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The original was posted on /r/nfl by /u/MITJustinFields on 2023-12-09 23:47:56.
Two months ago, I looked at whether the Saints would have been massively better off by holding Dalton and not signing Carr in this post. Now that the season is nearly over, I wanted to revisit it to see if the Carr contract is aging as poorly as the early stats suggested.
Keeping in mind Carr’s contract is $150 million over the course of 4 years kicking aside veteran Andy Dalton because they needed a “real QB” who cost only $4million a year - It was a risky move for the Saints who is certainly not “a QB away” and currently in perpetual cap hell. Because of the Carr contract, they have to restructure contracts just to meet the cap which means they can’t even blow it up even if they wanted to now.
At the time, most people considered Carr to be “underrated”, “a franchise QB”, “mistreated”, and he just “needed some good coaching and some good weapons”. It was also supposed to be a “clear” improvement over Andy Dalton. With a year 2 Shaheed, year 2 Olave, and a healthier Michael Thomas, the situation for Carr is clearly improved.
As a reminder Andy Dalton is famously known for the Dalton line back in his prime, where it was considered the prime meridian of QBs. A QB better than prime Andy Dalton would be a franchise QB, and a QB worse than Prime Andy Dalton would be considered replaceable.
Now let’s look at Carr’s stats on the Saints vs Dalton’s stats from last year and see if he’s above the “Dalton line” (even though that doesn’t even apply anymore since Dalton isn’t as good as he once was):
| QB | Completion Percentage | Avg yards per attempt | Yards per game | TD per game | Int per game | Passer rating | PFF Grade | Contract |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carr (2023 Saints) | 66.5% | 7.0 | 230.1 | 0.9 | 0.5 | 89.4 | 69.5 | $150 million / 4 years |
| Dalton (2022 Saints) | 66.7% | 7.6 | 205.1 | 1.4 | 0.6 | 95.2 | 82.1 | $4 million / 1 year |
Based on this we can see that while Carr’s has improved from 2 months ago as he familiarized himself with the system, the overwhemling answer seems to be no. The Saints are massively overpaying Carr and would have been better off with Dalton who was making 38 times less money, and factoring that the team around Carr has gotten better compared to when Dalton was the QB. Derek Carr is currently deprecating the Dalton Line the Carr bar. The signing by the Saints seems to have been for a worst QB and one that will absolutely destroy the Saints capspace for 2024. Keep in mind, they cannot exit out of this contract until 2025 at the earliest where he will be a 17million dead cap.
TLDR: The Saints made a massive mistake signing someone below the Dalton line and would have been better off sticking with Dalton for another year and resetting their cap. Instead they have borrowed from the future and can only restructure to meet the cap.