ALAMEDA –- Derek Carr woke up Monday morning in a panic. The sun was up for one, something that rarely pairs with the alarm clock’s sound. The second-year Raiders quarterback is on dawn patrol during the season, up and at ‘em early preparing for that week’s opponent.
“I woke up this morning to my alarm at a time it hasn’t been set at for about eight months,” Carr said. “I felt like I was late. I started freaking out and ran downstairs. That’s when I realized it was over.”
Sunday’s season finale at Kansas City was the last game to prepare for. Now there’s nothing, a great void created by another football season laid to rest earlier than the Raiders expected. Carr goes from five-month sprint to full stop in an evening, and it takes the body and mind time to adjust.
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“It’s hard,” Carr said. “It’s a weird feeling for it to be this way. I don’t plan on ending this soon for the rest of my career.”
Carr’s efforts stop with the regular season this time, short of lofty playoff expectations in head coach Jack Del Rio’s first season as head coach.
The Raiders finished 7-9, a significant improvement over the previous season. They lost 10 straight, finished 3-13, fired a coach and didn’t retain the interim replacement.
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It still wasn’t up to snuff. Del Rio set high expectations for this franchise, planning to win the AFC West and reach for the postseason for the first time since 2002.
“We feel like we should still be playing, but we didn’t earn it,” Carr said. “There are some teams in the playoffs that we played against. There are teams that we saw the mistakes they had and they barely beat us. We didn’t earn it and we’re not there yet, but we see where we’re headed.”
The Raiders are universally considered a team on the rise, another quality offseason away from legitimate contention. Del Rio believes the Raiders are in a good space after his first season in control.
“It’s was a good beginning, definitely a year we can build on,” Del Rio said. “We didn’t quite meet the goals I had established, but it was productive on many fronts. There were a lot of positives, but there are some areas where we have to improve. It’s not what we all want or all I’d like it to be as soon as possible, but it is a solid start.”
Del Rio convinced owner Mark Davis to finance a practice facility transformation and a large performance center. He tried to make Alameda a fun place to work and the Raiders a team talent wants to play for. That was phase one, an attempt to improve the team’s image among the rank and file.
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The next step was being competitive. The Raiders certainly did that, though they didn’t finish well enough. They either had the lead or possession with a one-score deficit in the fourth quarter of 15 games. Too many of those games slipped away, leaving the Raiders on the outside looking into the postseason.
“We learned this year how to stay in the fight and how to keep playing, keep plugging away,” Del Rio said. “You have an opportunity to turn these games and turn them back in your favor. We did a couple of times. We had other people turn it on us a couple of times. That’s kind of life in the NFL. You’ve got to be able to survive those close games and we’re pretty close to 50-50. A lot of experience was gained, some good and some bad, but definitely a lot of experience that we can learn from as we go forward. I think we’ll do just that.”
The season’s end is still too raw for most, even with a month to absorb another postseason exclusion. Carr said it’ll be hard for him to even watch the playoffs.
Raiders players considered themselves talented enough to contend, but didn’t play enough consistent, complimentary football to hang tough.
That will be the third phase, and will take place. There is confidence 2015 will be remembered as a building block to better times and greater glory.
“Everyone wanted to be even better, but we are headed in the right direction,” Carr said. “We know what we’re building here, and that’s kind of exciting.”