Derek Carr, the 36-year-old quarterback who started 166 NFL games across 11 seasons, is joining UCLA's football staff as an adviser to first-year head coach Bob Chesney. The university announced the hire Monday without disclosing compensation or formal title beyond "adviser." Carr played his college ball at Fresno State, 140 miles north, and spent nine seasons with the Raiders before two years in New Orleans. He does not have coaching experience at any level.
Chesney arrived at UCLA in December from Holy Cross, where he went 77-14 across seven seasons in FCS. He inherited a roster losing 12 starters and a program that went 5-7 under Chip Kelly's final year before Kelly departed for Ohio State's offensive coordinator job. Chesney brought eight assistants from Holy Cross and hired offensive coordinator Eric Schmidt from Boise State. Carr's hire came 11 weeks into the tenure, after spring portal windows closed but before summer official visits begin in June.
The move follows a narrow pattern of recently retired NFL quarterbacks taking advisory or quality-control roles without coordinator titles. Matt Ryan joined Boston College as a consultant in January 2024 after retiring with 62,792 career passing yards. Alex Smith worked with Stanford's quarterbacks informally for two seasons before stepping back. The roles offer former starters a low-commitment entry point while preserving optionality for media contracts or front-office pursuits. Carr has appeared on NFL Network but holds no known exclusive broadcasting deal. He earned $150 million guaranteed across his career; the UCLA role suggests relationship-building over income replacement.
For Chesney, the hire provides a name that registers with recruits' parents and a voice in quarterback meetings that carries recent NFL credibility. UCLA signed zero four-star quarterbacks in the 2025 class and returns Justyn Martin, who threw 8 touchdowns against 7 interceptions last season. The Bruins open 2025 against Hawaii at the Rose Bowl on August 30, then face Indiana and Nebraska in Big Ten play. Chesney's offense at Holy Cross averaged 38.7 points per game; translating that to Power Four rosters requires scheme adaptation and portal additions UCLA has been slow to secure.
The adviser title matters. Carr cannot recruit off-campus under NCAA rules unless he holds an on-field coaching position, which would require working through the 10-assistant limit and displacing a current staffer. His presence in the building during summer camps and officials will show whether the role carries substance or branding. UCLA's athletic department did not specify reporting structure, meeting attendance, or whether Carr will travel to road games. The university has spent heavily on football infrastructure — $75 million on practice facilities in 2017 — but Chesney's staff budget remains smaller than conference peers Oregon, USC, and Washington.
Watch for quarterback recruiting movement. UCLA hosts 14 official visits in June; two involve 2026 quarterbacks. If Carr participates in those weekends, the role is substantive. If he appears in social content but not film sessions, it is decorative. Chesney's first coordinator hires will define the program more than advisory roles, and UCLA still has not named a defensive backs coach after missing on two targets in March. The Big Ten media rights contract delivers $60 million annually starting this season; how much of that flows to assistant salary pools will determine whether advisory roles become recruiting props or genuine infrastructure.
Carr's agent, Mike McCartney of Priority Sports, also represents Chesney. The overlap suggests the hire came through existing relationships rather than UCLA initiative. McCartney has steered 12 other NFL clients into college or NFL coaching roles since 2020, building a secondary business line as player careers end younger. Carr will turn 37 before the season opener.
The takeaway
Carr's UCLA hire tests whether NFL credibility without coaching experience moves recruiting or just PR when the coordinator budget is already set.
Want the 60-second program for your specific event?
Enter your event and email — we build it and send the branded proposal before lunch. No obligation.
The branded-identity layer Chiefs of Staff and heritage CMOs route through — your name imprinted on real authorized stock, your pick of 200+ brands and 70,000 products, shipped from one accountable house. Nine editorial desks publish the intelligence those operators read before they sign.
200+authorized brands
70,000products · virtual proof on each
9 deskspublishing daily
1997one house, since
70,000 SKUs · virtual proof in 60 seconds · no platform fee · blind-shipped · ASI #217876
Your next customer won't visit your website. Their AI will.
AI assistants have quietly taken over the first step of buying — they answer from catalogs they can read and shortlist whoever can actually ship. Two questions now decide whether you exist to that buyer: can a machine read your catalog, and can you fulfill the order. Most brands fail one or both and never find out why the orders went elsewhere. The winners of this shift aren't the loudest. They're the most readable. Build for the machine that's about to do the shopping.
Built by the craft floor — apparel, media, packaging, and secure print.
This trade runs on hands, not desks. Imprint manufacturing & Komori Press · Canon high-speed secure-media operations is a craft floor — genuine Six Sigma discipline applied to ink, thread, foil, and registration, where a hundredth of an inch is the difference between a brand that reads serious and one that reads cheap. POPS4 is built by exactly those operators: independent, boots-on-the-ground engineers who carry their own book, read a client in microseconds, and put their name on every run. Beyond our own Virginia Beach floor, we work with a vetted network of craft manufacturers across the US — each meeting the highest excellence in QC standards in the industry, each a specialist in its own discipline — so apparel, hard-goods imprinting, media manufacturing, packaging, and secure printing all go to the bench built for them, coordinated from one accountable hub. Short-run from twenty-five units, volume to five hundred thousand. Two hundred authorized national brands, seventy thousand SKUs with virtual proofing on every one. Art archived for instant reorders. Net-thirty corporate terms, NDA-standard white-label — your name on the work, or none at all.
Strategy, positioning, identity, creative, and messaging — wired into an AI system that publishes and distributes on its own. Nine editorial desks generate the authority, the production house ships the physical proof, and the attribution layer tells you which post sold which SKU. What you get is an operating layer — content, catalog, and order path under one roof — that keeps working whether or not you are in the room. Built for principals who would rather own the machine than rent the agency.
Named-account programs — one desk, quiet delivery, NDA-standard.
One point of contact who already knows the file, so nothing restarts from zero between engagements. The work ships blind, under NDA, with your name on it or none at all. Built for single-family offices, heritage-house CMOs, sports-ownership groups, and the agencies that white-label our production. The relationship is the product; the merch is the proof of it.
SFO · Chief of Staff desk. Principal household, properties, aircraft, yacht, calendar, philanthropy — one file.
Shop seventy thousand products. Virtual proof on every one. 24/7.
Drop your logo on any product and see the virtual proof before asking. Quote routes direct to the desk. MCP catalog for AI agents. Celeste for the fast conversation. Full self-service checkout in development.