The commentators said the same thing that Double Barrel is saying:
Carr needed to get confidence back again and Pendry at least provided Carr with the very vanilla pass plays that can establish in Carr's head that "Yes! I can complete a pass, even if it's for short yardage."
We all were in awe of the Carr-AJ hook up last season when Carr would lob it up and AJ would go get it and wrestle it out of the defenders' hands.
I said, and I can't prove it now, that "Yes" that was great, that was awesome. BUT...it was a huge red flag to me becuase it signaled (to me) that Carr would rely upon AJ's talent and subsequently begin to lose touch on his passes, thinking that all he had to do was chunk it and AJ would adjust and grab it. I was glad we made those clutch plays, but I was also concerned because I also was leary of that sort of mentality.
Well, Carr lobbed a few balls up against the Bills that looked bad as soon as it left his hand: High arc, slow delivery, and the ball even ended up falling out of bounds several yards. It was NOT what we are accustomed to from Carr, and I know that it freaked a lot of us out.
Basically, he got away from precision passing and he thought Aj or Bradford could make the play for him and pull this team out of a funk. When in reality, none of the team's defense care about playing our WRs deep because they are scouting Carr and they know he's losing his touch on deep passes, so they can just play the short stuff all day long and they can throw a safety to one side of the field to help the corner out on AJ or whoever the deep route is at the time. Key on the short routes, break on the three-step drop, and BAM-O! You've got a pretty solid defensive play on our team's QB/WR.
That's kinda' what I have been seeing lately. BUT, I think Pendry is definitely putting the brakes on ANY deep pass plays and he's just wanting to get Carr into some sort of rhythm where Pendry can (at some point) trust Carr to have a little more touch on those deep passes. With every dee pass that floats 10 yards out of bounds, etc., it cause a huge deflation of Carr, the WRs, and the team in general. We end up punting, and then Carr beats himself up about it for the rest of the game and can't connect on even a short curl or quick slant. The WRs lose confidence and drop balls because they, too, think the ball has no chance of being where it should be...and THAT is why Aj dropped so many balls.