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New Orleans Saints quarterback Derek Carr. Matthew Hinton-USA TODAY Sports

The Derek Carr experience is off to brutal start for Saints

By Adam Gretz | Last updated 10/20/23

When the New Orleans Saints signed Derek Carr to a four-year contract (potentially worth $150M) this offseason, they were obviously hoping he could be a long-term solution at the position.

We are just seven games into his tenure with the team, and there should already be some doubt as to how the whole thing is going to work out.

Not only has the Saints offense struggled to find any consistency, but the whole operation looks completely dysfunctional. That was evident during the 31-24 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars on Thursday night, when Carr had multiple outbursts directed at his teammates during the game and the offense was consistently booed off the field.

One of those outbursts was caught by the Amazon broadcast when he could be heard saying, "What are you doing?" in the direction of wide receiver Chris Olave following a miscommunication in the fourth quarter.

Carr acknowledged after the game that he needs to "chill out" with the outbursts and hold himself more accountable but went on to say he wasn't specifically talking about Olave in that situation. He also talked about "negative plays" and things that shouldn't happen.

From NFL.com:

"I wasn't talking to Chris, like the past two weeks I was just talking in general," Carr said when asked about the exchange. "There were some things that happened today that led to some pretty big negative plays that should never have happened and I think that's where my frustration came from."

Frustration and yelling among teammates is one thing, and it happens on every sideline across the NFL every single week. It is a highly competitive and emotional environment, and sometimes those emotions boil over when the game is not going well.

The bigger concern is the fact the Saints keep finding themselves in this situation and just how consistently bad the offense looks.

They have failed to score more than 20 points in five of their first seven games, have scored more than 24 points just one time and are averaging just 19 points per game for the season. While there are definitely concerns with the makeshift offensive line, Carr has simply not played like the franchise quarterback the Saints are paying him to be.

He has struggled with turnovers, he has missed throws and he has been especially bad when the team gets into the red zone, where a lot of their drives tend to stall out.

Carr has had moments in his career where he has played and produced like a fringe top-10 quarterback. He has also had moments where he has tended to fall apart in big moments and big situations, while his 2022 performance with the Las Vegas Raiders was one of the worst seasons of his career. He is 32 years old and has taken quite a beating physically throughout his career so it is entirely possible he is just starting the decline portion of his career.

Whatever the case may be, the Saints offense has been an awful, dysfunctional mess for most of the season, and as the highly paid quarterback Carr has to take a large part of the responsibility for that. It is not an encouraging start for him and the Saints.

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