You Raiders fans are feisty.

On Monday, SportingCharts.com. That was the second-worst rate in the NFL, with Baltimore ranking worse at 6.65%. However, the difference in wide receiver drop rate between Oakland and the 16th-ranked, average Rams was just 1.67%. That's not going to drastically alter a quarterback's Passing NEP.

We should conclude that Carr was working with a bottom-five group. In addition, he had the second worst rushing attack. So, really, no team had quite the combination of the two like Carr did.

But don't forget that other teams had bad situations of their own. The Browns, as mentioned earlier, had the worst ground game in the NFL this year, and a wide receiver group that was just 38 expected points away from Oakland's total, ranking 11th worst in the NFL. Teddy Bridgewater, as a rookie, didn't have receivers, either. The Rams and Titans had relatively comparable situations as well.

And each of these teams finished ahead of Oakland in Adjusted Passing Net Expected Points.

So, yes, Carr's situation was poor. It was brutal. But he didn't perform reasonably well even when you consider the players he was throwing to.

5. He didn't have a defense.
While there's merit to those who think Carr was under unfortunate circumstances with his ground game and receiver play, there's little to the argument that his defense was terrible, causing him to make more mistakes.

Rather than rehash this debate, I'll lead you to happened to tweet something interesting about Oakland's red zone efficiency recently as well, noting that it was one of the best we've seen over the last 12 years. The difference is that the team had far fewer opportunities than others listed, meaning there's a good chance for regression in the red zone.

7. Other quarterbacks have succeeded after starting poorly.
John Elway didn't have a good rookie campaign. Neither did Peyton Manning. Look how they turned out.

If this was the response you had to the original Derek Carr piece I wrote, then I didn't convey the entire point of the article very well. Carr can still succeed. He can still be a top-tier quarterback. Maybe he'll follow the path of Peyton Manning and John Elway. Who knows?

The reason I brought up Carr's first-season NEP numbers and compared them to historical rookies is because there seems to be a trend in first-year performance -- in terms of Passing NEP -- predicting career-long success. This doesn't mean that this is a foolproof way of determining how well a quarterback's NFL career will go. Rather, this is a game of probability -- players who have played like Derek Carr in the past have typically not gone on to have sensational careers in the league.

To pinpoint examples would be the same as saying that teams should forgo drafting a quarterback in the early rounds of the NFL Draft because Tom Brady was found in the sixth round. Meanwhile, the majority of "hits" at the quarterback position are still coming early. You can't let exceptions overshadow the rule.

The fact is, Derek Carr had the 77th worst season from a quarterback with 200 or more drop backs since 2000 (there were 539 of these instances) in Passing NEP during a pass-friendly era. When looking only at rookie quarterbacks, his score ranked in the bottom-quarter percentile. Regardless of his weapons -- regardless of his running game -- this cannot be defined in any way, shape or form as good.

That's why I don't have a lot of optimism moving forward.