catching a touchdown<\/a> in the game against the Washington Commanders in Week 15. The Saints all-time leading rusher is just 50 yards away from his first 1,000-yard rushing season.<\/p>\n“I had Alvin in my office today, this guy wants to play,” Rizzi said. “I can’t speak on contract bonuses and all that. I have absolutely no idea and I’m not lying when I say that if he’s got an incentive, I don’t know about it, but I know this guy. Alvin has been unbelievable since he’s been hurt. He’s been wanting to get back. He wants to finish the season. He does everything he possibly can from a rehab standpoint to get back. We’re not just going to throw him out there just to have him go out there and get 50 more yards. That’s not going to be the case. If he can play, he can be effective, then certainly we want to be out there, because he’s a game-changer.”<\/p>\n
Carr, meanwhile, is trying to work his way back from a hand injury he suffered attempting to dive for a first down in the Saints game against the New York Giants in Week 14.<\/p>\n
“As far as Derek goes, Derek tried to simulate what a game would look like last week with his left hand,” Rizzi said. “It didn’t go great from a grip strength standpoint on that left hand. That was the middle of last week. And we’re thinking about doing that one more time here to see if there’s any possibility that he could do that. But, the same thing, we’re not going to put him out there in harm’s way. If he’s not able to function at a high level, we’re not going to throw him back out there.”<\/p>\n
Rizzi also addressed why he is giving the two the opportunity to play if they can get healthy despite the Saints no longer having a chance at a playoff berth.<\/p>\n
“I know there’s probably some fans out there, why the heck would you play Alvin Kamara? Why the heck would you play Derek Carr? These guys want to play and it’s my job to respect their wishes. Both these guys are captains, are leaders. They’ve been unbelievable for our locker room. And the fact of the matter is you know, we’re 5-5 this year with Derek Carr as our starting quarterback. We’re 0-5 without him and that’s just it. We can slice and dice however many ways we want, the bottom line is we’ve won five games with Derek at quarterback. We’ve lost five and three of those five games that we lost were by three points or less, because he gives us the best chance to win.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1. Derek Carr and Alvin Kamara still fighting to return The Saints have not ruled out a return…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2065],"tags":[39181,11114,13212,7,1744,393,2455,2454,81,6,525],"class_list":{"0":"post-184564","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-las-vegas-raiders","8":"tag-2024-reg-week17","9":"tag-coach-executives","10":"tag-darren-rizzi","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-las-vegas","13":"tag-las-vegas-raiders","14":"tag-lasvegas","15":"tag-lasvegasraiders","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-nfl","18":"tag-raiders"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114803335971769032","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184564","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=184564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}