We don't yet know the when, but we know it's happening.
After nine seasons with the Raiders and another in New Orleans in the wake of being cast off by Las Vegas, Derek Carr will face the team that drafted him for the first time in 2024.
"I am looking forward to it. I cannot wait," Carr said Friday, specifically in regard to playing his former Raiders teammate, Maxx Crosby, while answering fan questions on social media.
A second-round pick by the Raiders in 2014, Carr is the franchise's all-time leader with 35,222 passing yards and 217 touchdowns. He twice led the team to the playoffs during his nine-year tenure, and he represented the club in four Pro Bowls -- the last of which awkwardly came during his final season in Las Vegas following an end-of-season benching.
His first campaign with New Orleans was an uneven one. He struggled with consistency and fell short of the playoffs once again, but he did cut his interceptions down to eight from 14 in each of the previous two years, and his 25 passing touchdowns were his second most since 2017.
Whenever he takes on the Raiders this season, it'll involve a slightly smaller degree of revenge than if he had seen his former team early on in 2023.
After former general manager Dave Ziegler and former head coach Josh McDaniels gave up on Carr, their reign together in Las Vegas lasted only until Halloween night of the following season. The Raiders fired both following a 3-5 start.
With a new staff in place, Carr doesn't necessarily need to prove any coaches on the opposite sideline there wrong. However, there will still be familiar faces on the field, such as his good friend Davante Adams or Crosby, who finally gets to apply his petrifying pass-rushing prowess against Carr in a real game after four years spent respecting the QB's red jersey in practice.
Carr's preliminary strategy for dealing with Crosby is, in a word, unwise.
"Hopefully I'm going to try and start a fight with him and punch him, and then have the ref only see him throw his punch back," Carr said, clearly joking. "That's my goal."
Such an exchange between Carr and Crosby would unlikely live up to such storied bouts as Muhammad Ali versus Joe Frazier. It'd presumably fall more in line with Zach Galifianakis' Alan meeting Mike Tyson in The Hangover.
Nonetheless, Carr finds out later this spring when he'll host his former team.
