For the second consecutive week Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Derek Carr with a back injury. The injury has not forced Carr to miss any practices or games but is something worth keeping an eye on and is apparently affecting Carr’s ability to move around in the pocket, among other things.
It would be difficult to claim that as the sole reason for Carr’s rough performance last Sunday against the New Orleans Saints, but it certainly didn’t help matters as Carr threw for just 101 yards on the day and was sacked three times.
According to Vincent Bonsignore of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Carr admitted that the injury is affecting him, though he did add that it’s feeling better than it did last week:
“Did it affect anything in my mechanics or something like that? Of course,” Carr said after practice. “It’s something I’m battling through and dealing with […] “I can say I feel better this week than I did this time last week.”
The Raiders will need Carr to feel and play much better this week if they want any chance at salvaging their season and making the playoff run that head coach Josh McDaniels is still pushing for. The team has a long road ahead to accomplish that goal, but Carr surely believes he can lead this team that way.
But he has to be available, and that is something that is extremely important to Carr, who has missed just two regular season games in his career. It is so important to him in fact that he doesn’t even like seeing his name on the injury report:
“If my name is on there, that makes me upset,” he said. “I’ve got to try to do anything to never be on there only because I had a coach one time tell me, ‘Just always be available, no matter what it takes.’ And so that to me, just in my whole NFL career, has always been the most important thing.”
“Everyone at this point isn’t feeling great. I’m not feeling great, but it’s part of the game and never an excuse.”
At this point of the season, Carr is exactly right that everyone is feeling some sort of pain, but you have to push through that. One thing that undoubtedly helps the pain is winning, and the Raiders need much more of that, or this season will have an unfortunate ending overall.
