Derek Carr is hanging him up. After 11 years, the veteran quarterback decided to retire. He announced this on Saturday here. He said upon reflection of prayer and in discussion with Heather, that's his wife, I've decided to retire from the National Football League for more than 11 years. We've been incredibly, and we're forever grateful and humbled by this

experience. It's difficult to find the right words to express our thanks to all the teammates,

coaches, management, ownership, team officials, and especially the fans who made this journey

so special, your unwavering support has meant the world to us. Well, this is an interesting one.

Carr has a laboral tear and degenerative changes to his

rotator cuff, and instead of opting for a potential long road in terms of surgery, he decided to retire,

and it's fascinating for a number of reasons. He's giving up $30 million in fully guaranteed pay.

That was going to be his base salary for this season. He's not going to get that. And he leaves a depth chart that

is very, very thin. Now, I'm going to talk about that in a moment, but I did at least want to do a

retrospective of Derek Carr's career. It wasn't a Hall of Fame career. Nobody's

ever going to claim that, but it wasn't a bad career. There were stretches where he was kind of

like a mid-range starter. And let's be really clear about that as well. Today, maybe there aren't

a lot of starting jobs open. We know the Pittsburgh Steelers

need a quarterback. Now, obviously, the Saints quarterback situation is a little dicey, and there

are a few others that we could get into, the Jets, a few others. But regardless, there seem to be more

capable starting quarterbacks in this era of the National Football League than a decade ago

when Derek Carr started.

And I think being that mid-range level starter, like if you're like the 15th, 16th, 17th, best

starter, that was a pretty good thing. You know, you weren't necessarily kidding yourself at quarterback.

He had a few 4,000-yard seasons. In fact, he posted four straight in his time with the Raiders.

He capped that with 4,804 passing yards in 2021.

But he was never much of a touchdown producer.

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