MasterAwesome

There's a 15-page thread dedicated to literally just that one play, so it's wild that you feel compelled to derail this thread to singularly focus on that one play again when there's a whole host of new insight and perspective being shared. Your disagreement with his characterization is well noted, you don't need to relitigate this silly trivial argument.

Can you key in on D'Shawn Jamison and give your general impressions? I'm curious about him because for me, the eye test was much more positive than his PFF grade, which had him as our worst rated player on defense. Also Doc Throck at RG.

I actually was pleasantly surprised with D'Shawn Jamison, considering he was an undrafted rookie that we asked to cover the best receiver in the NFL one-on-one (who is 4 inches taller) on multiple snaps lol. Even on the touchdown he gave up, he was right there step for step. But maybe he was getting constantly smoked on plays where the ball wasn't thrown to his side.

How do we know Carr went to the hospital after the game? Oh right, because Dennis Allen said so...and like you said, coaches lie all the time. Did we get footage of Carr in the hospital? Did we get his hospital bracelet at least? Here's what I think happened...Carr was on a short leash after a lackluster start to the season (25th in the league in scoring). He wanted to give Derek Carr one half of football to see if he could pick it up. Then when Carr struggled to put up points again in the first half against the Packers, he waited until he took his third sack to have an excuse to soft bench Carr and give Jameis the opportunity to see if he could move the ball any better. "Oooo that sack looked kinda gnarly, no one will bat an eye if we say he got injured. *in his earpiece* Hey Derek! Stay down and writhe around in pain a little bit. I'll explain later". Unfortunately Jameis was kinda meh too which is why Allen is still non-commital on which QB he wants to use moving forward. So in the meantime while he's buying himself time to decide, he faked that Carr went to the hospital. He got his doctors to lie about it and pretend they did X-rays. And now he's putting Carr through practice and designating him as "Questionable" until Allen decides who he wants to play. *I don't actually believe any of the above, but hey it's pretty easy to come up with a theory. And this one is just as valid and credible as yours. Can you disprove anything I said? If not, then sorry but it's the truth. Sorry, I mean it is my educated guess.

I'm expecting top-notch analysis from you, so I'm paying you your beer in advance. But I WILL retract it if it's not up to standard.

I just can't buy into Scenario 2 at all...that seems like the quickest way to destroy Bryce's confidence. "Hey we're gonna pretend you have an ankle injury so we can get your trash ass off the field". It's very possible that it was such a minor sprain that he could have played last week but they chose to play it safe and sit him, and maybe a part of that is because of a hostile environment, an outmatched o-line, etc. but to outright manufacture an injury for him is an awful thing to do to Bryce's psyche. I don't think even Rhule is that dumb to think that would be a net positive.

Lol yeah I was expecting him to be at the top of the list before I even clicked the thread. People were saying during/after that game that we signed the wrong Bengals safety, so that might have been premature if Bell turns out to be really solid for us. Bell feels like probably the more consistent, but less flashy player. Bates seems like more of a gambler who will make some big game-changing plays but potentially also give up some big ones if he takes a risk jumping a route.

I apparently need to brush up on my NFL safeties because I legit haven't heard of half of these guys.

It's *Eddy* Pineiro, put some respeck on his name! He might be our best player

Footage = game tape from Weeks 1-3. I'm not talking about college tape. I'm talking about the footage that shows our o-line being manhandled, receivers being blanketed and/or poorly executing on their routes, questionable playcalling resulting in a lot of 3rd and longs, etc.

You can make any declarations you want. It's just meaningless...I can make a preseason declaration that Jonathan Mingo was going to break the single season receiving record and catch 47 TDs and win League MVP. I just don't get to point to it 3 games into the season and say that it still holds up because I said it. I.e. making a preseason declaration that Bryce was going into the best situation of all three rookie QBs doesn't necessarily make it so when we actually have footage to review. The former is speculative, the latter is empirical.

Huh? You've genuinely lost me...I'm literally engaging with you in discussion right now. So I don't know why you're acting like I'm wanting to censor these kinds of discussions. First off, can you point out anyone who is saying that Bryce has played better than Stroud or Richardson so far? You like to call people out for mischaracterizing others' positions and tell them to quote people who said X or Y things. So I'd like you to point out who is saying Bryce has played the best out of the three QBs so far. Rather, people are attempting to rationalize Bryce's struggles. I.e. he's a rookie with 2 starts, his o-line has been awful, his receivers aren't getting separation, playcalling has been uncreative, etc. You and others wanting to strawman this into people claiming Bryce is playing awesome so far, is just dishonest. I understand why you do it because it's such an easy slam-dunk claim to debunk. He objectively has not been playing good. We know that. The difference is in how much blame rests on Bryce's shoulders and his long-term career outlook. The whole "it's just 3 games" argument - this is specifically in response to career projection/long-term outlook. People saying "it's just 3 games" are saying it's too soon to tell who is going to have a better career between the three of them. Do you actually disagree with that? I hope not...that shouldn't be a contentious position. But you can still evaluate Bryce's supporting cast and our team's performance in 3 games. Hell, you can do it 1 game. Again, that goes to my previous point about rationalizing Bryce's struggles. It makes sense to say "it's just 3 games" when judging whether Bryce will ultimately pan out or not. It doesn't make sense to say "it's just 3 games" to completely disregard how each team's supporting cast has been performing thus far. Does that clarify things?

^ his post in reference

This seems to align with what @TheCasillas said when he was in the process of reviewing the All-22 game tape for Week 2. Playcalling wasn't bad, just awful execution in a lot of cases. (miss you buddy, the Huddle is a dark hopeless place without your sage wisdom)

That's fine. I will join you in saying that I am merely making an educated guess when I say you are a conspiracy theorist. Not my fault if you can't handle that people are going to call you that when you're constantly proposing nefarious alternative outlandish explanations for everything, that have zero evidentiary backing. It's becoming a bit cartoonish and I think if you were a bit more self-aware, you would realize that. Everything is you just "reading between the lines", which combined with an inherent distrust of the organization whose lines you are reading between (i.e. the Panthers in this case), this is exactly how conspiracy theories are formed and gain momentum. I'm not going to go into the parallels with the real world because that's obviously a topic more suited for the Tinderbox. At the end of the day, this is just football so these are relatively harmless conspiracy theories so it's whatever. You do you and I'll do my best to not engage and just roll my eyes and keep scrolling.

What is the relevance of what our situations looked like "going into the season" when we're heading into Week 4 and actually have empirical evidence to evaluate? Going into the season, Icky was our stalwart LT...now he's unfortunately resembling more of a turnstile. Which impression do you think is more relevant to current day? Going into the season, we had a pretty strong ILB duo. Now Shaq and Frankie are both injured. Going into the season, Chuba was considered a joke on these boards and most people didn't even want him on the roster. Now people are saying he's our best RB and want him to get more carries over Miles. One more, and I know you'll love this one: going into the season, Bryce was considered the most "pro ready" QB with the easiest transition. Now going into Week 4, he has struggled more than either Stroud or Richardson. Do we favor the pre-season perception or should we favor the actual game tape this season? You're right about the perception of us vs. the Texans before the season, but historical perception does not often equate to current reality.

What a weird argument... Bryce Young was drafted 1st, CJ Stroud was drafted 2nd. Checkmate! Bryce > CJ

Conspiratorial thinking is like a disease...if your brain is wired that way, it's very difficult to become de-programmed and certainly not on an internet message board. So I respect the commitment, but it's a lost cause. I spent a lot of time with him last offseason going back and forth about his theory that Matt Rhule was going to intentionally start Sam Darnold to begin the season...even though he thought Baker was the better QB...just so that he could wait until Darnold got boo'ed off the field a few games into the season, and then bring Baker Mayfield in to save the day to the cheers of the crowd in order to buy himself more time and cool off his hot seat.

The award for "Least Self-aware Poster" goes to....

I don't think it makes sense to use the collective "we" because this all seems to boil down to what your personal expectations were for Bryce. If you are using Cam's rookie season as the bar and expected him to be a star from Week 1, then of course you're disappointed. If you expected he'd need some time to transition, then you're still calm and hopeful. I'm willing to be patient...we're not a playoff team anyways, certainly not with our piling injuries to key players. I don't need him to "suddenly click", I need (or at least expect) to see incremental improvement and for him to get more and more comfortable over the course of the season. I would say we certainly did see improvement from Week 1 to Week 2. It wasn't a great Week 2 performance by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a baby step in the right direction and that's OK by me.

I'm saying that we're all open and welcome of criticism of our players/team (except maybe iamhubby/Gerry Green) so I'm not sure why you still appear to be trying to explain to me why criticism is okay. I get it...I agree. Most of us who are supportive of Bryce: our entire argument revolves around him being a rookie with two starts under his belt, and how it's way too soon and honestly silly to make any judgments on him at this point. So I'm not sure that bringing up a bunch of failed retreads (Teddy, Darnold, Baker) and a couple of nobodies (Allen, PJ) makes a lot of sense to compare to Bryce. Not to mention I don't know who ever hyped up PJ Walker on here other than CRA, so that's kind of a weird one to sneak in there. If anything, I could argue that guys like Darnold and Kyle Allen are good examples to the contrary of what you're arguing. Darnold and Allen were actually pretty solid in their first few starts with us. Some people got overly excited about them, while others (like yourself, I'm assuming) were saying that it's only a matter of time before they implode and show their true colors. Those seem like good examples of why you shouldn't judge a QB too quickly after a few starts, no?

Evero seems legit, so if he wanted this guy and thinks he can do something with him, then I'm still hopeful. Weren't most of us pretty impressed by how good he looked in preseason? I remember seeing him flash multiple times. Maybe he still needs a little more coaching up, that's not necessarily an awful indictment of a third round pick. I think people are hung up on the age too much...I've said it before, just cause you're a 24 year old rookie doesn't mean you're a finished product and a technical master of your craft. He's 24 lol he'll be in his physical prime during the entirety of his rookie contract (if he makes it to the end). People act like he's already on the decline and we should trade him to the Rock Hill Nursing Home for a 2029 11th round pick.

This take would be just as valid as anyone on the opposite side saying that you and the others on here *hate* Bryce and want him to fail and that he must have f'ed your girl or w/e. Do you think that take is fair? I don't know why people are incapable of not being so incredibly hyperbolic on these boards. I'm sure I'm guilty of that as well. But I'm willing to bet all of Bryce's dozens of moms on here would fully co-sign what is stated in the article in the OP, which has plenty of criticisms of Bryce...so this talk about people wanting to shout down any criticism is just delusional and unproductive. This article is a very rational and well-articulated summary of the good and the bad with Bryce and his supporting cast. That's what I appreciate rather than "BRYCE BAD".

You see....Corbett's injury was also faked. Actually, that Corbett you've seen at training camp and walking around isn't even the real Corbett. It's a doppelganger...actually not even human - it's a shapeshifting species from a distant galaxy. The real Corbett, he died mysteriously back in 2021. The circumstances were pretty fishy. He was an undercover FBI agent, investigating David Tepper for money laundering and human trafficking. And then he suddenly disappears? I don't think so...

Even if he did say the grade, we know they'd just pivot to something else. It'd be "show us the x-rays" lol. There's a certain sense of entitlement as fans, which I do understand...I mean we're contributing our time (and often money) to this team so we are certainly "stakeholders" in a sense. But the football team is a private business at the end of the day, they are not public servants beholden to us. We're not on the board of directors. The only leverage we have as fans is to decide to walk away and stop investing in this team. But instead of actually doing that and sticking it to The Man, it's just empty posturing about how sick and tired and fed up everyone is. I'm frustrated too, but I'm actually honest with myself...I know what I signed up for, and I still get entertainment from watching us play. The second that stops happening, I'm content walking away.