Derek Carr won’t take a pay cut for 2025 but willing to restructure to help the cap
Minshew went 2-7 as a starter threw 9 TDs and 10 Interceptions with the raiders this year
Carr is 14-13 as a starter with 40TDs and 13 Ints as a Saint
Cutting Carr to sign Minshew is about the dumbest thing a GM could do and would merit getting himself fired.
That's not the point. Cutting Carr wouldn't be about getting better in 2025, which will probably be rough with or without Carr. It would be about getting better faster in 2026 and beyond by freeing up $30M in cash to acquire or retain the young talent that will be the nucleus of this team when it is ready to contend again.
There's no guarantee it would work, of course, but that would be the thought process behind it.
The thing to keep in mind is that what we're looking at isn't like in 2006 when Payton was hired. The 2005 team had some talent, it had just been poorly coached and then was done in by a generational disaster, and when Payton arrived there was cap space to burn.
Likewise in 2000, when Haslett came on board there was cap space to go hunting free agents, which allowed for a quick turnaround.
What we're looking at in 2024 going into 2025 is akin to 1996 going into 1997, when the team had struggled with managing the cap while its core talent had gotten old (and, ironically, Derek Carr is literally the modern equivalent of Jim Everett, who put up decent numbers but consistently lost more than he won).