Sometimes, Derek Carr admitted, he needs to be protected from himself.
He showed his toughness last season, not missing a game despite suffering an AC joint sprain in his throwing shoulder and two concussions.
Toughness, yes, but maybe not wise decision-making. His play clearly suffered in games immediately following those injuries.
That wasn’t the case this year, though. Carr has missed the last three games with an oblique injury, and even though he wanted to be on the field, even he couldn’t argue with what the doctors were telling him. He simply was not able to perform the tasks his job required.
That time appears to be nearing an end, though. Carr was a limited participant in practice Wednesday for the first time since he injured his oblique in the fourth quarter of a Monday Night Football game against the Kansas City Chiefs, and both he and Dennis Allen expressed confidence he will return to the field this week against the Carolina Panthers.
“I felt confident enough to go strap it up today,” Carr said. “The real test is seeing how I would feel afterwards, and I feel good. Now let’s stack some days together and be able to hopefully play this week.”
New Orleans certainly could use him back. The Saints have lost six straight games, and in three games without Carr they’ve been outscored 110-45. Young quarterbacks Spencer Rattler and Jake Haener have combined to throw two touchdowns while taking 16 sacks in Carr’s absence.
With the exception of a broken ankle that kept him out of a playoff game when he was with the Raiders, Carr said this is the most frustrating injury he’s dealt with in his playing career. The pain was manageable, but the injury simply would not allow him to be an effective player.
The only thing Carr could do was allow time to heal the injury.
He listed off the things the oblique injury prevented him from doing: “Throw. Sneeze. Cough. Hold my kids.”
New Orleans brought him back gradually, navigating Carr’s frustrations with the sometimes slow progress. Carr said there were moments when he’d start to get disappointed when his progress would start to plateau, when the training staff would simply ask him to trust the recovery process.
If Carr is ready to go this week, he said he will return to the field on the “earlier side” of his recovery window.
That was where the protecting Carr from himself part came in.
“They learned last year, especially with the injuries and things that I had, that I would play through anything,” Carr said. “They learned that you may be able to do this, but you’ve got to be able to do what you’ve got to do.”
It may have helped that the training staff got an assist from a Saints legend.
Drew Brees went through a similar situation once, though his oblique injury came early in 2014 training camp and did not force him to miss any regular-season games. Once Carr understood what he was dealing with, he said he reached out to Brees for some advice.
“He said don’t let your mechanics suffer to just try and get back on the field, because then you won’t feel the same,” Carr said. “For me … every part of the process was making sure that I kept all that right, whether it was (throwing from) 5 yards, 10 yards or 50 yards.
“I made sure I have to be able to do it the right way to do my best to make sure there’s no setback.”
Carr started a throwing program last week, and it was by the end of last week that he started feeling confident in a potential Week 9 return. He threw again Monday and Tuesday of this week, then joined the team for its regular Wednesday practice — though coach Dennis Allen said his quarterback was on a limited “pitch count” in his return.
He was saved from himself, and now he may get a chance to help save a season that has gone off the rails since he suffered his initial injury.
“It sucks watching your team out there playing and wishing you could be there,” Carr said. “It was really hard for me, probably the hardest time to watch my team, because it wasn’t the most painful thing. It was just a functional thing I couldn’t do.”