carr, whose contract is set to expire after the 2022 campaign. Sure, it's very possible that GM X arrives in Sin City intent on retaining Carr, seeing as he was productive in 2021 and ought to be for years to come, but front-office bosses sometimes prefer to begin their tenures with a hand-picked signal-caller.
That doesn't even factor in the Raiders' head coaching gig, which is also in flux. Bisaccia — whom Carr enthusiastically endorsed following the club's playoff loss to the Bengals — deserves serious praise for guiding the squad through an exceptionally hectic season, but he still may be ousted. Should that happen, there might be even more reason to move Carr in order to spark an across-the-board reset.
Plus, if Bisaccia is let go, Carr could get upset on his own. The 30-year-old once declared that he'd "probably quit football" if he had to suit up for someone other than the Raiders, yet if the Raiders cut ties with a coach that Carr has a connection with, perhaps he'd lose some of that loyalty.
Washington obviously wouldn't be the only operation interested in acquiring a super-durable quarterback who firmly sits in the sport's second tier of talents at his position. The Steelers, Colts, Saints, Browns, Vikings and Panthers all make sense as potential bidders for Carr if he were to be made available, and others are always lurking.
With that in mind, the Raiders could receive a set of juicy offers for their present starter. He's coming off a near 5,000-yard season and no doubt acted as a steadying leader in a locker room that needed one. Nobody would put him on Aaron Rodgers' or Russell Wilson's level but plenty of people — Rivera likely included — sure wouldn't mind plugging him into their offense.
All of this will be irrelevant if Vegas' next honcho(s) view Carr as worth building around. And Washington has other veterans to evaluate as trade targets or free-agent pickups as well as the 11th overall pick to use in the draft. The two sides are only hypothetically linked at this point.
That said, Carr's contract, the Raiders' leadership change and the instant, competitive market that would surface for Carr all suggest an opportunity for a Matthew Stafford-like swap in the next couple of months. After missing out on Stafford last year, a win-hungry Rivera might be ready to participate in that type of transaction this time around.
