MasterAwesome

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.

I’m not sure why my argument is hard for you to follow. My argument is against the narrative that his poor performance was due to him not having enough time to learn the offense. If that was true, he wouldn’t have had his best game in his first start and then regress consistently from week to week after. That just makes zero sense no matter how you caveat it. “There was no actual time for Cam to learn”? What? There were 6 weeks for him to learn. It’s not an all-or-nothing thing - you don’t either know zero of the playbook or 100% of it. You would want to see him build more and more mastery of the playbook from week to week and have that reflect in his performances, and that just wasn’t the case. Going from Brady to “Rhule’s stooge” is a really odd deflection considering they used the same playbook, which is the only thing we’re talking about. I wasn’t even arguing against anything you were saying originally (for once) lol I was agreeing with your point and then expanding upon it. But then you got defensive and wanted to make a million excuses for what was objectively a poor season from Cam (along with the rest of our offense + coaching staff). I agree with you 100%: “two things can be true”…as in, it can be true that Matt Rhule is a terrible coach who didn’t do Cam any favors and it can also be simultaneously true that Cam was a bad QB last year in his own right. You seem to want to deflect all blame from Cam and onto Rhule considering you’ve talked more about Rhule than Cam in your responses.

And what about his next three starts after that? His performance as a passer basically got worse and worse as the year went on (if we exclude the Miami game in his 2nd start which was one of the worst QB performances I’ve seen, although I’d put that mostly on the o-line). If the problem was that he was thrust into the QB position before getting a chance to learn the playbook, then I would expect him to look more and more comfortable under center as the season progressed and he had more time to learn the playbook. But in reality, it was the opposite.

Yeah which doesn’t exactly jive with the whole “learning the offense” narrative. His best game was his first start, and his performance basically declined more and more as the season went on.

No chance PJ wouldn't be the odd man out the door. The "Rhule connection" got PJ a 1-year vet minimum $0 guaranteed extension lol. Sounds like a guy they're extremely comfortable cutting. Is the "Rhule connection" strong enough to unilaterally get PJ a roster spot but too weak to even secure the guy any guaranteed money? This is a confusing dynamic. "Inactive" vs. "Practice Squad" is an enormous difference. Practice Squad means they're leaving Corral to get poached by other teams, which would happen the instant he's put on the PS. So yeah you should probably be a little more mindful of the wording you use.

You literally said in another thread that if we trade for Baker Mayfield, Rhule would put Matt Corral on the practice squad lol. The Matt Corral who was the #1 QB on our board in this draft, who we traded next year's 3rd round pick for. Even kungfoo (who seems to be aligned with you pretty much on every opinion) doesn't seem to want to touch the insanity of that claim and rightfully acknowledges that PJ would obviously be cut in that scenario. A claim like that shows me either you do legit hate (and I don't use that term lightly) Rhule to the point where it's clouding your judgment...OR, you're playing some kind of "shock jock" role to drive traffic for Igo. It's okay to be unhappy that Rhule is our coach. I certainly fall in that camp. What you're doing, which is frankly juvenile, is making outrageous claims and justifying it simply "because that'd be the most Rhule thing ever", whatever that means. Your last ~27 "that'd be the most Rhule thing ever" predictions have crashed and burned, so at some point you should maybe re-evaluate your prediction criteria. You might as well go all out and start a thread about how we're gonna cut Brian Burns, DJ Moore, CMC, Moton, and Chinn because that would just be the most Rhule thing ever, amirite? Hell, that thread would be the most CRA thing ever. Rhule has done some obvious disastrous things for our organization but one of the worst under-the-radar things he has done is absolutely ruined Panthers' discourse by turning everyone into mindless sheep who roam the internet saying "Rhule baaaaaaaad". It's ridiculous and cringey but I have to basically caveat every post of mine with "hey guys just to be clear, I very much dislike Rhule/Darnold/Tepper and I wish we could be rid of them"* so the mob doesn't jump down my throat with "OHHHH SORRY WE DON'T HAVE TO LOVEEEEE THEM AS MUCH AS YOU DO". And yet they still do most of the time lol. *hey guys just to be clear, I very much dislike Rhule/Darnold/Tepper and I wish we could be rid of them

Wow posting an article from some dumb bored sportswriter?? At least quote a reputable analyst, like CRA’s brother-in-law Hank.

I'm not interested in "ranking" our OC...that's silly. We don't know. I'm evaluating his body of work and I'm saying it's limited but it's overall encouraging. That's it. Pretty uncontroversial IMO to a levelheaded person. You're the one taking a hard-line stance on McAdoo and I was trying to understand your reasoning for that. Cause last time we had a discussion where I questioned your reasoning (revolving around Joe Brady), you basically walked back everything you said about him originally. You went from him being an impressive OC who produced career numbers for our offense, to now holding the opinion that he is even worse than McAdoo who you are already calling a bottom 1/3 OC. It feels like you generally start with your conclusion already formulated and then try to develop your arguments/premises as you go, rather than the other way around. Speaking of your reasoning...shame on me for formulating my opinion based on statistics while you adopt your opinion from a single Giants' fan lol. Imagine taking one random Huddler's opinion and building your entire argument around that. I mean there are legit some Panthers fans out there who say Cam was a meh QB for us. "Numbers lie" and yet you've admitted to basically regurgitating what your brother-in-law has told you? I think we can leave things there...I just wish I had known I was arguing against your brother-in-law by proxy this whole time cause that explains a lot.

My whole point is that whatever league opinion is about a player is immaterial to their actual abilities. It's often a reflection of their actual abilities, but it's ultimately immaterial. A player or coach isn't better or worse at their job based upon their perception or perceived value. Their ability directly affects their perception, but your argument seems to be that it's the other way around. Malik Willis isn't going to be a worse NFL player because he was drafted in the 2nd round instead of the 1st round. And that's the flaw in your premise. Perception is part of the overall evaluation because it makes you go back and evaluate a player or coach like "hmm what am I missing here?" which is why I said I do factor it in. I just think you and CRA making it the crux of your argument about McAdoo seems pretty overblown. My primary evaluation is: how did McAdoo perform when he was OC of the Giants? A secondary evaluation of mine is: how was McAdoo perceived in league circles? You and CRA's primary evaluation is how NFL front offices view him. I think my approach is more comprehensive and I am honestly not sure why that's a contentious take. And you've lost me on your Rhule/Giants point. How do the Giants not matching our offer preclude any negotiations from having happened? My entire post was emphasizing the fact that negotiations take place between the "buyer" (i.e. the Panthers) and the "seller" (i.e. Rhule in this case). Are you suggesting negotiations only happen if there's a bidding war? If I go and interview for a job, there are going to be negotiations between me and the hiring company. I'm going to evaluate my current situation and decide whether the company's offer is enticing enough for me to leave my current job and accept. Negotiations aren't contingent upon me taking their offer to other companies to match it.

So do you truly think there is no team in the NFL who would have offered even a 5th round pick for Darnold last offseason? I assure you teams would fork up more than a 6th round pick for a talented and young QB coming from a disastrous organization in hopes of a miracle reclamation project. Now we can say with confidence that Darnold is just bad, but there was at least a legitimate question before last season as to whether Darnold's struggles were entirely his fault or if the Jets set him up for failure. Keep in mind that the "value" of a player isn't dictated just by outside teams bidding for said player. It's also established by the team with said player (in this case, the Jets) who is determining the price point in which they are comfortable giving a player up. No matter how incompetent you and I and everyone else believe the Panthers' FO to be, you would be crazy to believe that the 2nd + 4th price point was our initial willy-nilly offer to the Jets without any kind of back-and-forth negotiations. That was certainly an overpay and one of the worst trades in team history, but I guarantee you our initial offer was a hell of a lot less than that. That's just common sense 101 negotiating. Just like how ruthless businessman Tepper who was trying to chew Rock Hill for every penny he could get, probably didn't just go up to Rhule and say "here's my very first offer: 7 years $62 million!". But if you genuinely need definitive reporting to substantiate that, then I guess I'm stumped because I don't have that.

Who is "some of you"? Are you under the impression that I said anything positive about Darnold at all or the trade? And if no other team wanted Darnold, we're still ultimately having to bid against the Jets themselves to give them an offer enticing enough to part from him. Let's say we're theoretically the only team to call the Packers inquiring about Jordan Love. That doesn't mean we can all of a sudden offer a 2039 7th round pick and they'll be like "well.....I guess that is technically the best offer on the table...".

First about Shula - remember that "control variable" thing I mentioned? If we had a different OC in 2014 and largely the same roster (most notably, the QB) and the notable difference was that we hired Shula and then all of a sudden we turned from a mediocre/bad offense to the #1 offense in his first year, then hell yeah I'd give Shula mad props. I can also speak much more confidently and with nuance about the Panthers than I can about the 2013-2018 or w/e Giants, so this is a poor analogy to ask me to compare our own OC to one of a different team. I don't presume to have followed the Giants that closely to be able to be able to attribute X% of the Giants' offensive success to McAdoo vs. other variables. You sure as hell are clueless about the Giants too, considering you baselessly overestimated Coughlin's role in their 2014-2015 offense before I had to refute it with 2 seconds of Google searches. All I can do is evaluate the Giants' roster/coaching staff pre-McAdoo and post-McAdoo and consider the significant role of an offensive coordinator to a team's offensive output and make an educated guess about how much of a factor McAdoo was specifically to their offensive turnaround. Manning was a constant, then you're looking at a receiving corps of Hakeem Nicks/Victor Cruz (one of the best 1-2 WR tandems) in 2013 vs. rookie OBJ/Reuben Randle in 2014. I'd call that a wash. So from a purely analytical sense from someone who hasn't watched every Giants game for the past 10 years, the evidence looks promising in favor of McAdoo. That's literally all I've been saying all along...that McAdoo has a small sample size as an NFL OC and it's relatively encouraging. That's the ridiculously controversial statement that you find to be offensive. I'm not even predicting McAdoo to be a good OC for us. As to the bold - yeah I already did that and you're flat out wrong. In many cases it was opposing teams who were down the whole game only to come back because the Giants went conservative on D (sound familiar?). It must be nice to say whatever you want and force the opposition to do all the research to refute it. I've done enough of that so I'll just say you're wrong about this whole "garbage time" narrative...if you want to prove *me* wrong then feel free to actually do some research and come to me with stats. Here's a simple one - the Giants in 2013 had a 60/40 pass/run ratio. The Giants in 2014 had a 57/43 pass/run ratio. So that makes the whole "SUPER BOWL CHAMP Eli Manning airing it out all game" narrative seem a bit questionable. Were only the 2014 and 2015 Giants in garbage time "airing it out" situations but not the 2013 (7-9) Giants? Why the huge discrepancy in offensive performance? I'm also not talking about "all four years" because YOU explicitly started your statement off referencing McAdoo's "pure OC years".

There was that rumor about the 49ers offering a 1st round pick for Darnold before last year's draft. And you can certainly argue that we foolishly overpaid for Darnold, but you'd have to agree that Darnold in all likelihood would have fetched more than Gardner Minshew did (6th round pick) in which case my point would still be valid. That NFL front offices valued Darnold more than Minshew which clearly does not make him the superior QB.

Fair enough. Yes I think it's bad, but I also think emphasizing "what NFL front offices think of you" over actual NFL production puts you in weird territory that leads to conclusions like Sam Darnold (2nd and 4th round pick trade value) > Gardner Minshew (6th round pick trade value) which I think most people would argue is laughable. And again, if we cut Sam Darnold tomorrow and a team signs him as their back-up QB it isn't gonna make me think any more highly of Darnold than if we cut him tomorrow and nobody picks him up.

Such a weird statement....did you even bother looking any of this up before you formulated this opinion? We're talking about the 2015 Giants who lost 8 of their 10 games by one score? That's the team who racked up a bunch of garbage stats to inflate their offensive performance? Yeah, the team probably sucked cause their defense was ranked 30th/32nd (points/yardage). I'm sure you will explain to me how that was McAdoo's fault though. And are we talking about the same "2-time Super Bowl champion Eli" (lol) who went for: -7766 yards, 44 TDs, 42 INTs, 58.7% completion, 78.3 QB rating in the 2 seasons prior to McAdoo -8842 yards, 65 TDs, 28 INTs, 62.9% completion, 92.9 QB rating in the 2 seasons under OC McAdoo That Super Bowl champion Eli? I would be thrilled if we had 1/10th of this turnaround in QB play with McAdoo.

Which I've never argued otherwise. The disconnect is that I personally draw a meaningful distinction between him as HC vs. him as OC. I certainly will factor in his playcalling as a HC in his overall body of work, but it's not a 1:1 comparison to me. Painting it with a broad brush as simply "4 years of playcalling" without any distinction whatsoever comes off as extremely reductive and disingenuous to me. That's what CRA is doing that I am pushing back on - he's weighing them equally as "HC w/ playcalling duties" = "OC". Literally zero difference between the two. Hell, if anything, he's weighing "HC w/ playcalling duties" more heavily than OC which is super weird. OC's do a hell of a lot more with the offense than just calling plays, and head coaches do a hell of a lot more with the team outside of playcalling. Playcalling is one tiny blip in the overlap of the "OC vs. HC w/ playcalling duties" venn diagram.

I couldn't care less whether you're exited (sic) or not about McAdoo. I'm sticking to factual arguments so I'd appreciate it if you'd do the same and stop appealing to emotion in every response. Every time I try to discuss something with you, you pivot to arguing against something someone else said instead of addressing my own personal statements. I am simply curious as to how you reached your conclusion that he's a bottom 1/3 OC in the NFL. To justify that, you suggested 2 "good" years + 2 "horrible" years = poor overall body of work. I asked you how having a Top 6 offense is characterized as a "good" year and having a bottom 7 offense is characterized as a "horrible" year. Clearly that's a meaningful difference, it's not semantics...I shouldn't have to explain this unless you're being intentional dodgy. "Good" and "horrible" are not both hyperbolic - that's the issue. "Horrible" is hyperbolic and you deliberately chose to characterize it that way because otherwise "2 good years + 2 bad years" sounds much less offensive.