​What Derek Carr's Success Says About the NFL's Intransigent Coaching

Recent Raiders history has been bleak and depressing, as the team consistently wastes draft picks on players with speed and not much else. General manager Reggie McKenzie even approaches free agency that way.

Thanks to the salary cap, star NFL players who actually hit free agency usually get offered the same contract from team to team and so they opt to sign with contenders. Thus, in a way, the "parity" caused by the salary cap actually keeps lower-rung teams from acquiring talent. It's why the Raiders keep running out Charles Woodsons and Justin Tucks rather than bringing back Lamarr Houston or becoming a serious option for Devin McCourty. Any sane player with a choice treats a destination like Oakland as a pure cash grab.

So, naturally, I was pretty down on Oakland's chances to pull any sort of playoff run this season. A lot of my skepticism had to do with Derek Carr's play as a rookie last year.

Carr was handed a very conservative offense that was rather inefficient. His touchdown-to-interception ratio was skewed by a lot of dropped picks—he finished at the bottom of the list at Cian Fahey's Interceptable Pass Project. Nothing about Carr's first year screamed star.

Then this season happened. Let's compare the two seasons statistically using Football Outsiders' advanced metrics.

Pretty stark difference, right?

Normally when a leap like this occurs, we try to find an outside reason. The Raiders definitely made an investment in their receiving corps this season. They did strike gold in rehabilitating Michael Crabtree, who has been efficient and shown more burst than most NFL scouts thought he had left. Also, Amari Cooper landed in their laps with the fourth overall pick, and he's been nothing short of the great rookie receiver we all thought he'd be.

But offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave's role in Carr's development has been undersold. Musgrave was ousted from Minnesota despite having overseen a major leap in quarterback bust Christian Ponder's productivity. After a year as Eagles quarterback coach, Musgrave has brought more spread principles to the Raiders. Carr passes almost exclusively out of shotgun, and it's not rare at all to see Oakland have an empty backfield.

It's kind of funny that, as the national media dances on Chip Kelly's preordained grave, we've got an example of the spread blossoming on the other coast, in obscurity.

You'd also be wrong to believe that it was all Cooper and Crabtree boosting things for this spread offense. They've combined for 148 DYAR. Crabtree has a negative DVOA, and Cooper's is 1.2 percent. The vast majority of Carr's positive value comes from hitting speedy receivers Seth Roberts (23.3 percent DVOA), Andre Holmes (24.3 percent DVOA), and satellite back Marcel Reece (56.5 percet DVOA). Spreading the field allows Oakland to generate favorable matchups with those players, finding the weak underbelly of the pass coverage. Crabtree and Cooper keep defenses honest, and they're obviously crucial no matter what the team-based value statistics say, but they are, in a sense, decoys for the real problem Oakland presents most plays.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that Derek Carr is the next great quarterback in the NFL. I don't think the tape supports that. He has made a lot of throws this year that I didn't think he had in him. I also think the possibility exists that he's become so hyper-efficient on his short throws that he can emulate the success of a player like Tom Brady, in if not in scope. This has been a clear step forward, but I don't think I'm crushing anyone's dreams by saying that he's not Aaron Rodgers yet.

Here's the fun part, though: he doesn't have to be.

The Raiders have created an offense that only the Broncos with a still-healthy DeMarcus Ware have really been able to shut down. They've done it not only by encouraging their quarterback but by leaning on his contributions: the Raiders have simply plugged Carr into a better version of his college offense and asked him to succeed. It's worked this year, in a way that is starkly different from what Norv Turner has drawn up in Minnesota for Teddy Bridgewater, or what the Gus Bradley Jaguars have done to Blake Bortles. It's a sharp contrast to the norm, and the Raiders should be celebrated for what they've been able to do this season.

I'm not going to tell you that nobody is ever going to figure out the Raiders passing attack—football doesn't exist in this kind of a vacuum—but when other young quarterbacks are struggling in pro-style offenses, Oakland's progress with Carr stands out.