Fresno State QB Derek Carr would love to be an Arizona Cardinal, ready for whatever draft brings
Apr 21, 2014, 9:11 PM | Updated: 9:11 pm
With more than two weeks until the NFL Draft, there is still plenty of time for prospects to see their stock go up and down.
It’s like a roller coaster, really, and nobody can get off until May 8, at the earliest.
Fresno State quarterback Derek Carr is one of the prospects expected to have their name called that night — or the night after, at the latest — and at this point he’s just ready to know where he’ll be playing next season.
“All the traveling, going to this team, going to that team,” he told the Dan Bickley Show with Vince Marotta Monday on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM, “you know, really, you just want to finally get your routine down.”
For football players especially, routines are a very important part of their lives. But it’s pretty much impossible to keep one as you are preparing for the draft, and Carr said much of the time is spent trying to find hotel gyms to workout in. Carr isn’t so much nervous about the upcoming draft as he is ready for it to happen.
“I just want to get on a team and get my routine going and get to work,” he said.
And while he doesn’t really care what team he ends up with, Carr said the Arizona Cardinals would be an exciting option.
Go through enough mock drafts, and some have the Cardinals using their first-round pick — number 20 overall — on the 6-foot-3 signal caller.
“I would love it, oh my goodness,” Carr said of the possibility of coming to Arizona. “Especially learning from a guy in Coach Arians and their whole staff. And learning from Carson, what an opportunity that would be, to learn from a great quarterback like Carson.”
Carr added that given that the California roots he and Palmer share give them something else in common, and that couldn’t hurt.
But with Palmer on the roster entrenched as the starter, would the Cardinals spend their first pick on a quarterback?
Carr, who is the brother of former number one overall pick David Carr, is coming off a season in which he completed 68.7 percent of his passes for 5,082 yards and 50 touchdowns.
He passed for a ridiculous 12,730 yards and 113 touchdowns in three seasons as a starter at Fresno State, numbers that certainly give the impression of a franchise quarterback. Palmer is that guy for the Cardinals right now, but at 34 he’s in no way the long-term answer, meaning a player of Carr’s caliber could prove to be useful down the road.
However, when a team views itself as a contender who may just need one or two more pieces who can contribute right away, it may not make much sense to draft someone with an eye on the future.
Though Carr is confident he could help a team right now.
“If I need to come in and start and help a football team, I’m ready to do that. There’s no doubt in my mind I’m ready to do that.
“And learning from the coaches and the NFL staffs, I would be ready. And from my veteran teammates, too. There’s no doubt in my mind (that I’d be ready).”
If the Cardinals do in fact take Carr, odds are the plan would be to have him sit and learn for at least one season. It’s not necessarily an easy thing for a three-year collegiate starter to handle, but something the future draft pick would be able to handle.
“If the scenario played out to where I did have to sit out and learn from a guy like Carson or guys like that, then I’m still going to be the same guy,” he said. “Of course it’s going to be hard, of course being the competitor I am it’s going to be really hard.
“But I can promise you that starter will get better because I’m going to be out there working my tail off every day trying to take his job, knowing my role is to learn from him for that amount of time.”
