All is quiet on the Alameda front, but Derek Carr hopes it doesn't stay that way.
The Oakland Raiders quarterback, coming off a career season and entering the final year of his rookie deal, faces contract negotiations with the organization on a mega deal that could keep him with the Raiders for the long haul. But if a deal isn't done by the start of training camp in July, Carr is ready to table the discussion.
"There's nothing new to report right now. I'm hoping that those things will pick up here real soon, which we're expecting anyway," Carr told reporters Tuesday following Oakland's organized team activity. "They've been talking to Tim, my agent, and things like that. But that should get going real soon, I would hope, because once training camp hits, I'm all football. I'm not going to distract my teammates and you guys are going to want to know and things like that.
"Trust me, if it's not done by training camp, we won't be talking about it."
Carr's comments come two weeks since a report emerged from NFL Network's Michael Silver detailing the quarterback's frustration with the glacial pace of the negotiations. On Tuesday, Carr iterated that he wants to get the deal done by camp and remained confident that it will.
"I'm very confident. Again I'm not worried," Carr told NFL Network's Alex Flanagan on if the deal will meet his deadline. "I know how they feel, they know how I feel. It's just a matter of them sitting down and getting after it. I'm not worried at all. At the same time, things happen. If it got to that, I'm just focused on football."
The most concerning development for Carr, he said, was that his contract situation was becoming a "distraction" for his teammates, who have been asked about it in interviews. He pointed to one conversation between Khalil Mack and a SportsCenter anchor as something that "bugged the heck out of me."
No one expects Derek Carr to go the entirety of 2017 without a new contract in Oakland and to enter free agency as easily the top quarterback on the market. This deal is going to get done. It has to get done, as to avoid a city-wide and organization-wide mutiny.
And it will. It's all a waiting game now, one Carr doesn't want to play, either for the good of his patience or his teammates'. But hey, that's the business.
