MasterAwesome

Of course being loaded up on draft picks would, and should make people feel better about our future. Which makes more sense in the face of an embarrassing blowout? Feeling optimistic about having a pretty good young pass rusher who is in his 4th year, having contributed to a 17-41 record since joining the team? Or feeling optimistic about having a stockpile of 1st and 2nd round picks over the next three seasons? Which one bodes well for future prospects, relatively speaking? There's a reason why fans every year look ahead to the draft in the midst of a failed season. Good drafting is the most effective way to turn a franchise around.

Wanting to trade Burns for 1st round picks 2-3 years from now is the furthest thing from "instant gratification" lol.

My family and friends would be the ones wearing paper bags on their heads around me if I ever did something this cringey.

I dunno how many times the b-word was thrown out, but there were definitely a lot of people drooling over Charles Cross in Week 1 and suggesting we took the wrong tackle. I am pretty sure you were among them lol.

Most players aren't playing the strategic "long game" in the "Not For Long" league. That's for front offices. Their job security and "making a fug ton of money" as you put it, is contingent upon them playing to the best of their ability. Individual effort may fluctuate based on team performance simply due to morale, because winning can give you a little extra boost and getting blown out is demoralizing. But I guarantee they aren't intentionally ***** up on the field in order to hopefully lose enough games to draft a guy who hopefully ends up being an elite player who is hopefully the missing link to a Super Bowl run. Also, that would have to be a coordinated effort with full buy-in from everyone in the locker room or else you're just asking for a toxic environment. Imagine a tanking OT just "forgetting" to block for his QB who is trying to win, or a tanking QB intentionally throwing an uncatchable ball to his WR who is trying to win.

I am genuinely super curious what @CRA thinks about this. Remember his claim that Rhule would start Darnold over Baker at the start of the season so he would have an ace in the hole to later bench Sam Darnold and buy himself more time to keep his job? I thought that idea sounded kinda nuts, but does that not feel like exactly what happened here? Wilks keeping a couple of Rhule's flunkies on staff so that "In Case of Emergency, Break Glass" and fire them after an embarrassing blow-out loss? I was receptive to the idea of keeping Wilks until yesterday's game. That was arguably the sloppiest most ill-prepared we've looked in any game I've ever watched as a Panthers' fan. I'm not often actually viscerally embarrassed of our team's performance cause at the end of the day it's just a game for entertainment, it ain't that serious. But damn was I embarrassed yesterday.

Interesting...if you believe that report from Twitter from that one dude who called out the rift between Phil Snow and Steve Wilks and talked about Phil Snow being Rhule's "puppet master" or w/e, then that string of tweets specifically singled out Paul Pasqualoni as backing up Wilks in voicing his disagreements with Snow's scheme.

“The guys are playing SO HARD for Wilks!”

This is a horribly coached team. The same damn penalty three times by three different players lining up in the neutral zone. Awful.

Panthers blowout today.

I know I'm late but this was too funny to me. To answer your bolded hypothetical, apparently by your own claim he would still be a 3rd rounder lol.

Are you still pretending you're not an alt and just joined the boards last year? Cause that's a hell of a throwback to call someone out for a 10-year-old take lol. Most people don't care whether someone is an alt or not but you are one of the few people who use the term "alt" disparagingly to insult others which is what makes it super weird. Are you @TheRed? You remind me of him which piqued my curiosity. He was a regular for ~10 years until he disappeared off the face of the earth...less than 2 months before you joined with your current alt.

The thing about Burns is, he's obviously a good player and he has had good production but can we honestly say that he has improved in any way since his rookie season? We've been saying for years now "oh just wait til he takes that next step" but it's his 4th season and he seems like the exact same player to me. Which is a very good one, but I'd be much more reluctant to trade him away if I felt confident that he has yet to reach his ceiling, which to be honest I'm not.

DeAndre Hopkins is probably a legit example. He put up 1500+ yards and 11 TDs in his 3rd year (pre Watson) catching passes from Brian Hoyer, Ryan Mallett, TJ Yates, and Brandon Weeden, with a 32-year-old Nate Washington lined up across from him as the #2 WR.

It would be silly and impulsive to cut him after one game based on his total body of work this season. But I am slightly concerned that this performance is gonna snowball into a "yips" type situation if he doesn't have the mental fortitude to overcome it.

It’s weird how low PFF rates him…50.8, which is garbage level. Shaq is 66.2 for comparison.

Yeah I mean I don’t necessarily have a strong opinion one way or the other cause I don’t pretend to have the ability or means to have evaluated a DB’s performance throughout an entire game (considering most of his match-ups were not even on screen lol) but I’m just sharing what PFF thinks as a data point.

https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-week-8-game-recap-atlanta-falcons-37-carolina-panthers-34 And IIRC, the Rams game where Donte Jackson got a pick-six, he still had one of the lowest PFF grades in the game, like in the 40-50 range. So PFF clearly thought highly of CJ's performance beyond just the interception.

Marvin McNutt is 6’4 and still only 33 years old. Fitterer better get on that phone ASAP!

PJ at the very least proved the last couple weeks that he belongs on an NFL roster, contrary to popular belief that he’s only here because of Rhule favoritism.

As a Christian McCaffrey fan….tasy football owner, I’m ecstatic that we traded him to a team that can maximize his talent.

Seems like genuinely a good trade for both parties.

Which is an odd thing to say about a team with a 2nd year “generational talent” 1st overall QB.

Your post sounded so goofy that I just wasted 10 minutes of my life scrolling through the Falcons’ message board to confirm that you’re talking out of your ass lol. Their fans definitely want to win and they’re a lot more complimentary of our team than 99% of this board. You can always tell who watches too much Real Housewives cause they experience everything through the lens of a soap opera.

We lost to the Giants by 3 in NY back when we were under Rhule and had an awful Baker under center. That’s the team that’s supposedly gonna destroy us in the first round of the playoffs? The Panthers team that showed up last Sunday against the Bucs is night and day different from that team that lost by 3 to the Giants in Week 2. We just have to wait and see if that game was a fluke or if we might actually have made strides.