David Carr thinks he knows why little brother Derek got cut from the Raiders. And he believes it all has to do with how Tom Brady bullied his coaches in New England.
Let’s fill in more details. Derek Carr’s now-former coach is Josh McDaniels. And McDaniels recently finished his first year as head coach of the Raiders. But before that, McDaniels spent 20 years with the Patriots. He spent 14 of those seasons as offensive coordinator. When he arrived in 2001, Tom Brady was a second-year quarterback. But that season, Brady replaced Drew Bledsoe as Patriots QB1 and led New England to a Super Bowl.
David Carr, who was the top pick of the Houston Texans in the 2002 NFL draft, said if Brady didn’t get his way, he’d take the issue to coach Bill Belichick. And if he still didn’t have a favorable decision. he’d go above Belichick to owner Robert Kraft.
Burned by Tom Brady, Carr believes McDaniels wanted to be able to control his starting quarterback with the Raiders. And Carr thinks he couldn’t do that with Derek, who signed with the Saints this week. David Carr, who works as an analyst for NFL Network, discussed the Patriots during an interview with the Harvard Sports Podcast.
“I think what happened, and this is just my opinion,” Carr said. “I don’t speak for anybody in my family. (And) I don’t speak for anybody in New England. I know some people up there, I know some people that were in Las Vegas. I would say what happened is, in New England, Tom Brady ran the show. So, he was able to bully Josh. And he would just say, ‘This is what we’re gonna do.’
“If Josh said no, (Brady) would go to Bill’s office,” Carr said. “If Bill said no, he would go to Robert Kraft (and say) ‘Trade Jimmy Garoppolo, I don’t need him in here causing a problem.’ Jimmy Garoppolo gets traded, right?”
And Carr shared more thoughts about Tom Brady, who retired from the NFL last month as a Tampa Bay Buc.
“I think that when they were in New England, Tom ran his stuff,” Carr said. :Tom is a guy, historically, that gets to the line of scrimmage, picks the play he wants to run. … I think that what Josh wants to do, is Josh feels like — and maybe he’s right, maybe he’s wrong, time will tell — he feels like he can guess right most of the time from the sideline, which is almost impossible to do in this day and age. But Derek does say he’s a smart guy, like he’s a football genius. Like he gets it. So, I think for Josh, he’s gonna get a guy that he can not control, but tell where to throw the ball. That has some physical tools, that can make some plays in the run game, that can push the ball down the field.”
