{"id":110795,"date":"2025-06-07T08:58:27","date_gmt":"2025-06-07T08:58:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/110795\/"},"modified":"2025-06-07T08:58:27","modified_gmt":"2025-06-07T08:58:27","slug":"i-didnt-want-to-just-take-the-saints-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/110795\/","title":{"rendered":"I didn’t want to ‘just take the Saints’ money’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Derek Carr<\/a>‘s stunning decision to retire last month<\/a> included forgoing $30 million by deciding not to undergo surgery, which would have kept the New Orleans Saints quarterback out for the 2025 regular season.<\/p>\n

“That part was tough because I didn’t want to have surgery and just sit there and — it sounds crazy but — just take the Saints money,” Carr told David Rumsey of Front Office Sports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Carr framed his May 10 decision to walk away as being in the best interest of all parties.<\/p>\n

“I wouldn’t have been able to play if I had the surgery,” Carr said. “And then if I tried to play with it, I wasn’t near 100%, and so that doesn’t help them, either. I just felt like it was the right thing to do for myself and for the team.”<\/p>\n

The Saints and Carr came to the decision that the quarterback would retire, leaving $30 million guaranteed that he would have received in 2025, and the club wouldn’t pursue the $10 million roster bonus that would have been forfeited by retiring.<\/p>\n

“I never played just for the money,” Carr said. “I had a whole bunch of people tell me how crazy I was, and, ‘Man, I would never have done that.’ That’s all cool, but I’ve gained all these things that the world has to offer, and it doesn’t really do anything for your heart. I knew my heart was at peace, and that’s really all that mattered.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Derek Carr‘s stunning decision to retire last month included forgoing $30 million by deciding not to undergo surgery,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2076],"tags":[1227,496,7,896,55,2572,2571,88,6,609,4267,397],"class_list":{"0":"post-110795","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-orleans-saints","8":"tag-around-the-nfl","9":"tag-derek-carr","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-new-orleans","12":"tag-new-orleans-saints","13":"tag-neworleans","14":"tag-neworleanssaints","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-no-minute","18":"tag-offseason-news","19":"tag-saints"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114641260086068477","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}