MasterAwesome

The difference is that the people stumping for Darnold in 2021 were blaming his o-line/coaching staff/receiving corps for his failures in NY and clinging onto hope that maybe if those improved, Darnold would improve and maximize his potential. Whereas with Baker, you can't really blame those things because he has had a VERY solid support system across the board in all three of those areas. So we basically know what Baker is, best case scenario, under peak conditions and it's pretty meh. I think pretty much everyone understands that Baker will not be getting peak conditions here lol.

Fatt Rh00L iz SuCK!! Gimme my damn pie!!!

Yeah same, he showed some flashes but was inconsistent (which I’d argue describes Henderson too). I think with Henderson’s athleticism and potential, that if the two of them are neck-and-neck leading up to Week 1, I think they’d be tempted to go with Henderson. So I’m giving him the slight nod over Taylor, but it’s close IMO. I’m just saying, that guy I responded to was like demanding sources from the other guy for simply saying Henderson could “potentially possibly be a starter” which is about the most non-committal take ever lol. I don’t know why calling Henderson a potential possible starter is some kind of preposterous claim.

Don’t worry, I think we all understand your point…it comes up literally every season by somebody. It’s not exactly a unique take. The problem is that no NFL team in reality operates with this kind of mindset. No team goes “well guys…we all know we’re gonna suck this year so we might as well save money, pack it in, and roll with these bums and just try and set ourselves up for a good 2023!!!”. That’s such a casual fan perspective lol. Every team begins the season 0-0 with a clean slate and with the objective to put together a competitive roster for the year. Injuries happen to key players every year and can drastically change the course of a season for any given team, for better or worse. Imagine if Brady got injured in Week 2 and they trot out Kyle Trask who turns out to be a monumental bust. All of a sudden our 5% chance to win the division turns into a 35% chance or w/e. No, I’m not saying we’re banking on a Brady injury to become competitive. There are countless variables and possibilities that inflate or deflate a team’s success in any oven season - that’s just one example (probably the most drastic one, albeit).

Is it really that crazy to imagine CJ Henderson starting for us? I would think the most likely starting CBs are Horn, Jackson, and Henderson. Who else is in contention for a top-3 spot? Maybe Keith Taylor? Rashaan Melvin with a slim outside shot? I would have a hard time believing Henderson isn't the odds-on favor for one of those starting spots.

Here's some pie. Guess you love David Tepper too now. Wow that was easy!

What have we done this offseason to signal we're taking a "young roster-building approach"? Because we drafted a QB? That'd be a strange approach to decide to take in Rhule's third season. Every single team needs productive vets, including developmental ones. Of course Rhule is trying to field a competitive team this year, as every coach does every year. I think there's a certain negative connotation with "win now" mode, which generally implies that a coach is mortgaging the future to capitalize off of a closing window of opportunity (usually involving a roster littered with older vets and/or key players expected to hit FA). I really doubt Dunlap's signing is going to mortgage our future, but we'll have to wait and see the details.

Lol oh well, I tried. Of course they're comparable, with respect to being two completely out-of-left-field, sudden, gigantic, perplexing, significantly impactful moves for Charlotte sports that clearly had a shroud of behind-the-scenes mystique and obfuscation. Can you explain a little more why one warrants a "wait-and-see" approach and the other one warrants a rash and impulsive response? Simply saying "because they're different" is a meaningless rationale. IMO it's pretty clear the difference here is that you're going to always take the position that is least charitable and in direct opposition to Tepper. Which is honestly fine and you can argue that it's justified, given Tepper's failures so far which don't really afford him much charitability when there are a ton of question marks. I'd respect it if you came out and said that outright. But instead, you seem to want to present yourself as this enlightened bastion of objectivity and levelheadedness when I suspect you're just as emotional and biased and reactionary as the average Huddler. Which again, is fine and justified since we're all fans at the end of the day. It takes a lot of discipline to be able to remove your fandom from the equation and evaluate these kinds of things from an objective viewpoint.

I just don’t understand where all this “woah woah let’s all slow down and wait for the full story to come out” energy was when Tepper fired the Charlotte FC coach. You were one of the first reactionaries to jump in and throw some snarky comment in. And then you sat back while everyone carried on for 10 pages of “The Roast of David Tepper”. It was incredibly obvious there was more to that firing behind the scenes but you didn’t seem very interested in that case. At least be consistent. Please spare us both the grandstanding platitudes of “corrupt evil billionaires blah blah” because I don’t have any love for Tepper. I’m just curious what your reasoning is for wildly different approaches to these two stories.

That even raises another question: who gets the bulk of the blame for an overpay? Fitterer or Suleiman? Suleiman is technically in charge of contract negotiations. All these roles kind of blend together and muddy the waters.

It's probably a reasonable assumption to think that the hotter a coach's seat/the shorter his leash, the less authority he has to override the GM if there is a roster disagreement. That probably applies to Fox in 2010 and Rhule in 2022, so again a reasonable assumption to think the GM had more flexibility to steer roster decisions. That's part of the complexity of the coach/GM dynamic, that their individual roles/responsibilities/authorities are somewhat fluid depending on the warmth of their seats. I'm sure Rhule probably had more influence on roster management in his rookie season when Tepper threw his entire support (and wallet) behind Rhule, whereas present day, the power dynamic has probably shifted away from Rhule and more towards Fitterer. Again, it's all speculation though.

Well yeah...my whole point is that it's hard to evaluate them individually when it comes to roster management because you don't really know the power dynamic behind-the-scenes nor do you know which of them is driving any individual move. It's much more straightforward on the other hand, to evaluate them as a pairing, which is what you're talking about. It's like when Ron was the coach and Hurney was the GM and we had some pretty bad drafts and then Ron gets fired and Rhule came in and everyone loved Rhule/Hurney's first draft together (at the time) and people were all "CLEARLY this was Rhule's draft cause it was so much more awesomer than our other Hurney drafts in the previous years!!". But I would argue that the Ron/Hurney partnership needs to be evaluated separately from the Rhule/Hurney partnership, which needs to be evaluated separately from the Rhule/Fitterer partnership. Coach/GM pairings create complex dynamics when it comes to roster management. I'm only talking specifically roster management...there are some things we can probably confidently evaluate them individually on, like game management, which I would give Rhule like a D- on.

Do you guys honestly think Rhule and/or Fitterer are making unilateral decisions when it comes to the roster? A coach/GM relationship should be highly collaborative; otherwise, that's a sign of a highly dysfunctional partnership IMO if they are on wildly different pages on roster moves (FA, extensions, draft, etc.). It's very difficult to evaluate them individually when it comes to roster management.

Agreed. I was simply pushing back on the suggestion that "hey maybe Brady was actually a good OC who was set up to fail and scapegoated because he was stuck with Sam Darnold". Like I said, I think it's silly to hand-wave away Brady's failures simply because he had a terrible starting QB...but similarly, I'm not in any way absolving Sam Darnold's failures by saying he was a victim of a terrible OC. Brady and Darnold were both garbage and it's no mystery how Brady + Darnold + a terrible starting o-line = a joke of an offense.

Chinn and Harper are similar types of old-school SS box safeties. Harper was just as limited in coverage as Chinn. The difference is, Chinn is an absolute athletic freak (10/10 RAS) while Harper was about 73 years old as our starting SS in 2015 and one of the slowest, if not the slowest, safeties in the league. So Harper had zero recovery speed when he did get burned in the secondary.

Yeah but you're doing the whole black-and-white holistic statistical look at the offense which is literally the exact thing I said I am not doing. I'm talking about a nuanced evaluation where you look in depth at why the offense struggled, not just simply that the offense struggled. I'm saying we clearly had a problem with in-game adjustments, which you appear to agree with, which objectively falls on the shoulders of the OC. So simply hand-waving Brady's failures as "oh he had Sam Darnold" is a very surface-level and elementary analysis. We can do a little better than that, as Panthers' fans who watched every game. I think too much is made of the new bum Rhule-lackey who filled in at OC for the last 5 games of the season. People seem to use his failure as vindication of Joe Brady like "See! We still sucked on offense after Brady left, Brady clearly wasn't the problem". We thrust this absolute nobody (Rhule's co-offensive coordinator at Baylor lol) into a prominent role as OC for the last 5 games of the season, while still using Brady's playbook. Properly and extensively coordinating an offense is something that begins in the offseason with playbook development, while using OTAs and minicamp to instill and tweak the offensive scheme. To think some rando lackey could have an actual shot at success going from running backs coach to OC using some other dude's playbook and offensive scheme is laughable. Now that McAdoo has come in and has had a proper offseason to build a playbook and develop/install his offensive scheme...if Sam Darnold starts the year and plays a considerable number of games as our starting QB and our offense crashes and burns similarly to last year, THEN we can maybe begin to consider that as somewhat of a vindication of Joe Brady.

Now you're kind of doing that whole reductive superficial thing with your evaluation, that I'd expect from an outside observer who never actually watched our games. It's easy to look at our team on paper and say "Ok, they went from a mediocre QB in Teddy, to a bad QB in Sam. Of course their offense looked worse!! Any OC would look worse under those circumstances". But for someone who watches our games as I'm assuming you did, you should be able to apply a bit more nuanced of an evaluation to assess Brady's individual performance within the broader holistic view of our offense. Watching our games over the last two years, did you ever feel like you were watching Brady make in-game adjustments in real time? I sure as hell didn't. It looked like he went into the game with a rigid gameplan and he stuck with it throughout the course of the game. Why did we consistently suck absolute a%@hole in the 3rd quarter last year? Is Sam just inherently a worse QB in the 3rd quarter? Or were defensive coaches making adjustments after halftime and throwing things at us that we were entirely unprepared for and unable to adjust to in turn? How many 3rd quarter meltdowns should it take for us to learn to come out of halftime with some new tricks up our sleeve? Football in large part is a chess match between offensive and defensive coordinators and Brady routinely made opposing DCs look like Grandmasters out there. Oh, we have one of the worst o-lines in NFL history? Let's not run the ball, and instead do more 5 and 7 step drops in the pass game. Even during the 2020 season, we consistently sucked in the red zone all year long and it was never apparent that we tried anything different. It's easier than you make it out to be, to isolate an OC's performance within the offense. The lack of adjustments routinely killed us over the last couple years, and that is on the OC. I don't know if McAdoo will be an improvement in that area, but I sure as hell can't imagine he could be worse.

Andy Reid might be the most out-of-shape coach in the league but he's one of the best. Not sure what parallel you're trying to draw between Ron's ample chest and his coaching ability. I think it's clear Rhule was just emphasizing the importance of building relationships with his players. Personally I think he's got a million other more pressing issues with his coaching that he should emphasize, but I don't think his answer was very offensive.

Well, I don't know that I would agree with that comparison. IMO there's the coworker complaining for 8 hours a day, then there's the "positive" coworker who gets fed up and makes a comment like "Dude, do you have to complain so much??". Then maybe they'll go back-and-forth for a bit during that spat, but I don't think there's anyone who has made it their mission to go around combating negativity full-time (i.e. spending 8 hours complaining about a co-worker who complains too much). Except maybe iamhubby lol but he is exactly who I would consider one of those anti-criticism "toxic positivity" guys. And the dude literally got banned for 24 hours as a result of it lol. So that kind of set a strange precedent that persistent complaining about the team = OK, but persistent complaining about complaining = bannable. But then complaining about complaining about complaining is also OK I guess, considering people continued to beat up on iamhubby during his 24 hour ban while complaining about how toxic and annoying he is. Maybe I'm weird but the offseason seems like the ideal time to dial back on the negativity, not ramp it up...no? I mean we're 0-0, clean slate in the standings, just brought in new talent at key positions via draft/FA, lots of coaching overhaul, etc. I get that we still have Rhule and Darnold which is obviously going to put a cap on how optimistic we truly can be, but still...this is our opportunity to put the last terrible season behind and look towards a fresh start.

Yeah I totally agree about Sam. I don't wanna get in the weeds about him specifically because I was just tossing out a random example of a "positive" comment that would be faced with severe criticism/borderline bullying on these boards. That comment in no way reflects my personal thoughts on Sam. That dude in particular who quoted me, I swear has some kind of internal decision tree algorithm where he scours the boards for any mention of Sam Darnold: "Is comment negative? If yes, then -> flame reaction. If no, then -> respond "SAM DARNOLD LOVER!!!!". Even neutral comments gets blasted by him. I would know, because I assure you I haven't said a single remotely positive thing about Darnold in roughly a year and yet he has quoted me several times to lump me in with the 1 or 2 "stans" that Darnold has left in here. The Huddle sometimes seems like an ass-backwards microcosm of society where people wear their negativity like a badge of honor while cheery or positive posters are seen as social pariahs. Trust me, I get that we suck and have sucked for a few consecutive years and there is a lot to be upset about. But at some point, it's just excessive and gratuitous and draining. If I worked a crappy job that provided terrible pay and benefits and overworked its employees, it's still gonna be annoying as hell to work with a coworker who, for 8 hours a day, complains nonstop about how crappy it is to work there. It's like, yeah I get it dude, I'm living it too...can we talk about something else other than how miserable it is working here? You ask that guy if he saw the new Doctor Strange movie and he's like "Naw I can't afford a movie ticket with what they're paying me at this POS job!!" or you'll ask him if he has any plans for Christmas and he says "Nope I can't even afford gas with what they're paying me at this POS job so I'm just staying home and recovering from the long hours at this POS job!!". Like every attempt at conversation pivots to how terrible the job is...that's how it feels on the Huddle. And hey, the "toxic positivity" crowd I mentioned in my previous post would be your coworkers who show up to this crappy job every day like "What a wonderful day to be at this amazing company!" and "Hey quit complaining about your job! You should be grateful to be here!" - these people are obnoxious too which I have acknowledged. I just VERY rarely see those kind of people here.

Lol so not just making a comment about Sam Darnold making strides, but making a comment about a theoretical comment about Sam Darnold making strides is enough to rile people up. I just tossed up the alley-oop and you slammed that bad boy home for me. Thanks for the assist.

I think one of the problems is that there is so much higher of an intolerance for positivity than there is negativity. Continuously trash the team/organization several times a day and you'll maybe get 2-3 posters who feel strongly enough to make some snarky comment about your persistent negativity. But make one little comment like "I think Sam Darnold might finally make some strides this year behind a solid o-line" and watch how many people will gang up and jump down that dude's throat and practically bully him off the message boards lol. Yes, pessimism is a rational and justified outcome based on the state of the Panthers' franchise for the past several years, but there's no need to drag people down into the mud who choose to adopt an optimistic outlook. Granted, both sides should stop imposing their outlook on others which is why I think it's silly to just be outright anti-criticism. I just think that's such a tiny minority on these boards with that opinion, which makes it so weird that they are constantly talked about so much. Meanwhile the doomers act like they're some kind of marginalized oppressed group trying to be censored and silenced when they're by far the majority, and even fill prominent moderator roles here. I think "toxic positivity" and "toxic negativity" are both very real things on these boards. The thing is, toxic positivity accounts for maybe 1-5% of posts/posters here while toxic negativity accounts for upwards of 30-40% of posts/posters here and yet people are quick to cry "both sides" like they are equally destructive. Both groups co-existing not only should happen, but needs to happen for the sake of interesting discourse. But the discourse has basically devolved into "StOp BeInG nEgAtIvE" vs. "QuIt BeInG a DuMb HoMeR" which you can pretty much reduce to "stop whining" vs. "stop whining". There are very few actual substantive arguments taking place here anymore and that's a symptom of the disease.

Can you guess why that is?

Haynes and Luvu are two players that would constantly flash on screen in limited snaps; I'm excited to see them take on more prominent roles. Hell, with Burns locking down one DE position and guys like YGM/Haynes/Luvu rotating into the other spot, I'm fairly comfortable with our edge rushers. That's not even factoring in the chances of a guy like Barno coming in and earning a decent chunk of playing time as a rookie.