Mr. Scot

If we get anything out of our lower round picks, I'll be pretty happy.

That's not a circumstance. John Fox didn't believe in franchise quarterbacks.

Coach of the Year is a pretty useless honor. If you want to talk about Rivera the person, you'll find loads of people ready to say something nice about him. Rivera the coach? Not so much.

We didn't have better behind Teddy. We saw that pretty clearly when PJ Walker played against someone other than the worst defense in the league. And if we're being real, Jermaine Carter wasn't anything special either.

When you picked in the top three, it's a pretty safe bet that you actually did.

He also doesn't have any sort of "no trade" clause so he can't control where he gets traded.

This is the kind of hard hitting, in-depth news that's available at this point in the offseason.

More: Apparently Newton is working on his throwing motion... Quietly and with little fanfare, Cam Newton had been working with a throwing coach to rebuild some of his fundamentals this offseason. Some who shared a field with him this past week at voluntary Patriots workouts -- the first time players were on the field as the program shifted to its second phase -- noticed a difference. What does it mean in the big picture? The essence of the Patriots' offseason program is teaching-based, with the goal to give every player what they need so they can be in the best position to compete come training camp, so any pure evaluation is premature. But some teammates view Newton as getting off to a nice start last week. Quick hit notes from Mike Reiss

Which could mean that both Jones and Lance ended up in the best situations for them.

He's really a slow learner. The list entitled "things Ron Rivera learned too late" is a long one.

That probably makes as much sense as anything.

I think it's fairly safe to say that Rhule isn't necessarily looking to have everybody go out on their own terms.

To a point... If you're in the top two or three, chances are pretty good you really did get your guy.

He predicted the same thing last year. (maybe he forgot to carry the two)

We lost Tahir Whitehead, Tre Boston and Teddy Bridgewater.

I don't know if Lance is gonna be good or not, but it can definitely be argued he wound up in the best possible situation for him.

He's also a taskmaster, though. We know from multiple stories he has high standards.

Same. Heck, maybe they did it for laughs

Combination of both, I'd say. The idea got out there and everybody ran with it. For their part, I'd guess Lynch, Shanahan and Peters probably found the whole thing amusing.

Other inside stories have previously said it was always Lance. It's just never been officially acknowledged till now. I will grant a lot of the work was done for them by people making incorrect assumptions.

Agree with all of this. Rhule isn't the Xs and Os genius, but head coaches don't have to be if they have coordinators who are.

Not that I know of, but I won't claim to have researched it.

Gotta give it to 'em, well played. Honestly not sure what the point was, though. Once they were at #3, they had their pick.

If Rhule doesn't win the Super Bowl this year he needs to be on the hot seat!!! Yeah...like that

Good points. We gave Henning a lot of hell back then but I think we see now that he was legitimately one of the best OCs we had. Fox was the problem.