MasterAwesome

I don't think any amount of "culture" is going to overcome the sheer talent deficit on this team, which is far and away the most pressing issue. We need an influx of talent both from a player standpoint and a coaching standpoint, i.e. creative playcalling, scheming, etc., then maybe we can have a discussion on culture. Harping on culture I think is reserved more for teams like the Eagles who have a stacked roster but are underachieving on the field. How do you define "culture" anyways? That seems like more of a nebulous buzzword I would expect during coachspeak or something. Is it just like a locker room that holds each other accountable?

Yeah this pretty much exactly sums it up and why I think it's frankly incredibly silly to try and extrapolate optimism for your favorite sports team into some broader diagnosis of delusion, weakness, etc. lol like bro, it's entertainment. You can walk away at any point. I would argue "weakness" is being beholden to a stupid trivial sports franchise that causes you distress at every waking moment, and then complaining about them online day after day. I've never gotten to that level, but I'll damn sure immediately walk away from it all if I do. Lowest I've gotten is apathetic this past season, at which point I'll either just have it on in the background while I'm doing something else or skip watching altogether. Cause, ya know, I'm a big boy in control of my life and choose to prioritize things that make me happy instead of dwelling on things that cause me misery.

I know you weren't the one who actually posted the article, but it has virtually zero relevance to the outlook of a sports fan. The article draws a distinction between cautious optimists and cockeyed optimists: the primary difference between the two, being the amount of effort each puts into achieving their desired positive outcome. Whether the Panthers will be good or bad is entirely outside the control of us fans and our outlook. You or I as an individual choosing to have a positive vs. negative mindset about the team each offseason has no correlation to how well the team will actually perform. I don't know if the study dove into this, but I think the above concept plays into the excerpt that you quoted, highlighting the association between pessimistic outlooks and higher exam grades. I would imagine intuitively that a pessimist is generally more likely to overprepare for an exam than an optimist, particularly a cockeyed optimist who assumes everything will work out and therefore will opt not to put the work in to study. But then again this study investigates such a niche application of pessimism vs. optimism, i.e. with regards to exam performance of one psychology class at one university, comprising of a sample size of 67 participants.

You're conveniently leaving out the fact that Rhule was in his 3rd season and Campbell was in his 2nd. It's a lot easier to sell the fanbase on "patience" and "staying the course" halfway into the second season rather than the third, while there had been a clear downward trajectory. "There is a plan in place"..."preaching patience"...I mean, come on that's just a very minor repackaging of the same exact pitch we were fed on Rhule's whole "7-year process" lol. It's ironic because even your attempt at drawing distinctions between Tepper and Sheila, only further blurs the line between them IMO. You can bring Reich's tenure into question, but it's not an apples-to-apples comparison since he came after the whole Rhule fiasco so Tepper appears to clearly be adjusting his approach and willing to cut ties early on rather than letting things play out in the spirit of "patience". If Campbell didn't turn things around in Season 2 and the Lions looked dysfunctional throughout, I'd have a hard time believing Campbell would have been given a third season or at the very least, he would've been on a very tight leash in Season 3 (similar to Rhule). Their approach seems almost identical...but again, the difference (and the only thing that ultimately matters) is that Sheila got the hire(s) right the first time. Even her approach of hiring her close family business advisor Rod Wood as Team President very much echoes complaints people have explicitly levied against Tepper (unqualified nepotism hires...running the team like one of his businesses...etc.).

Owners have the luxury of stepping aside and letting the people they hired do their job, if they hire the right people. It's that simple...that's all that matters, and you're lucky if you get it right the first time. The worse your team is performing, the more likely an owner is going to intervene/"meddle". Which is obviously what anyone should want as a fan, unless you're saying you wish we were heading into Year 5 of Rhule's 7-year plan because Tepper is a good little owner who is entirely hands-off. I seriously doubt Tepper would be asking Reich to introduce certain plays for Bryce half-way into the season if we were 8-0 and Bryce was on pace to shatter every rookie record.

Imagine thirsting over a coach who is looking for the easiest/cushiest job. You all talk about wanting players who “have that dog in them”, well give me a coach with that dog in him who looks at our team and thinks “I’m the man who is gonna come in and fix that mess”.

It's funny to me that the projection of Burns' contract is exactly $100,000 more than Josh Allen. I'm not sure if that was deliberate...like Allen signs and Burns wants "more" than that or something in this hypothetical scenario lol. Allen has had a monster year but it's hard to tell if it's that extra "contract year" edge or if he has truly elevated his game. He's got a pretty crazy PFF rating (89.5) too, for what it's worth.

Nah he didn't leave that out. The OP kinda glosses over this point, but that's pretty much all it boils down to. Hiring the wrong people at the top can be catastrophic cause that trickles down to everything. Poor talent, poor player development, bad gameplanning, poor coaching, no culture, bad playcalling, apathy from players, bad salary cap management, and a million other things that all culminate into what you just posted. It all stems from bad hires.

Maybe he can even buy the team himself, with the settlement money he gets from Tepper.

It was really just Chark who stepped up. Thielen has been solid all season. I would love to see some big renaissance from our receiving corps but we’ll have to wait and see. We’ve seen Chark drop some easy balls this year so I think he’s prone to streakiness and this was good Chark…really good, even.

It ain’t that serious lol just be a good sport and take your lumps like a big boy. Especially after Howell put up maybe the biggest dud of the entire season only for his backup to come in and put up 21 unanswered points and almost win them the game. So much for all that “worst o-line in NFL history” “worst defense since 2016” etc. *cope* (to borrow your word).

Stroud also had by far his worst game in his last game before injury, putting up 6 points and less than 100 yards. Which just so happened to be his one game without Nico Collins and Tank Dell. So yes, weapons do matter…it’s not the QB’s job to single-handedly carry a weak receiving corps.

Woah okay Mr. Fancy Pants exclusive Discord Group. Nice humble brag...

Lol I’ll be honest, I had already spent a few minutes trying to find a Brady one earlier but I couldn’t. I think maybe he’s too unathletic to even clear the ground. But moreso, there’s not really a great search term to use for this: I was doing “*QB name* pass” but like 80%+ of the images are gonna be focused on the upper body and don’t even show the feet.

Lol hey I love Stroud and think he has an awesome future. OP is the one who is insinuating that Stroud is trash and needs to fix his awful mechanics because there is tape of him throwing with both feet off the ground.

Falcons are a top 10 defense in both yards and points, FYI.

Man...if only there were someone so unathletic and living on the internet...who could teach these awful bums how to be an NFL QB. Do we have anyone like that here? Maybe they could host a QB camp and invite all of these losers.

You can just google his hand size: it's 9 3/4". Slightly above average for an NFL QB; same size as Jalen Hurts who doesn't look cartoonish holding a football, so my guess is yeah it's doctored.

I don't know if this is necessarily borne out empirically, but I think intuitively there is a belief that a great OC with creative playcalling (especially a fresh young up-and-comer) is way more likely to get poached for a head coaching gig. The Mike McDaniel/Kyle Shanahan/Sean McVay archetype is the shiny new ideal that I think teams strive for, which is why Ben Johnson has been a hot name over the last year or so. Then again, you still have DCs like Demeco Ryans, Robert Saleh, Jonathan Gannon, etc. getting poached so it would be interesting to actually track the hirings. It just feels intuitive that a young offensive-minded HC doubling as an innovative play-caller is the ideal commodity in the modern NFL. It feels like an innovative talented defensive playcaller doesn't quite have the same potential moving the needle for a team's overall success that an equally talented offensive counterpart does. Evero seems to be an example of that, but we'll also see how hot of a head coaching candidate he is next year.

Really? I may be wrong but that's definitely not my recollection of the consensus for the 2021 draft lol. I remember most people being opposed to drafting a LB in the Top 10 because they saw Micah Parsons as an off-the-ball linebacker, not the elite pass-rusher he is today. I don't know that there was a "consensus" Huddle crush for the 2021 draft, but if anything, the plurality seemed to be gunning for Justin Fields which would have also been a bad pick in hindsight. There were definitely some who wanted Parsons, but it was a small minority from what I remember.

It seems like that’d still be easy to exploit. Imagine someone like Kelce getting passed off to like a 5’10 corner in the red zone. Teams would probably just adjust and force mismatches.

Are you suggesting that other teams’ fans know Nicole Tepper by name?

What about Micah Parsons?

Okay cool so it was a Freudian slip...you very clearly don't like the team (i.e. the Panthers' organization/staff)...do you deny that? So that doesn't change anything I said. Again you're being pedantic. You're totally not riled up, yet I'm "freaking out". I hate to break it to you but we're both exuding the same energy here...if I'm freaking out then you're freaking out. You sorta lose your right to play the chill zen carefree card when you've spent 20 pages arguing with 9 different people back and forth. If they're just basically doing "coachspeak" (which you acknowledge is a thing that all coaches around the league do) then what I don't understand is why you always time and time again make such a big deal and get pissy about it when it happens. I think most of the rest of us can recognize it and ignore it because it's a rather meaningless leaguewide norm, yet it for some reason drives you crazy to the point that you're jumping into rants about PR bs and how everyone is lying etc. like that one crazy grandpa at Thanksgiving dinner. I don't think I've ever witnessed a constructive discussion between you and anyone else because you simply never attempt to engage with anything anyone actually says, rather than all this performative drivel about "Sorry you can't handle what I'm saying" and "you're such a ________ fanboy" and "I'm just telling it like it is" and all these other meaningless platitudes. You just come across as some kind of rhetorical debatelord, but not an effective one. I've never seen someone post so many paragraphs, while saying so little. You have the same energy as the people in here who get so mad any time the bot does bot things and posts a fluff piece from the Panthers website. While the rest of us can recognize that the Panthers PR/website is just doing its job churning out content about the team, and subsequently ignore it without getting triggered every time. So to the rest of us who hear some throwaway line during the offseason like "The Panthers are a QB away from competing" or "we have the best WRs in the NFL" or w/e and pay it zero mind, here you are months and months later still bringing it up like it wronged you to your very core. You think the rest of us eat up whatever the team's PR spoonfeeds us...but in reality, the difference between us is we are capable of ignoring all the clear PR nonsense while you let it eat away at you for some reason.