OAKLAND, Calif. -- Derek Carr, two weeks removed from suffering a broken bone in his back, said he would not play if it would hurt his Oakland Raiders teammates.
The rest from taking last week's game off versus the rust from sitting out is a fine line, but Carr was just, well, off, against the Los Angeles Chargers.
Again.
To be fair, Carr has not been the same since the self-described "aberration" at Washington, suffering a broken right ankle in Week 16 last winter, and breaking his right pinkie the weekend after Thanksgiving last season.
And try as he did against the Chargers on Sunday, it simply was not enough in a 17-16 loss, the Raiders' fourth straight defeat in a season in serious danger of being over.
Already.
At 2-4, the Raiders are now in last place in the AFC West and play host to the Kansas City Chiefs Thursday night. The Chiefs are 5-1 against Carr.
"At the end of the day, this is my fault," Carr said. "It's not my players' fault, it's not my teammates' fault. This is all on me. So, I have to get it right. I have to somehow make it click better or maybe I can talk to them better. Maybe I can explain things better.
"Whatever it is. They're just going to go as I go. So it's all my fault. I have to figure out a way to communicate what we need."
It is the first four-game losing streak for the Raiders since they dropped 16 straight from Week 12 of the 2013 season to Week 11 of the 2014 season. Yes, when they beat the Chiefs on a rainy Thursday night in Oakland for Carr’s first career victory.
This is a different Carr, though, one who is out of sync, unable to maintain whatever game plan first-year offensive coordinator Todd Downing is coming up with since that 2-0 start.
But that’s a story for a different day.
Several times in the course of this game -- in which Carr, wearing a pad on his back, threw two interceptions -- the quarterback looked unsure of himself.
He again seemed to be aiming passes, instead of throwing the ball. He looked to be throwing off his back foot instead of stepping into the throw. And his throws to Marshawn Lynch, across the middle, inside the Chargers' 15-yard line, and to Michael Crabtree, on fourth-and-2 near midfield, were badly off target.
His throw to Lynch bounced off Lynch's hands and resulted in an interception. The throw to Crabtree resulted in a turnover on downs.
Raiders coach Jack Del Rio said he thought Carr did "OK" in his return from a transverse process fracture.
"It’s good to have him back, I know that," Del Rio said. "He mis-threw a couple of things, but I thought for the most part he was fairly sharp. It was a lack of communication on the first. Then we had two interceptions, which is unusual. We had a communication error on the first one and the second was kind of a funky tipped ball. I felt good having him there, I know that.”
Carr finished 21-of-30 passing for 171 yards, with a 23-yard touchdown pass to Crabtree. He was hit a few times and the crowd held its collective breath.
The 47-yard touchdown run by Cordarrelle Patterson seemed to give the Raiders’ misfiring offense the spark it needed, but the missed PAT by Giorgio Tavecchio after a high snap from Jon Condo, was an omen.
In the past, it would be no sweat for Carr to lead the offense downfield for a game-winning score, or at least bleed the clock for the final six minutes.
This version of Carr and the Raiders offense, though, is not that group. Instead, it was a three-and-out.
"I'm frustrated, and not in a bad way," Carr said. "I'm not changing anything I do. I know how to work, I know how to study, I know how to play this game. Everyone has talent, it just comes down to everyone locking in every detail of this offense. That's all it really comes down to. I'm not going to elaborate on what that is, but that's the problem. That's why it's frustrating.
"We're better than that. But obviously we're not, because that's not what we're putting out there."