Derek Carr’s benching and separation from the Las Vegas Raiders for the final two games of the 2022 regular season signals the end of a disappointing nine-year tenure with the organization.
Disappointing because Carr, for all his talent throwing a football, never developed into a top-tier quarterback.
Disappointing because the Raiders, for all their attempts to buy happiness, from signing Jon Gruden for $100 million to acquiring superstar receiver Davante Adams, failed to give Carr a baseline level of support from their defense.
Since drafting Carr in 2014, the Raiders rank 19th in expected points added (EPA) on offense while ranking 32nd in combined EPA on defense and special teams. That dead-last ranking in the components beyond Carr’s control — defense and special teams — invites an updated look at the “QB Betrayal Index” published before the season.
This updated version has been expanded to include all 92 quarterbacks entering the league since 2000 and starting more than 20 regular-season games.
To determine how much each quarterback was “betrayed” (or not betrayed), we measured how much better (or worse) their teams were on offense than on defense/special teams. To that end, we rank all 92 quarterbacks’ teams by EPA per game on offense in their starts, according to TruMedia. We then rank all 92 of their combined defense/special-teams (“DST”) units in the same way. The difference between those rankings informs the Betrayal Index.
Drew Brees emerges as the “most betrayed” quarterback of the 92 qualifiers since 2000. This makes sense, because his New Orleans Saints were very good on offense (second-best out of the 92 offenses), and very bad in the DST realm ( 81st out of 92). The gap between those rankings produces the minus-79 differential shown in the table below.
Carr’s Raiders ranked even lower than Brees’ Saints in the DST component, but Carr was “less betrayed” because the Raiders’ offenses were not as good as the Saints’ defenses. Carr is the 15th-most-betrayed quarterback of the 92, falling between Andrew Luck and Kirk Cousins.
We’ll revisit this in the offseason. For now, note that three of the four starting quarterbacks in the AFC West rank among the 15 most-betrayed, led by the Los Angeles Chargers’ Justin Herbert (12th on offense, 88th on DST, minus-76 differential) and the Kansas City Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes (1st on offense, 67th on DST, minus-66 differential). Mahomes’ ability to bridge that gap with top-tier play is what makes him a perennial MVP candidate.
2000-22 QB Betrayal Index: Most to Least
(Photo: Chris Unger/Getty Images)
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