It’s always a lot more fun when you know someone on the other sideline.
For Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Derek Carr, Cincinnati Bengals offensive coordinator Brian Callahan was his former coach.
"Callahan, love him to death. Gosh, he helped me so much when he was the quarterback coach here," Carr said.
"Just sitting in his office talking about go balls or talking about this coverage or this trajectory of a throw and just studying that with him and becoming a better player. There is no doubt in my mind that he is a really, really good football coach.”
It makes it even more interesting when the pair still communicate with each other.
"Our relationship, we still talk. We still text,” Carr said. “When we are not playing each other obviously, he'll send me a throw that I made in a game and just be like, 'Are you kidding me?' ...”
“Same here, if Joe [Burrow] has a good day, I'll send him a text, 'Wow, that was awesome. I love that you ran such and such play and hit him on this. That was great. Great call.' That kind of stuff."
But today, instead of sending compliments to each other, the pair are going head-to-head against each other.
With that said, the knowledge of Callahan does help Carr and his squad prepares for the Bengals.
"Helping our guys and the way that he thinks and things like that, absolutely," Carr said.
"There [are] definitely things I can try and help. I know he did it against us last time we played, giving them a whole bunch of stuff. We got a whole bunch of crazy looks last time we played them, so it was good."
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