MasterAwesome

Well, if you look at TMJ in 2020 (when he had neither Chase nor Jefferson to benefit from), his per game stats are very much on par with Chase and Jefferson during their monster 2019 season. He just chose to opt out halfway into the season after declaring for the NFL draft, or else he was on pace to put up the same kind of monster numbers. I think he's clearly not viewed as on the level of Chase/Jefferson (his draft position shows that), but I think he also showed that he can be the guy, rather than just an overrated receiver who benefited from the receivers around him.

You are all over the place. How do you not see the irony in you being one of the most outspoken "sky is falling" overreactors from Week 1, while now bringing up D'Andre Swift who had 1 carry for 3 yards in Week 1? If you were an Eagles fan instead of a Panthers fan, there is zero doubt you would've started a thread on their message boards after Week 1 like "WAS D'ANDRE SWIFT THE WORST TRADE IN FRANCHISE HISTORY?!?!".

But even your thread was 7 wins to 6 losses. So still slightly favoring the Falcons when you combine both prediction threads, but we can just say 50/50. 85% of the board picking the Panthers is an outrageous claim.

Lol what? 85% of the board absolutely did not predict we would beat Atlanta...most people picked Atlanta to win. I know cause I embarrassingly went back to the prediction thread and read through all 14 pages just because I was so baffled by your comment. 19 picked Panthers, 21 picked Falcons. And that's only the explicit predictions...I didn't even factor in many others that implied loss but didn't outright predict it, i.e. "there's zero chance we stop their run game" or "I can't see us winning in Atlanta with a rookie QB".

I just don't understand how you can have this ignorant of a take when there's overwhelming empirical evidence of elite QBs struggling in their pro debuts. There was just a thread on it (see below). Did all of those QBs step on the field and immediately change the game in their favor from the first snap? Doubtful, considering there was another stat shared in here recently that QBs taken 1st overall were 0-13 in their Week 1 debuts. Even Stroud who "played better" put up 9 points (less than Bryce) and 0 TDs...hardly game-changing. According to your criteria, all of these guys were/should've been busts.

Zavala looked good, but then again so did Christensen. I read somewhere that he had one of his best games, and he's still only a third year player so it's not like we're in a rush to groom a replacement for him. Albeit he's older than your typical third-year player, but still only 26 so plenty of career left as an o-lineman. So I'd consider this a fluid situation - once Corbett comes back from injury, I'm not necessarily going to force a big shuffle on the o-line if it continues to look as good as it did in Week 1. If BC is playing well at LG, then why risk moving Zavala to LG and slotting Corbett back in at RG when you can opt for just the latter and keep most of the solid o-line intact? Regardless, it's a good problem to have and Zavala is looking like potentially a steal.

Is there some kind of minimum snap threshold in the data you’re looking at? Cause I saw a PFF article having Troy Hill at 76.4 which makes him our highest graded defensive player. It also had the worst 3 offensive players as Young (31.4), Smith-Marsette (37.8), and Sanders (47.7) but also Tremble with a worse grade (50.3) than Thielen (53.9). https://pantherswire.usatoday.com/lists/panthers-falcons-pff-grades-week-1-bryce-young-chuba-hubbard-brian-burns-derrick-brown/

You're both kinda partially right. The pro-football-reference stats seem wrong, I watched every Fields snap and he got pressured quite a bit but a good chunk of those were on him. https://www.sportsmockery.com/chicago-bears/one-uncomfortable-revelation-from-justin-fields-game-vs-packers/ I can't copy/paste from that website for some reason, so here's a snippet:

Again, I'm not disputing his blocking abilities which are what were on display in that one clip you showed. He didn't even get a single target in the passing game, in a game where they were getting blown out 20-0 less than halfway into the second quarter. Initial impressions from that stat line don't scream "pass catching weapon" to me, which is what we desperately need. Sure it's hella premature one game into the season, but you're opening that door to premature scrutiny when you're already proclaiming him to be a big miss for our FO based off of one pass-blocking snap. If you're being critical of DJ Johnson's 0 snaps Week 1 and through the other side of your mouth hyping Darnell Washington's potential as a receiver after a game where he didn't even get targeted, then you're applying two different standards (immediate contribution vs. future potential). And the bold basically just reads "Warning: confirmation bias. Will overreact to singular positive plays". I don't think openly admitting that is helping you come across as an objective evaluator.

I'm not sure my takeaway after Week 1's performance was "man, if only we had a better blocking TE". That'd be near the bottom of my priority list.

You know he’s gonna be an absolute sponge in the film room, studying the tape. This is his first NFL action with teams actually running legit gameplans, so it’s invaluable for a cerebral rookie like Bryce. I’m eager to see our rematch against the Falcons to see how Bryce performs after having an entire game of footage to study.

It was at least Everette Brown (traded a 1st round pick) and Armanti Edwards (traded a 2nd round pick), right?

Chuba has always been underappreciated as a runner. But I'm worried that his running style is a bit of a double-edged sword. My impression of him is that he's a patient runner with pretty good vision, meaning he'll often be handed the ball, hesitate for a second while he scans for an opening, and then explodes through with pretty good burst. That split second of hesitation worries me because if our run blocking isn't firing on all cylinders and creating holes, then he seems like the type of running back who is more prone to TFL behind the line.

I’m so annoyed that I was 3 minutes late to my Fantasy Football draft and was auto-drafted this bum in the first round instead of taking someone like Tyreek Hill.

I think Burns' career trajectory (based on his stats thus far, his availability, and his pass rush style) is a Robert Mathis/John Abraham/Terrell Suggs type of player. Which is well worth the money, IMO. Those guys are all probably consensus Top 50 pass rushers in NFL history - their year to year production didn't generally blow anyone away (mostly in the 10-12 sacks per season range) but they were damn consistent and didn't miss much time, which yielded very productive NFL careers. I'd be happy with that from Burns.

Yeah, what I'm saying is - that's not the principled stance that people are acting like they're adopting. Essentially saying "yeah let's pay our best players...but if they fail to justify what they're earning, then let's cut them and save some of that money" is a pretty milquetoast generic position that pretty much sits right on the fence between players and owners. It's hardly "siding with the players".

People here act like they're all for players getting their money...until said player fails to live up to their contract. Then that money is the first thing people throw in their face: "overpaid", "cashed in and got lazy", etc. Then y'all are all for the "big man" to cut players to save money lol. You can act virtuous in principle but there's a very short leash from that virtue turning into callousness.

Meh it's pretty cowardly IMO to take on a cushy new HC gig across the country and then...7 months later...take accountability for screwing the pooch during a defensive collapse in the Super Bowl where your QB and the offense put together an incredible performance. I doubt Eagles fans are reading this and feeling warm and fuzzies and saluting their computer screens lol I'd be annoyed AF to see this as an Eagles fan. It's just meaningless posturing to take "accountability" at a time when you no longer have to answer to your fans, your media, your team. Accountability is so overrated on these boards anyway. Just produce or GTFO is all that matters...the rest is noise and coachspeak.

Sure...but if you constantly view draft picks through the lens of "worst case scenario", then we just traded up to first overall to draft JaMarcus Russell. And there's no point in even retaining first round picks, we might as well trade them every year for known commodities. But the reality is, high draft picks are among the most valuable assets you can have in the NFL, and there's a reason for that.

Then why did Butker sit on our practice squad unclaimed for two weeks until the Chiefs needed a replacement because they had to IR their starting kicker? This revisionism that Butker was this known elite commodity that teams were like circling sharks chomping at the bit to steal away from us is just weird.

Lol going into preseason, I only knew we signed a D. Williams from Denver. So when an announcer said something about "Raequan Williams" in our preseason game against the Giants after a big guy with "Williams" on the back of his jersey made a play, I kinda scoffed and thought "Wow what an embarrassing gaffe..." until I looked up that we indeed had a Raequan Williams on our roster.

I don’t think there were 2 D Williams as far as I know. There was a Raequan Williams who was cut, and there is still a DeShawn Williams, both big guys on the DL.

Oh he's definitely serious...he's been very vocally anti-Young so I'm sure anything short of League MVP + OROY + Super Bowl MVP his rookie season will have him believing we took the wrong guy.

I feel like this has more to do with basic talent/production/underperformance vs. "Rhule guys". If we end up keeping some of Rhule's draft picks (Barno, Mays, Christensen, Chuba) and get rid of others (Tremble, Corral, Taylor) then clearly everyone is getting a fair opportunity to make the roster, and are simply being evaluated individually on their own merits.

Even ignoring Ford also being a bust: unless you've got "Real Housewives" brain and view everything through the lens of sensationalized Reality TV, they didn't even "laugh at us" lol they breathed a sigh of relief and celebrated/high-fived that their guy was still on the board. Something that happens during just about every draft selection across all 32 war rooms.