outlaw4

Nice guy. Not as nice coach. Also, I don’t believe Canales has any real connection with him and if we are moving on from Evero, a guy like Saleh makes far more sense.

We made a lot of terrible moves in 2023, but Thielen may have just saved us from having an absolute catastrophe in our hands right now.

Penix will look like a guy handing the ball off to Barry Sanders.

Maybe it's just me but kickers nowadays seem to be more interchangeable. I did read an article recently that said there's been almost 50 kickers that have made a kick this season so far because so many have been injured. Wonder if we're sticking with Eddy because of the difficulties trying to find another live leg out there.

Full disclosure but I was never big on Mayfield myself. He looked like a broken QB with nothing to play for. Could we had tried fixing him back then? Given what was going on with the dysfunction behind the scenes? Unlikely. Darnold did have moments but I never got the sense the organization (ie Tepper) was truly behind him. Still have that feeling Mayfield was basically handed the starting job over Darnold.

When I think about going all in with offense, I think about this year's Bengals. Burrow putting up MVP numbers with MVP caliber receivers. And yet, they are a long shot from making the playoffs partly because their defense is nearly as bad as ours. Offensive help will have to be incremental. Defense help is mandatory.

There's a part of me that wished we traded Bryce just to see this place's reaction to him playing like he is now with someone else.

Based on what I've seen from his as a playcaller, I'm leaning towards wanting a dedicated OC. I'm only a fan of pulling double duty if you're Andy Reid levels of good and Canales isn't in that neighborhood.

I just find it utterly hilarious just how badly this place trashed Darnold and Mayfield while they were here and now we keep finding excuses to blame their success somewhere else on everything else except us.

Sounds more knowledgeable than the average football fan. Take that as a compliment.

I'm at the point in which it's really hard to discern whether it's the scheme or our players that's causing the bigger issue. Either way, it's probably best for both parties to go our separate ways and go full reset on our defense.

If there's one valid criticism of Canales, it's him deciding to get overly pass happy which is exactly what he did after that opening drive. I get it. We don't have Chuba or Moton but the Bucs were playing as though we would pass every down and we played right into their hands, not only putting more pressure on a compromised O-line but also forcing our defense to play a lot more minutes that they simply could not afford to do on any day but especially today without Horn. I would hope he learns not to do this next season but every coach in the NFL has a bad tendency and this may be the one we're stuck with going forward.

Really? I mean, I fully expected this defense to be completely eviscerated today without Horn and not having a run game on the other side to minimize their time on the field.

But we already did to start the game. That's pretty much all we have.

Why is BY and Thielen still out there? They are literally the only offense we have today. Zero point getting them hurt.

11 plays but yep.

And everyone is still mad anyways. I just want to leave this game healthy.

Murray has a game winning drive going and then doinks his pass off his receiver's helmet for a game losing INT. Ouch.

The potential bidding war for him and his injury history scares me off of him. We've already dealt with a player like that in CMC and we eventually gave him away. That and I see us needing the spending money to fix the defense. We already did that last offseason with the O-line. How I see things, adding an explosive piece would be ideal but even just finding a guy that's reliable and not overly expensive also works. I mean, Thielen has been one of the few things we did for Bryce initially that has actually worked well. Can we find another guy like him?

Higgins has just earned himself a massive payday with someone else. Probably out of our price range.

Maybe we should trade him for their kicker. Changing teams tends to fix kickers nowadays.

If Bengals lose, I dare say Zac Brown should be fired.

Moton being out a second time this season is the canary telling us we really need to start finding his successor. Maybe one of the other guys will be competent in his place tomorrow, but as the famous saying goes, I don't think the answer is currently on our roster.

May be a blessing in disguise. Let Chuba's last play of the season be a walk-off win. Bryce also showed up on the injury list this week. Probably a precaution, especially when we're also down Moton. Not overly confident about the O-line holding up, especially if our other backs do nothing and our defense gets eviscerated early.

So our O-line may be shaky, Chuba/XL may be gimpy, and Evans may set a new NFL record for most receiving yards in a game. Seems that just getting through the game without any more injuries will be a win.