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“It’s not a ‘popular’ thing to be a Raider right now, but I am and I love it,” Oakland’s Derek Carr (4) said on Twitter recently. (Tim Ireland/Associated Press)
Des Bieler
Sports reporter covering national topics, as well as supporting coverage of D.C.-area teams
Derek Carr took to social media Tuesday to push back on a report claiming that he had a “fractured relationship” with his Raiders teammates. The Oakland quarterback said that efforts to “tear us apart” are “not happening,” and he denied shedding any tears during a game against the Seattle Seahawks, which some had suggested was shown in a video that went viral.
Carr posted two tweets, the first of which was a reply to one of his brothers, Darren Carr, who listed a number of injuries that the quarterback had overcome to play for the Raiders. The brother’s tweet was itself a reply to a Pro Football Talk post that quoted a report by the Athletic’s Marcus Thompson, in which he wrote that it didn’t help Carr’s “fractured relationship” when “film showed what looked like him crying after being sacked and injuring his arm.”
“They saw his face. They heard his whimper,” Thompson, who cited team sources, wrote of how some unnamed Raiders viewed Carr’s reaction to being taken down by Seattle’s defense earlier this month. “They witnessed him explain on the sidelines. They assuredly watched it again in film session. It’s hard to see how Carr can lead this team again.”
“Raiders headquarters is not the best space for Carr. The belief in him has deteriorated, perhaps to irreparable levels,” Thompson claimed in his report, adding, “There are already rumblings about Carr being a sitting duck. … His game is marked by a mental fragility that doesn’t inspire confidence.”
“Don’t even waste your time with this,” Carr tweeted at his “big bro.” He said that when he was “on the ground” during the game in question, he only “yelled” for teammates to “get me up.”
“Not one tear. Not one time,” Carr, 27, wrote in his post. “There is the Truth. People will click on it because it sounds crazy. But stop playing with me.”
The context for Thompson’s report was what he saw as a lack of morale in the Raiders’ locker room, a funk that began when star pass-rusher Khalil Mack was traded to the Bears shortly before the season began. The sense that, under first-year Coach Jon Gruden, the team is holding a fire sale ahead of a move to Las Vegas in a couple of years has only grown in the wake of Oakland’s trade this week of wide receiver Amari Cooper to the Cowboys.
Thompson cited team sources in reporting that Cooper didn’t outright demand a trade but “set the wheels in motion” for one. With two of the 1-5 team’s supposed cornerstone pieces already gone, Thompson suggested that Carr might soon follow them out the door.
Possibly seeking to reassure Oakland fans, and maybe even his own teammates, that he still very much wants to stay put, Carr followed his tweet to his brother with one in which he wrote, “I’m a Raider. It’s not a ‘popular’ thing to be a Raider right now, but I am and I love it.
“I love the struggle of trying to fight back for our city when not a lot of people believe in us,” the fifth-year quarterback, a three-time Pro Bowler, continued. “People can try all they want to tear us apart, but it’s not happening to the real ones.”
Carr “believes he is not going anywhere” and “believes he is part of Jon Gruden’s future,” NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo, citing “people close” to the player, reported Tuesday. Garafolo added that while the coach has been known fall “in and out of love with quarterbacks” in the past, Gruden has “made it clear” to Carr that the latter will “be his quarterback for a long, long time.”
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