Mr. Scot

It's nice to remember that he's gone.

Might be worth considering who makes the personnel decisions in Washington.

You're calling 2022 a negative when analysts were calling it a breakout season? Also ignoring the part where people (including our own Mike Kaye) have continuously called Sanders underutilized in the passing game? Okay...

You've been concentrating on 2020 and 21, only now mentioning 2022 and largely dismissing 2019. Here's an article about last season... Miles Sanders might be the most-improved player on the Eagles roster in 2022 Excerpts: It feels like only yesterday that Miles Sanders was hearing his name in trade talks on a near-weekly basis. The Penn State product is enjoying a breakout season almost as much as fans are enjoying watching it. Miles Sanders is silencing his critics I’ve always been very critical of Miles Sanders. His ability was always visible, even if it was in flashes. But that was part of the problem. For every 80-yard run he’d break off, there would be countless plays where he’d just sprint into a blocker, dance with indecision and miss a hole completely, or end up trying to bounce a run outside and end up being tackled for a loss. Not to mention his pass-blocking woes. ... 2022 sees a very different Miles Sanders hitting the hole. A man who is unafraid of contact and will happily run through defenders instead of trying to shimmy around them. As a result, we’re seeing someone who’s not only on pace for a career year, but who is being trusted far more with the rock in his hands as a result. Miles Sanders now has 656 yards and a career-high 6 touchdowns on the season. There are still 9 games left on the 2022 calendar. ... Sanders continues to be one of the most valuable offensive assets on this team. His ability to burst through the hole and move the chains is so important to an offense that can hurt a defense in so many ways. It’s all well and good locking in on Jalen Hurts to stop QB rush on an RPO, but it leaves an opportunity for Sanders to slash through. And because he’s doing it so violently, it means he’s also now a viable option at the goal line, something that was never really feasible before due to his poor decision making. ______________________________ If you want more analysis, here's some via Pro Football Network from a guy whose name you might recognize... Miles Sanders 2022 success should be measured beyond his numbers Excerpts: Miles Sanders is a big play waiting to happen. While his usage in Philadelphia has been inconsistent — at best — during his three-year career, the Eagles’ top running back has another opportunity to prove that he can be a dynamic do-it-all back this upcoming season. That said, Sanders’ success can’t be measured or compared to most of his peers because of how the Eagles use their running backs. Sanders, 25, is set to lead a rotation that’ll be complemented by intriguing dual-threat playmaker Kenny Gainwell and reliable ground-and-pound pinball Boston Scott. Sanders wants to be fed. Unfortunately for him, with the way the Eagles use their backfield, he is going to be forced to capitalize on the limited touches he’s grown accustomed to. ... Seeing as Kaye has covered Sanders before, I'll be interested to see what he says now.

Two of your links quote the same article from December 2020, an article that starts with this paragraph... Miles Sanders is one of the best young running backs in the NFL and yet the Eagles have underutilized the former Penn State star tremendously. ...and includes only Sanders analysis on himself. Your third link is all based on a tweet from the 2021 training camp, but talks mostly about 2020. The fourth is pure speculation from a reporter in early 2021 something that didn't end up happening. I'd say you're cherry picking to fit your narrative. Of course, you've also previously confessed that you like stirring sh-t up, so this possibly falls into that category as well.

I did, because that's exactly the response I was expecting. Didn't find a thing...

The same Duce Staley that helped recommend we sign him this year? Care to link any of the articles you're talking about?

Damn. What a family

Even if we're only looking at him as a backup (compared to our current depth)?

True It's probably fair to acknowledge though that the Panthers haven't given the NFL (or their own fans) much reason to have high expectations over the last few years. Here's to hoping that changes.

First thing that crossed my mind too

It benefits the NFL if teams in big markets look good...even if they're not If we're being honest, the same can be said of high profile players.

Confirming...

Well, here's a surprise...

Don't think that's telling the whole story. Here's an analysis from a Philly reporter talking to Sanders himself around his second year. Why Miles Sanders' receiving yards are down You also have to account for other things, like the fact that he was catching passes from either a declining Carson Wentz or a still developing Jalen Hurts. Then last year the Eagles went run heavy in their offense. Context matters...

Brown nosing?

Another point of contrast...

And s little background on the pre-draft conversation: Reich addressed the personnel staff after the team traded for the first pick and outlined his five criteria for a quarterback, cultivated after being around, and coaching, guys like Peyton Manning, Philip Rivers and Andrew Luck, and also going through five seasons in Indy with five different starting quarterbacks. Those five criteria: toughness, footwork and finish, accuracy, playmaking ability and the x-factor (“the quarterback is a multiplier”). And Young brought those things to Charlotte, at least in a spring setting, as Carolina figured he would. But there were also a few things Reich and his staff didn’t know, at least for sure, and one was how Young’s stature would figure into his ability to see the field. There wasn’t any lack of vision on tape. It was just that, until Reich could stand behind Young on the practice field, and know what he was seeing, and see how he saw it, it was hard to be totally certain. He is now. “I’m only one person, but we wouldn’t have drafted him if we had major concerns about that,” Reich says. “And we didn’t. But it’s one thing to say, Oh no, we’re good, you can see it on film. He sees the field real easy. People can say what they want about 5'10"-and-change, but the guy’s done it his whole life. We’ve seen that on film so we’re going to believe the tape. So I believed the tape. But now I’ve seen it in person. “I’ve been around football enough to know that I do think that there are some shorter guys that do have a problem seeing. But maybe it’s not that they’re shorter, maybe it’s because they just can’t see. I don’t know. All I know is standing behind Bryce, I never felt like he didn’t see that one because the offensive lineman was in his way. That just never happened.” The other thing that didn’t happen—Reich never had to prod Young to be a leader. “I don’t have to encourage him,” the coach says, “because he’s a natural leader. He’s been a leader his whole life.” This, then, is just a new stage for the 21-year-old to show that on.

Contrast this with last year... A lot of times when coaches decide not to give first-round quarterbacks first-team reps from the jump, it’s in an effort to make them earn their way up the depth chart. But that really wasn’t it with Bryce Young, back in May, when Reich and his staff started OTAs with Andy Dalton in the huddle with the starters. At that point, it was a nod to the work the rest of the team had done leading up to the arrival of the rookie class—not wanting to have to stop that progress to accommodate the development of a single player. At the same time, that decision would be baked into a plan that Reich, Brown, Caldwell, Frazier and QBs coach Josh McCown had hatched for Young, using the early parts of OTAs to get him up to speed, before getting him in there with the first team organically, when he was caught up, a plan that would also allow for Young to get to see Dalton, a 13-year veteran, operate the offense. As part of that plan, a goal was set to elevate Young for the last two weeks of the spring. “He’s going into training camp as the No. 1 quarterback; we made that transition with about two weeks to go into OTAs,” Reich says. “We didn’t make any big deal of it; we didn’t hold any big press conference. We just did it. That was always the plan. … We’d started talking about, O.K., Andy’s going to take first-team reps. Let’s just assume that everything goes the way we think it’s going to go—when’s the best time to make that transition? And that’s kind of what we had determined. And then things went the way we thought they would go. “We were willing to adapt and adjust, if needed, but we didn’t need to.” That’s because Young, for the most part, has come as advertised, and a lot of that has been a result of things Reich and his staff knew about the 2021 Heisman winner.

On a related note...

Quoting the article...

I like to pretend it was just a really long nightmare...

...and Reich has a lot to say. Breer's interview with Panthers head coach Frank Reich is the lead in this week's MMQB, and it's pretty extensive, covering a range of topics. One of the key things I got from it is near the end. Specifically, that Reich wants to make this job his swan song, and finishing out his coaching career with the Panthers means he's going to give it every single thing he's got.

That's the same thing they did the year John Fox took over; reviewed the prior year only very briefly and spent most of their time talking about the new staff and the season to come instead. Nobody really wanted to relive that season anyway.