Derek Carr's first season with the New Orleans Saints didn't exactly go according to plan, but he's hoping the 2024 campaign will bring better things for him and his new team. One game he will surely have circled on his calendar is when he goes up against his former team in the Las Vegas Raiders, which will see him face off against some of his old friends in Maxx Crosby and Davante Adams.
While Carr won't directly be playing against Adams in this game since both guys will be on offense for their respective teams, Carr will have to deal with Crosby all day long, which is something he isn't accustomed to since he spent four years watching him wreak havoc on opposing quarterbacks. Carr believes he has a plan for dealing with Crosby, though, and it involves starting a fight with him that sees the dominant defensive lineman punch him so that the refs are forced to throw a flag and penalize the star pass rusher.
“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. That's my goal.” – Derek Carr, NFL.com
Derek Carr's fight with Maxx Crosby would likely not go his way
Carr is obviously saying this in jest, as he and Crosby are still good friends, despite the fact they no longer play for the same team. It will surely be an odd experience for Crosby to be trying to tackle Carr on the Saints after he spent quite a bit of time being forced to chase him around practice fields without being able to actually hit him.
If Carr and Crosby were to fight, chances are things wouldn't go Carr's way, unless he is skilled in some form of fighting that the public is not privy to. While you have to be an athlete to be a quarterback of course, comparing him to Crosby in terms of a potential fight doesn't really seem like, well, a fair fight.
Crosby spends his time on the football field mauling opposing quarterbacks, and he's one of the best at his job in the entire league. Crosby is fresh off the best campaign of his career in 2023 in which he racked up a career-high 14.5 sacks and a league-leading 23 tackles for a loss. Those big numbers earned him his third straight Pro Bowl selection, a spot on the All-Pro second team, and a fourth place finish in the Defensive Player of the Year race.
Carr spends his time on the field trying to avoid guys like Crosby, but he didn't have a ton of success doing that again in 2023, as he was sacked 31 times over his 17 games on the field. Crosby regularly finds his way into the opposing backfield, and it's probably a safe bet to expect him to drop Carr at least once when they line up against each other.
Chances are Carr and Crosby won't be fighting anytime soon, but if they do, Carr has a plan to make it beneficial for him, even though he might get beat up pretty badly. Carr will be hoping to stay as far away from Crosby when the Saints and Raiders face off, but oftentimes Crosby is inevitably going to get his sacks, and it wouldn't be a surprise to see Carr fall victim to that hard truth for the first in his career in 2024.
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