By Ross Jackson
After the shocking retirement of New Orleans Saints quarterback Derek Carr, the focus shifted quickly from the team’s quarterback position to salary cap implications and speculation about Carr’s relationship with the Saints.
Carr surprisingly returned a large portion of his guaranteed salary back to New Orleans, despite them being entitled to none of it.
The combination of the massive blowback of salary to the Saints ($30 million) with some of the details of his hasty departure and extended absence from the city following last season have created a perplexing situation.
Saints legend and former linebacker Scott Shanle joined After Further Review and host Matt Moscona for an exclusive interview on 104.5 ESPN Radio Baton Rouge and pondered some of the odd details of Carr’s split with the Saints, beginning with never meeting with the head coach.
Shanle, a10-year player and Super Bowl champion said that the fact Carr never met with head coach Kellen Moore was indicative of early turmoil and that Moore may have never seen the veteran as a viable long-term option.
“If you take a job as a head coach, first of all as an offensive guy,” Shanle said. “The number one position everyone’s concerned about is the quarterback position. So, before he got hired, I’m sure that he talked to the organization about what direction they’re going at quarterback. Are they going to force him to coach Derek Carr? Does he have an option to draft somebody? Does he look for somebody in free agency? To trade for somebody? So, the fact that he took a head coaching job and never met with the guy who was under contract…the guy who was going to be the starting quarterback…is extremely weird.”
Indeed it is. Moore confirmed that the two never met in person during his post-rookie minicamp press conference last week.
It sounds like Kellen Moore and Derek Carr never once met in person this offseason.
I asked, “Did you two ever meet in person when (Carr) was coming in and visiting with the doctors?”
Moore: “I just missed him because we were doing some pro days. So we missed that one time.”
— Ross Jackson (@RossJacksonNOLA) May 10, 2025
The weirdness didn’t stop there for Shanle, who openly discussed the rarity of returning $30 million at the time of retirement.
“I don’t know many players that are not going to get a surgery for $30 million,” said Shanle. “So, the fact he didn’t go have shoulder surgery to get $30 million guaranteed tells me the team said, ‘Listen we’re going to fight for that $10 million we gave you unless you just get out of here.’ And I think that’s the reason why he didn’t get shoulder surgery and sit on (Injured Reserve) for a year.”
This was the biggest win for the Saints out of this strange situation: the fact that the restructure gave Carr a $30 million base salary and $10 million roster bonus, fully guaranteeing the total to be paid off in future years. For Carr to give back $30 million of that is being often discussed as a “good guy” move by Carr. And while the player has been noted as a friendly and very nice person, not a lot of people are $30 million worth of nice.
Shanle speculates that the return is based on a stark shift in expectation for what Carr’s role was expected to be.
“He was going to be the bridge quarterback,” Shanle speculated. “And once the shoulder injury was related to the team and it was evident he was not going to be able to be your starting quarterback, I think that’s when everything kind of unraveled.”
It’s also been speculated elsewhere that perhaps there was a litigious nature to the back-and-forth between Carr’s camp and the Saints’ front office. Perhaps the Saints were ready to fight to get that money back through other avenues, but this compromise was the best way to split amicably. Carr still walked away with his $10 million roster bonus, so the win still goes both ways.
Shanle highlights some of the elements only a former player might understand while reading the tea leaves. His perspective shows that there’s always more to the story in complex situations like this one, especially when it’s a disappointing end to disappointing tenure.
