ALAMEDA, Calif. -- Derek Carr rediscovered his old gunslinger and deep-throwing ways the last time he was on the field for an Oakland Raiders game, throwing for 417 yards and three touchdowns without a pick on 52 passes last Thursday night against the Kansas City Chiefs.

And yet ...

He did have a brain cramp in the second quarter, calling his own number for a quarterback draw on third and 10. With a broken bone in his back. He got stood up after a 1-yard gain and was blasted on a late hit by Marcus Peters.

That's when all Hades broke loose, with Marshawn Lynch running on the field to protect Peters, his close friend, and getting tossed from the game for making contact with an official, an offense for which he is now serving a one-game suspension.

"It happened fast, right?" Carr said Wednesday. "You were like, 'Man!' I get up and I got hit, I didn't hear the whistle, so I didn't know because it was so loud and everything. Especially when you get hit, you don't hear a lot of things. You get hit and ... you get up and all of a sudden there's chaos and you're like, 'Oh, OK, they're all getting into it.'

"Then, all of a sudden [Marshawn is] into it and now he's kicked out. I was like, 'Whoa, time out. I just got tackled, and now people are getting kicked out.' So it all happened so fast, man. I honestly didn't have time to think about it at that moment and I didn't get time to think about it until after the game. Like, 'Dang, bro, he really got kicked out for whatever the situation was.'"

Yeah, Carr's losing his mind for a minute by running the ball on such a daunting down and distance set off a bizarre chain of events suitable for a reality show (yes, Lynch is working on such a project). As such, Carr will go at it against the Buffalo Bills without Lynch but with a pair of undersized second-year backs in Jalen Richard and DeAndre Washington, plus fullback Jamize Olawale and perhaps rookie Elijah Hood, who was promoted from the practice squad on Wednesday.

No matter who is in the backfield with Carr, the Raiders need their quarterback to light up the Western New York sky like he did the East Bay last week, so long as it comes within the game plan, no?

It probably gives Oakland its best shot at winning.

Consider: Carr threw 10 passes to targets that were at least 20 yards downfield against the Chiefs, completing three for 105 yards and a TD. He had attempted just 10 such throws through Week 6, per Pro Football Focus.

Then there's this: Buffalo's secondary is beat up and could be without safety Jordan Poyer and cornerback E.J. Gaines. The Bills have given up an NFL-high 350 passing yards per game since Week 5.

"He's one of the best quarterbacks in the league," Bills coach Sean McDermott said of Carr. "I don't think there's any question about that. Their offense goes through him just like a lot of good offenses around the league. He's obviously a young player that's had success. We can see his impact on the offense and the team. One of the best quarterbacks. I'm sure he's going to have a long career in the NFL."

Then there's Raiders first-year offensive coordinator Todd Downing, who had been under fire for turning what was a top-6 offense in 2016 into the No. 30-ranked unit heading into last week.

Downing seemed to find a play-calling pattern against Kansas City that needs to continue in Buffalo.

"Whenever I can complete passes for him, he gets in a rhythm," Carr said with a smile. "Whenever I can help him in that aspect, it'll always help him look better. The cool thing about him was throughout the losses, through the two wins in the beginning, he wasn't any different.

"When we did well, he celebrated with us. When we did bad, he coached it. He didn't come and demean people or anything like that. ... That says a lot about his character, and it's so encouraging going forward, knowing that we went through some adversity, but when that good day came we were still the same. We were like, 'Hey, that was awesome but now we have to move on.' To see that it didn't change was really cool."

Keep an eye on this, too, from a playcalling aspect: Oakland used play-action nine times last week, completing four passes for 89 yards and a TD, compared to using play-action on just 12 drop-backs through Week 6.

Of course, having Lynch in the backfield would seemingly make play-action more of a threat, no? Alas ...

"And that hurts, man, because we love Marshawn," Carr said of his suspended tailback. "We love playing with him, we love him in the building, we love him on game day and so for him to have to miss this game, it's hard. But as coach [Jack] Del Rio probably said, it's next man up. We have a good stable of backs that can do it."

So long as Carr is carefree with his arm but careful with his legs.