Community Tailgate: Derek Carr’s Deal
Derek Carr is now the highest-paid player in the NFL…depending on how you look at it. The “new money” average annual value of Carr’s deal gives him $25MM per year, beginning in 2018 when the contract kicks in. That tops Andrew Luck‘s new money yearly average of $24.769MM, giving Carr the mantle by a slim margin of $271K per season. There’s also the matter of cashflow. Luck’s three-year value ($75MM to $67.6MM) and four-year value ($96.125MM to $87.7MM) tops Carr’s. Any way you slice it, Carr probably won’t be at the top for long anyway since Matthew Stafford is on deck for a new deal and the Lions are not hesitant about making him the highest-paid player in the NFL. 
[RELATED: Derek Carr Discusses Extension]
When asked about his new contract at a press conference earlier this week, Carr explained that he structured the deal with his teammates in mind. The Raiders will soon begin extension talks with right guard Gabe Jackson, linebacker Khalil Mack, and (perhaps a little further down the line) wide receiver Amari Cooper. The way the deal is designed, Carr said, should help the Raiders keep all of those key pillars for years to come.
When looking at the fine print, Carr’s deal isn’t exactly the market-pushing deal that the initial reports would have led us to believe. There was speculation that Carr would push the Raiders for larger-than-usual guarantees or perhaps even a set percentage of the yearly salary cap to account for the team’s ever-increasing revenue. Neither one of those things happened and Carr didn’t exactly shatter the glass ceiling for top quarterbacks.
Jason Fitzgerald of Over The Cap estimates that the quarterback market should really be around $27-$30MM by now rather than $25MM. Because a few QBs like Tom Brady accepted team-friendly deals, the going rate for elite signal callers has not increased at the same rate as the salary cap. Carr’s deal will help out the Raiders and his teammates, but it doesn’t necessarily blaze a trail for his fellow quarterbacks.
Do you like Carr’s decision to structure his deal in a way that suits Oakland? Or do you think the youngster should have pushed for more? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section.
Derek Carr Discusses Extension
The Raiders and franchise quarterback Derek Carr finally agreed to an extension this week that’s worth around $25MM per year. The 2014 second-round pick is now signed through the 2022 season, and he’ll presumably earn at least $70MM in guaranteed money ($40MM of that was already guaranteed upon signing the extension).
The 26-year-old met with the media yesterday to discuss his brand-new contract. The Associated Press reviewed his press conference, and we’ve compiled some of the notable soundbites below:
On his negotiations with the Raiders:
“I think that both sides wanted it to get done. It was two family members just figuring out how to get along, and we did. We figured out a way to do it so that we have the opportunity to sign the other guys that I think are important to this organization. That was really important to me, not just to take every single dime that we could.”
On him earning the NFL’s richest contract:
“I think I’ve set a standard for myself, the organization and for this team, personally, that no amount of money is going to matter. It doesn’t matter. You can give me a dollar, you can give me $25 million, it doesn’t matter to me. My goal is that I make sure I give everything I have to this organization. There’s no pressure, there’s no, ‘We’ll be on the 1-yard line and I won’t give it to Marshawn, I’ll throw it.’ None of that stuff. I don’t care about the stats, that’s not my No. 1 objective.”
On his teammates’ reaction to the extension:
“All of my teammates to a man said, ‘Man you work your tail off, you deserve it.’ I don’t feel like I deserve it. But just them saying that grabbed my heart because they’re the ones I go to battle with, they’re the ones I work with every single day. What they have to say really matters to me. I do know I will have to owe them all a big dinner. That will be fun.”
Barnwell: Carr's Deal Lags Behind Luck's
- At $25MM per year, Raiders quarterback Derek Carr‘s newly signed contract is a record deal in terms of average annual value, but it still doesn’t match up to Colts signal-caller Andrew Luck‘s pact, writes Bill Barnwell of ESPN.com. While Luck is collecting less per season (just over $23MM) on the six-year, $139.1MM extension he inked last summer, he outpaces Carr in terms of both three-year value ($75MM to $67.6MM) and four-year value ($96.125MM to $87.7MM). Those are better gauges than the overall value of a contract, suggests Barnwell, who argues that the last year of a quarterback’s deal is essentially irrelevant. By then, the QB will have either landed a raise, thereby eliminating what was left on the previous contract, or gotten cut.
Derek Carr: Deal Structured To Help Team
Derek Carr‘s new contract is, in some ways, a record-setter. In other ways, it fell a bit short of what the football world figured he would get in an extension. At a Friday morning press conference, Carr explained that his contract is structured specifically so that the Raiders can also work out long-term deals with his best teammates.
“This affords us to do that. We’ll start on that ASAP,” GM Reggie McKenzie said (Twitter link via Michael Gehlken of the Las Vegas Review-Journal).
Next up could be an extension for right guard Gabe Jackson. Back in March, McKenzie hinted that a new deal could be on the way for the 25-year-old. In 2016, Jackson graded out as the league’s 20th best offensive guard out of 72 qualifiers, per the numbers at Pro Football Focus. The Raiders’ offensive line also ranked first in pass protection in 2016, allowing an adjusted sack rate of just 3.4%, according to Football Outsiders. While interior offensive linemen don’t get as much love as tackles, Jackson is clearly a key cog in Oakland’s O-Line.
The Raiders will also have to address the contracts of wide receivers Amari Cooper and Khalil Mack down the line. The structure of Carr’s deal coupled with the Raiders’ cap flexibility should allow the team to hammer out deals for all of its stars and continue to build on one of the best cores in the league.
Raiders Sign Derek Carr To Extension
The Raiders and Derek Carr have finalized a new five-year deal that is believed to be worth about $25MM per year, league sources tell Adam Schefter of ESPN.com (on Twitter). Carr confirmed the deal on Twitter on Thursday morning and the Raiders made it official with an announcement on Friday.
[RELATED: Lions Willing To Make Matthew Stafford League’s Highest-Paid Player]
Carr is now signed through 2022 with a deal that will contain just south of $69MM over the first three years, according to Jason La Canfora of CBSSports.com (Twitter links). Carr’s deal includes $70MM in guarantees with $40MM fully guaranteed at signing, a source tells Tom Pelissero of USA Today (on Twitter). Additional details can be found here.
It has long been expected that Carr’s deal could approach the $25MM/year mark, but it wasn’t clear when the two sides would finally shake hands on a deal. Now, the Raiders have gotten the extension hammered out with weeks to go before training camp. That’s a huge win for the Raiders, especially since Carr was adamant about cutting off talks in late July.
“I wouldn’t even answer my phone,” Carr said recently. “The money isn’t the thing that drives me. … What drives me is making sure I’m giving everything that I have with my abilities, and making sure that we win. And I don’t want anything distracting my thought process at all…Now, that’s not a jab, or anything like that. That’s just me saying I’m not going to deal with anything that’s not helping me just focus on winning.”
The former second-round pick was slated to enter the final year of his rookie contract. Instead, he’ll see a titanic bump after his paltry $1.15MM salary in 2017. Before today’s news, Andrew Luck‘s $24.6MM average annual salary was the highest of any player in the NFL. Carr’s new deal – when counting just the “new” money – will place him at the top in AAV, besting Carson Palmer ($24.35MM), Drew Brees ($24.25MM), and Kirk Cousins ($23.9MM).
Last season, Carr completed 63.8% of his passes for 3,937 yards, 28 touchdowns, and six interceptions. He graded out as Pro Football Focus’ No. 6 QB last season, putting him ahead of Brees, Cousins, Matthew Stafford, Dak Prescott, and several other major names. Only Tom Brady, Matt Ryan, Aaron Rodgers, Luck, and Russell Wilson finished with higher scores than the Raiders QB.
Carr’s new deal will have major implications for Stafford and Cousins as they seek new multi-year arrangements. Lions president Ron Wood admitted this week that a new deal for Stafford would likely mean making him the league’s highest-paid player and the Carr deal only raises the bar. The two sides may now have the framework in place for a deal and that could bump Carr from the top spot in compensation rather quickly.
Meanwhile, Cousins and the Redskins have until July 17 (not July 15) to work out an extension. Cousins is not interested in taking a hometown discount and he is seeking full guarantees that will match the total of this year’s franchise tag ($23.94MM) plus next year’s transition tender ($28.7MM).
Raiders Got Flexibility In Carr Deal
- The Raiders‘ commitment of $40MM guaranteed at signing for Derek Carr is nothing to sneeze at, but the team got a level of flexibility that you don’t see with some of the other quarterback contracts out there, Jason Fitzgerald of Over The Cap writes. Before the third year of the deal, the Raiders could theoretically walk away from Derek Carr and take on just $7.5MM in dead money. Because he’ll effectively be going year-to-year, the deal has some similarities to Colin Kaepernick‘s 49ers contract and that’s not necessarily great for the player. Carr did get some financial security with his new deal, but Fitzgerald feels that quarterbacks need a new champion to really push the market. That could come in a matter of weeks when/if Matthew Stafford inks a new deal with Detroit.
Details On Derek Carr’s Contract
We now have some additional details on Derek Carr‘s new extension with the Raiders. As previously reported, the five-year, $125MM deal gives Carr a record-setting $25MM per year when evaluating only the new money. A closer look shows that the deal, while still lucrative, is far from a sure thing for the young quarterback. 
Carr will get $40MM fully guaranteed at signing with $70.2MM guaranteed for injury, as ESPN.com’s Dan Graziano tweets. However, the particulars of the deal effectively make this a two-year, $47.5MM contract with team options the rest of the way. That’s because Carr’s 2019 and 2020 guarantees do not vest until February in each of those years. It’s also worth noting that the final two years of the deal – 2021 and 2022 – are non-guaranteed.
If the Raiders do not release Carr before that date in 2019, he’ll be in line for $67.5MM in earnings through the first three years of the deal. As we learned on Thursday morning, Carr’s agents purposely pushed for a backloaded contract so that Carr could take full advantage of Nevada’s 0% state tax. Still, the fine print of the deal leaves Carr with little certainty in the event that he regresses. The notion of Carr falling off before his 30th birthday seems unlikely today, but stranger things have happened in the NFL.
Reactions To Derek Carr’s New Contract
Derek Carr is now the highest-paid player in the NFL – if you count only his new money average. Carr will begin a five-year, $125MM deal in the 2018 season, giving him a record $25MM average annual value. If you roll in his 2017 salary, which is less than $2MM, then Carr’s yearly average falls closer to $21MM. Carr’s deal is substantial, but what kind of ripple effect will it really have on other top quarterbacks around the NFL?
Here’s a look at some reactions to Carr’s new deal:
- The market for quarterbacks truly peaked with Eli Manning, Joe Flacco, Drew Brees, and Aaron Rodgers, Jason Fitzgerald of Over The Cap (on Twitter) argues. Top players have failed to really push the market since 2013, in his view, as he feels that the league’s top quarterbacks should be earning between $27-$30MM per year at this point. Keep in mind, the salary cap has grown roughly 35% from 2013 to 2017 and top QB deals have not ballooned at the same rate.
- Fitzgerald (Twitter links) also believes that Carr’s $70MM in injury guarantees hints at a contract that is going to be more like Russell Wilson‘s than a real market setter. A deal giving Carr about $43MM in Year 1 new money, $60MM by Year 2, and $80MM Year 3 would have pushed the market further, in Fitzgerald’s view. For what it’s worth, the expected cash flow on the deal might not be too far off at the start with $40MM fully guaranteed at signing. His $69MM intake over the first three years, however, falls short.
- Carr’s new deal led Mike Florio of PFT to wonder how much Tom Brady could have gotten from the Patriots if he drove a hard bargain. One beat writer suggested to Florio that he could have gotten as much as $40MM per year. Florio doesn’t think it’s quite that high, but he does believe that the future Hall of Famer would be making at least $30MM per season if he wanted to squeeze every penny out of New England. Brady is under contract with the Pats through the 2019 season and he is arguably one of the league’s most underpaid players.
- Even when going by new money average, Carr’s deal only tops Andrew Luck‘s by $271K per season, Florio notes.
- Carr’s deal will impact negotiations for Matthew Stafford, but it probably won’t mean much to the Redskins and Kirk Cousins, as one agent tells Mark Maske of The Washington Post. “The Stafford contract clearly will take it the next step higher,” said one NFL agent not involved in the Carr, Stafford or Cousins negotiations. “Whatever Carr gets, Stafford will get more. The Cousins thing, that’s a little bit different. Those are negotiations where the numbers are set by the [franchise] tag, more so than [by comparison to] other contracts.”
Backloaded Deal For Raiders’ Derek Carr?
Derek Carr and the Raiders have a new deal which will keep the quarterback in place through the 2022 season. We know that the new money average on the deal – $25MM per year – is an all-time record, but there are other factors which will dictate the true value of the deal. Naturally, the cash flow and nature of the guarantees will tell us a lot about how Carr did in negotiations, but his reps may have also structured his deal with the Nevada state tax code in mind, as Adam Schefter of ESPN.com tweets. 
[RELATED: Raiders, Derek Carr Agree To Record-Breaking Deal]
California’s state tax rate is 13.3%. Meanwhile, there is no state tax in Nevada. A backloaded deal could make a lot of sense for Carr and allow him to hang on to millions more in income.
We know that the Raiders plan to play their home games in Oakland for the 2017 and 2018 seasons. In 2019, the team could move to a temporary home in Nevada while waiting for it’s new home to be built, but it’s also possible that they’ll extend their stay in Oakland for one more year. It stands to reason that Carr’s team has opted for less money in the first two years of the new deal (’18, ’19) with a step up in 2020, when the new stadium is projected to open.
It’s not just Carr that will be thinking of the Battle Born State when negotiating a new contract with the Raiders. The same will go for any Raider in extension talks, including Khalil Mack, Gabe Jackson, and Amari Cooper, Schefter tweets.
Sebastian Janikowski Plans To Kick Into His 40s
- Like Rivers, Raiders kicker Sebastian Janikowski would like to continue his career into the foreseeable future. One key difference between the two is that Janikowski is already on the cusp of his 40s. Nevertheless, the 39-year-old’s aiming to remain the Raiders’ kicker when they relocate to Las Vegas in 2020. “I hope so, that’s my goal,” he said, via the Associated Press. “That’s not my decision.” Janikowski will be 42 when the Raiders move, which isn’t an unprecedented age for a kicker to play at (the Colts’ Adam Vinatieri is 44, and ex-Raider George Blanda lasted until he was 48, notes the AP), but it would make for a remarkable run with one franchise. Janikowski is entering his 18th year with the Raiders, who raised eyebrows when the then-Al Davis-led organization chose him 17th overall in the 2000 draft. The ex-Florida State Seminole has generally been effective for the Raiders since, including when he made 29 of 35 field goals last year.
- One of Janikowski’s Raiders teammates, quarterback Derek Carr, is a candidate to receive a record contract worth $25MM-plus per year prior to the season. But Bill Barnwell of ESPN.com is somewhat skeptical of Carr and the Raiders, arguing that it will be tough for either to replicate their 2016 performances this year. Carr will have difficulty avoiding negative regression on both his paltry interception rate (1.1 percent) and lofty fourth-quarter comeback total (seven) from last season, while the Raiders probably won’t win 12 games again unless they dramatically improve their point differential, Barnwell contends. Oakland only outscored its opposition by 31 points last season, leading to a Pythagorean Expectation of 8.7 wins. Additionally, the club went a hard-to-sustain 8-1 in games decided by seven or fewer points.