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At some point today, Derek Carr will hit the free agent market for the first time in his career. The longtime Raiders quarterback refused to waive his no-trade clause to facilitate a transaction to another team, so Las Vegas will cut him outright today in order to avoid paying him his $40 million guaranteed salary.
Carr received some interest over the last month but most teams were unwilling to engage in any legitimate trade talks because his contract was too large in tandem with having to send out a draft pick. Now, though, he’ll have plenty of suitors. Carr checks in as a slightly above-average QB so any team hoping to land him needs to have the cap space to pay him a pretty good salary. Not quite at what his Raiders contract was, but not far off, either. Something in the realm of $20-25 million per year seems about right; the length of the deal is entirely dependent on who Carr signs with.
Here are a few possible free agency destinations for the multi-time Pro Bowl quarterback.
New Orleans Saints
The Saints were the only team engaged in serious trade talks with the Raiders prior to today, but never got a deal done because Carr wouldn’t take a pay cut. It’s fair for New Orleans to ask and fair for Carr to decline, so I doubt there are lingering hard feelings there that would get in the way of a new deal in free agency. New Orleans obviously does not believe Andy Dalton or Jameis Winston is the answer. Carr is better and more reliable than both parties. He’d go a long way towards helping the Saints seize a wide-open NFC South.
The issue (as always!) is that the Saints are currently $57 million over the cap. They’ll have to do quite a bit of gymnastics in order to get even with the cap before the new league year starts, much less create enough room to sign Carr, other free agents at positions of need, and their draft picks. But we talk about this every year and it never ends up mattering for New Orleans so that alone is not enough to eliminate them. It’s absolutely a factor, though.