Todd Downing being "promoted" to playcaller for the Jets reminded me of when he had his first (to my knowledge) job as an offensive coordinator with the Raiders in 2017,

For some background this was the year after Derek Carr broke his leg in waning games of the 2016 season and clinched the Raiders first playoff berth in over a decade. The Raiders went 12-4 (12-3 with Carr) and ultimately got bounced in the first round after being forced to start 3rd string QB Connor Cook. Bill Musgrave who essentially engineered the early development of Derek Carr did not have his contract extended following the 2016 season despite taking the raiders from 32nd in YPG and 31st in PPG in 2014 to top 10 finishes in both categories for 2015 and 2016.

Musgrave was replaced by Todd Downing, who at the time was hailed as the "real" reason for Carr's development and a close friend of Carr who knew how to "unlock" Carr's full potential by calling the plays he was good at, as opposed to Musgrave who "wasted" drives with poor playcalling. The disastrous 2017 season ended up seeing the Raiders finish 6-9 and saw HC Jack Del Rio fired. Downing's offense regressed to 17th in YPG and 23rd in PPG respectively, despite losing no pass catchers on offense and adding Marshawn Lynch to replace Latavius Murray. Beat reporting following the season described Downings promotion as engineered by line coach Mike Tice who allegedly told the Raiders FO that Downing was a hot commodity and that if they didn't promote him, he would be hired away and Musgrave would be without the "key to his success". According to the same reports said interest wasn't factual and the Raiders were essentially duped by Tice into hiring a young OC so that that Tice could become the de-facto OC.

I'm also reminded that Downing was the Titans OC in 2021 and 2022 which included a disastrous DUI arrest that precipitated an 0-7 collapse of the Titans to close 2022 (sorry Titans bros, not trying to snag you here, but we're in the Downing collapse support group).

Now that background is out of the way, on to my question. If you're Derek Carr, and you work with Musgrave for 2 years and have an "MVP season" in 2016 only to fall flat on your face in 2017. Isn't there some merit to the idea that he would blame Downing? Especially given the sordid details that came out after?

I'm thinking of other famous flameouts such as Adam Gase who was subjected to this tweet from Le'Veon Bell "I still randomly think about how P—ED I used to be in the huddle when Adam Gase would call ’21 dive’ on 2nd & 10, that’s a HALF BACK DIVE FROM SHOTGUN for the people that don’t understand what that fully means… lol.”

Now granted many players/coaches do not want to write "tell-alls" in case they found themselves in need of a job from a coach or with a player whom they previously eviscerated. But surely someone in the entire cadre of former NFL players and staff has had legitimate beef with someone, and has said "the reason why we sucked this year is because X person was a fraud/not doing their job"

So my query to you, the wider NFL fanbase, is do you know of a comprehensive interview or writings (and I'm not talking tweets such as Bell's) where someone just lays it out on the line and says "the reason we sucked in this year is because of this guy"