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No injury is funny, but this would be hilarious.
Nobody ever wishes for a player to be injured, but if something happens to Derek Carr it would set in motion a chain of events resulting in one of the funniest things to happens in NFL history.
Carr was named to the Pro Bowl on Tuesday, along with Tyler Huntley in one of the funniest/saddest examples of how far the game has sunk. At least Carr had a sense of humor about it.
Well… maybe this invitation got lost in the mail from past seasons but I’m going back to pro bowl #4. See you soon Vegas!
— Derek Carr (@derekcarrqb) January 31, 2023
Now, here’s where this gets hilarious: At this point Carr is free agency bound. The Raiders are looking at the trade market, they’re moving on, and Las Vegas is hoping to find a partner to recoup some of the money on his contract and get some cap relief. Carr will find another team, but he can’t be traded yet. Contractually he’s still a member of the Raiders at the time of the Pro Bowl. So, if something were to happen at the Pro Bowl it would be the Raiders’ responsibility to pay Carr in 2023.
The hilarious part about this is that Carr is about to hit an enormous escalator. A huge one. His salary in 2022 was $17.4M and it was set to jump to $32.9M. It’s highly unlikely a team will either trade for that contract, or sign him to that amount of money.
So, it’s actually in Carr’s best interest to get hurt in the Pro Bowl. Nothing debilitating, we’re not monsters, but say he got a really bad case of turf toe, or a sprained ankle that lingered — gosh, what a shame. Carr would need to stay at home and collect $1.93M a week until he’s able to return to the field. It would be horrible if took a while for that toe to full recover and he’d have to miss an entire season, getting paid a full THIRTY THREE MILLION DOLLARS for doing absolutely nothing.
I’m not saying Derek Carr should fake an injury to get a huge bag from the Raiders, but I’m not, not saying it. IF he wanted to, say, not take the best care of himself and open himself up to getting hurt this weekend it would be tremendous content.
Who am I kidding? Do it for the memes, Derek. Get paaaaaaid for doing nothing.