MasterAwesome

Really? How are you arriving to that interpretation? Yes he has mismanaged the QB situation every year, but I think his mismanagement is a lot simpler and straightforward than you're making it out to be. His mismanagement has been a result of him bringing in a bad QB to lead this team in back-to-back years. What is some of this variability you're referring to? What are some of the other ways he's mismanaged the QB situation beyond simply bringing a bad one in? I'm the only one here looking at Rhule's history with the QB position and extrapolating that to predict how he handles it this year. I told you he brought in Teddy in 2020 and started him Week 1, he brought in Sam Darnold in 2021 and started him Week 1, and he brought in Baker Mayfield and is likely to start him Week 1 based on his pattern of behavior thus far. He consistently brings in a new QB every year when the previous one fails. Regardless of how much variability you think there is in his mismanagement, that is the one consistent theme with Rhule year after year. You on the other hand are suggesting Rhule this year is going to do the exact opposite of what he has done the last two years.

"Continuing to do what he does" would mean he would start Baker Week 1. He brought in Teddy in 2020 -> Teddy started Week 1. He brought in Sam Darnold 2021 -> Darnold started Week 1. He brought in Baker 2022 -> he...doesn't...start Week 1? Huh? That directly contradicts what Rhule has done thus far. Continuing to vaguely allude to "the Matt Rhule effect" just seems like carte blanche to propose whatever wildly irrational scenario your imagination can conjure up. Trading 9 1st round picks for Jacoby Brissett? I could totally see it, because "Matt Rhule effect". Cutting Brian Burns and replacing him with the waterboy? Oh for sure...Matt Rhule effect!!!

This really feels like the embodiment of this GIF lol. The obvious answer is that Rhule is gonna start who he thinks gives the team the best chance to win. It's possible he could decide that's Darnold, which would be a testament to his poor player evaluation which I can believe. Your convoluted theory that he's deliberately withholding the better quarterback in order to enact a chapter out of "Scapegoating for Dummies" seems like such a wild departure from common sense. Winning is how Rhule keeps his job, bottom line. Occam's razor, bro.

According to you, Matt Rhule was clearly the one pushing hard for a Baker Mayfield trade out of desperation to save his job...but he has no intention of starting him? How does that make sense? How is Baker going to save his job from the bench?

If you say so much as “Matt Rhule actually looks like he showered this morning for once”, you get a swarm of certain obsessed weirdo Huddlers tripping over themselves to rush in and say “LoOkS LiKe ThE mAtT rHuLe FaN cLuB iS oUt In FuLl FoRcE”. It’s pretty hilarious.

False alarm...Matt was just inside rinsing off after his daily morning half-marathon before practice starts.

The guy you're responding to is arguing about the quality of our WR corps going into this season. So instead of whether or not you think Robby was the worst starting WR in the league last year, the more relevant question would be: do you think Robby genuinely is the worst starting WR in the league? Cause you can point to his performance last year, but the disconnect between your argument and his, is that I think it's safe to say that guy (as well as most of us) would expect Robby to bounce back this year. Robby's entire career's body of work puts him in solid WR2 territory outside of one pretty terrible year with Darnold throwing him the football. So if DJ is a stud WR1 and we suspect Robby will revert to the mean of being a solid WR2, then that would suggest at least an average receiving corps.

I hope so...that would have put us at 7th best rush defense last year.

Those tweets characterizing it as Robby "diving" and "laying out" for the catch make it seem like it was more of an amazing grab than a throw. But it was more like Robby just falling as he caught it lol. That throw was darn near perfect.

It seems so bizarre to be a fan of a team that you want less content from.

Age isn't really a part of the equation unless he's old enough to where he's physically limited. Just because he's a few years older doesn't mean he's further along in his development than a 23-year-old second-year player. It's about his experience and the level of coaching he has received, which are both on equal footing with NFL sophomores.

Kyler was legitimately an MVP candidate over the first half of the season, but he seemed to follow the Wentz trajectory of going from MVP candidate -> mediocre after injury. I think there's a decent chance he bounces back this year though.

No need to shame him man...that was a bit off-colour.

Meh I can't foresee any scenario where he'd be cut after the season. Even if we draft a QB in the top 5 next year with a brand new coaching staff, he'd still be easily worth one of our 2-3 roster spots at QB. I suspect this will largely be a redshirt year for him. I think the Baker signing essentially confirmed that he isn't expected to be an instant impact guy and that we're prioritizing his development this year (for better or worse, TBD).

Yeah right now on paper, our QB prospects over the next three seasons is basically on the shoulders of a 3rd round rookie QB lol. I'd argue Corral is a better prospect than your average 3rd round QB, but that's still what he is at the end of the day and what outsiders see when they evaluate the QBs on our roster.

Whoever the respective starter is in Pittsburgh/SF/Atlanta, Mayfield (as of right now) should be considered better than them. So joemac's original point would still stand, which is evaluating Mayfield against the rest of the league's starters. Things could very well change by the end of the year though; it's contingent upon the development of a lot of these young QBs (Lance, Fields, Lawrence, Wilson, Pickett, etc.). On that point, this article seems to be projecting "future" power rankings and upon looking up the article itself on ESPN, it's stated that this is a projection over the next three seasons. So I'm guessing they have most (if not all) of these young first/second-year QBs as ranked higher than Baker since they expect them to surpass him within the next 3 years. So viewing this article as saying Baker is currently the 28th best QB in the league isn't really what this article seems to be suggesting. It's saying we have the 28th best outlook at QB over the next three seasons which is probably fair. We don't even know that Baker is gonna be here beyond this season.

Nice.

There are quite a few people who are upset we got Baker because we're gonna supposedly win just enough games for Rhule to keep his job. Those are the people who want us to lose and are legit upset because our team got better.

I suppose in your example, if Andy Reid is drawing up 30-35 pass plays for you a game despite you showing time after time after time that you're literally throwing the game away, and goes into every game with the same rigid gameplan instead of even attempting to switch anything up, has opposing defenses who laugh in his face about spamming the same play calls over and over again to where the corners can run our routes for us, and is routinely clueless in the red zone across two seasons with two different QBs...then yeah I would be equally critical of Andy Reid. Your argument would be convincing on paper if you were making it to someone who didn't watch any of our games and just simply read the box score every week. Otherwise it's quite easy to separate the failures of our offensive talent from the failures of our offensive coordinator. You don't realize that you're falling into the exact same trap as the few Darnold defenders who go "Well OF COURSE he has failed, look at his o-lines/coaching/receivers/*insert excuse here* during his NFL career! No one could succeed with that level of talent around him". When all it takes is simply watching an NFL game to see Darnold skittish and crumbling in the pocket and routinely making boneheaded decisions. Similarly, all it takes is watching a Panthers game to see the terribly predictable situational playcalling, the woeful lack of in-game adjustments, the extremely predictable offensive nosedive in the 3rd quarter, and the lack of a consistent balanced offensive gameplan. Those are the things you can't blame on the players. I've never talked about "winning", I don't care about that. I care about how the offense performed strictly within the scope of Brady's individual roles and responsibilities.

If your position is that all else being equal, you can swap out one OC with another and nothing will change with the product on the field, then you’re basically arguing that an OC is inconsequential and meaningless to your offense. You seem to be severely understating the impact of an OC on an offense. Just like a good QB can mask deficiencies with a bad o-line, a good pass rush can mask deficiencies with a bad secondary, a good receiver can mask deficiencies with a bad QB, and so on…..a good OC can mask deficiencies with a lack of talent through his offensive scheme. I’m not saying Brady should have taken last year’s offensive roster and pulled a top 10 offense out of his ass, but if Brady took a trash roster and produced a trash offense that lived precisely to its exact expected potential, then he’s essentially just a JAG who can be replaced by any bum off the street. In the NFL where we’re talking about the best of the best, you need players and coaches who can elevate each other to maximize potential. Brady was not that guy and is not that guy. Instead, he’s apparently the type of guy you hire to be Josh Allen’s QB coach (a top 3 QB in the NFL) lol. If that doesn’t tell you what the NFL thinks of Brady, then I don’t know what does. That’d be like hiring me to be the defensive line coach for a d-line of prime Julius Peppers, John Randle, Aaron Donald, and Reggie White. I mean I’d take that job, but I’d also be like “oh I guess they just want me to sit here and maintain the status quo and try not to mess anything up”.

That’s quite the framing lol. Tepper’s deference to Rhule is a bad thing simply because Rhule has shown poor judgment. Does that mean I want Tepper stepping in and meddling and overriding Rhule and Fitterer on football decisions? Hell no. An owner’s deference to their head coach as a management philosophy IS a plus…I can’t possibly imagine you disagree with that. Tepper already made his bed and committed himself to Rhule, so at this point I want him to entrust the people he hired to do their job. Otherwise you end up with a Jerry Jones or Dan Snyder. Tepper’s mistake thus far has been hiring Rhule - that’s his job and where he has dropped the ball. His job isn’t to coach this team and set the depth chart and manage the roster. If he kept Rhule and instead neutered him of all football decisions and took it upon himself to make those decisions instead, then THAT would epitomize ineptitude and would convert me into a full-blown bitter and miserable Huddler.

As opposed to...? You know the reason we're left speculating about what might have happened if we had taken a different approach with the offense last season? Because nothing ever changed with our offense gameplan....absolutely zero adjustments. And that will forever be the fatal flaw with Brady, regardless of our roster shortcomings. The game plan week in and week out was to trot Sam Darnold out there behind a turnstile offensive line and see how long it would take for him to implode. It was mind-boggling how little we seemed to game plan each week. Like I said, even against the weak run-defense opponents, we still prioritized the pass over the run. Even though we won those games...so it's not like we were forced to pass, coming from behind. All evidence points to a stubborn one-dimensional OC who had zero feel for the fluidity of an NFL game. Despite having over 1.5 seasons to settle into his role and show even a semblance of progression in that aspect of the game.

He also literally said in that same exact answer, that Rhule has final say. Which is exactly what was literally said in the post you quoted that you're trying to refute. Lol.

Well you're using our "weak run game" as justification for why we didn't run more, when the alternative (our pass game) was monumentally weaker by comparison. So you are ostensibly ignoring the elephant in the room when laying out your rationale.

"Talent" is a relative term that needs to be evaluated with respect to your personnel. You have to work with what you've got and maximize your strengths while limiting your weaknesses, regardless of how your talent stacks up to other teams. Was our run blocking and rookie running back liabilities? Yeah probably, but not nearly as much of a liability as our QB play and pass protection. You can't talk about how weak our run game was in a vacuum while ignoring the elephant in the room that was our abysmal pass game. With our roster, we probably should have been a run-heavy team. Instead, our OC would panic when down 3 in the second quarter and practically abandon the run game altogether...making our offense entirely one-dimensional to where the opposing pass rush could pin their ears back and ignore gap integrity. Even if you're not "imposing your will" in the run game, you still have to incorporate it into your game plan throughout the game to keep the defense honest. Out of those 4 bottom-10 run defense teams you mentioned we played, we still prioritized the pass in 3 out of those 4 games. That only serves to epitomize our poor offensive gameplanning.