WATFORD, England – Raiders quarterback Derek Carr has competed against Khalil Mack for years. It’s normally not on a football pitch.
They had some epic battles playing basketball in Carr’s pool. Building an intense rivalry playing a child’s game fit their friendship well. They battle, they talk serious trash, and end up with a handshake and a hug.
That’s how Sunday’s game between the Bears and Raiders will go here in London. There is one difference, however. Mack will try to take Carr down for the first time.
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That part, Carr admits, will be weird.
“I love the guy. Everybody knows that,” Carr said Wednesday after a Raiders practice at The Grove resort just outside London. “He’s one of my best friends. We’ll be friends when we’re all old and maybe he’ll have kids. I’m trying to nudge him in that direction. This week is different. We’re competing against each other, so it’s back to the pool basketball mentality for me.”
It will be odd, for sure, to have them going against one another after years pulling in the same direction. They were drafted in subsequent rounds back in 2014, highlighting an excellent draft class that worked hard to change the Raiders losing culture.
It was something Carr and Mack took personally, leading their respective units while playing premium positions. They were foundational pieces, and expected to play their entire careers together.
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After all, nobody trades a franchise quarterback or an elite edge rusher. You pay those guys fair market value and reap immense benefits. That was not the Raiders course of action.
They paid Carr first, something mandatory considering the second-round pick did not have a fifth-year option to exercise. Mack was pretty pissed that he didn’t get extended at the same time -- the Raiders had more control over a first-round pick -- which would’ve been the first possible moment to do.
The Raiders waited a year but weren’t willing to provide the compensation required to keep Mack in Silver and Black. Coach Jon Gruden and the front office chose to trade him to Chicago over watching his contract holdout extend into the season, despite them having tools at their disposal to play hardball and get him to re-join the fray.
He has been awesome with Chicago, totaling 17 sacks and 10 forced fumbles in his Bears tenure. The entire Raiders team has 18 sacks and eight forced fumbles over that same stretch.
Those numbers could’ve benefitted the Raiders. That’s what Carr always thought. He believed deep down that they would play together for years. They only got four, with the business side of football getting in the way.
Carr went down memory lane Wednesday when asked about the fast friendship, especially during a rookie season full of awful results but great optimism for the future.
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“We were non-stop joking, all the time. He’s one of my best friends,” Carr said. “He would say this too: That’s my brother. Just sitting in the team meeting room, he was always in the seat right next to me, right in the front row. We go eat, and we’re sitting together. On the practice field, we’re talking trash. We had fun because what we were trying to do.
“Him and I together, and our [2014] draft class, we were trying to change a culture. We did that. We really started to get things going and made the playoffs for the first time in forever. Doing something like that, when it hasn’t been done in 15-plus years or so, was big.
"We were drafted together and we were captains together, and we changed a culture together. That creates a special bond, and nothing can take it away. Not even Bears versus Raiders, when we’re playing each other. We’re still friends. We always will be.”