Believe it or not, but Derek Carr ended his career just a couple of months and a healthy shoulder away from being remembered as a top-five quarterback in New Orleans Saints franchise history. Really. Now, that may speak more about the history of quarterback play in New Orleans than Carr’s real value to the Saints the last two years, but it’s the truth. Just look at the numbers.
Carr retired with 6,023 passing yards in a Saints uniform, which ranked 8th-most behind Dave Wilson (6,987) and Billy Kilmer (7,490) outside the top-five. His pace of 223.1 passing yards per game was fourth-best, trailing modern-era passers like Drew Brees (298.3), Jim Everett (226.0), and Aaron Brooks (225.4). But this is a stat often measured in volume, and from that perspective Carr is just on the outside looking in. He was exactly 4,600 yards away from breaking into the top-five in Saints franchise history.
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What about touchdown passes? Carr scored 40 of them in his two-year Saints career, which lagged behind Billy Kilmer (47) to rank seventh-most. If he had thrown for 20 more touchdown passes this season he would’ve met Everett’s total and tied for fifth. Bobby Hebert ranks fourth with 85 career touchdown passes, behind Archie Manning (115), Brooks (120), and Brees (491) at the top of the charts.
And then we’ve got to look at wins. Argue about whether or not they’re solely a quarterback stat; the bottom line is they are meaningful, to some degree. And Carr’s 14 wins in a Saints uniform are the sixth-most, all-time. Given his 14-13 record, Carr needed to win four more games to lap Everett (17-30) for fifth place in the record books. Manning (35-91-3), Brooks (38-44), and Hebert (49-26) were within reach if he had played out his four-year deal, but Brees still would’ve been alone at the top (142-86).
Had he been healthy enough to continue playing, Carr likely meets some of those goals. He threw for a career-high 4,804 yards a couple years ago with the Las Vegas Raiders and may have still had it in him if his shoulder held up. His 15 touchdown passes last season were a career-low but so were his 10 games played. Better health would’ve gone a long way. We don’t know how successful he may have been in Kellen Moore’s offense, and we’ll never know. It’s a shame his career ended like this, but Carr did get to bow out on his own terms rather than spend a year on the sidelines recovering from rotator cuff surgery. There’s something to be said for knowing when it’s your time to head out.
This article originally appeared on Saints Wire: Derek Carr retires: QB needed one more year to rank top-5 for Saints
