Mr. Scot

Also... Sooo...about those final two playcalls

In other news, here's a clip of the shot that got Burns ejected

But hey, there's this...

...or the Jim Harbaugh crowd

"All this meddling talk is overblown."

I'm waiting for the phase where he figures out he's the problem. Not holding my breath...

Here's where I think the ultimate bottom line is for us... The word is out all over the league on David Tepper. No good coach is going to come here if they have to submit to weekly meetings with the owner. No good GM candidate is going to come here if they expect that the owner is going to meddle in their decisions.f So if we really wants to get a good candidate, David Tepper is going to have to make radical changes in the way he operates. Candidates could conceivably even ask him to agree in writing to stay out of things. It's just that bad

Tepper Is the problem.

I get that, but I don't know that any of us would feel different having to deal with Tepper. Hell, a good portion of us dislike him intensely without ever having met the man.

It's a Tepper team, Bryce or not

He's not wrong, though. (not even a little)

From the latest FMIA... Tepper Troubles It wasn’t particularly surprising that Carolina owner David Tepper fired coach Frank Reich last Monday. It’s Tepper’s M.O. In the last 48 months, Tepper has fired three full-time head coaches in mid-season. After 28 games of ownership, he dismissed Ron Rivera. He fired Matt Rhule 38 games into his seven-year contract. Now he fired Reich after just 11 games. Tepper also owns the MLS franchise Charlotte FC, and in its two years of existence, he has fired both head coaches. This means: None of Tepper’s five head coaches has lasted as long as 2.5 seasons. His five head coaches in two sports have lasted an average of 29 games under his ownership, which began in 2018. Tepper willingly sold the farm to draft quarterback Bryce Young in April, then fired the two coaches in place to nurture and develop him, Reich and QB coach Josh McCown, after 10 months on the job—even though Young liked and trusted both coaches in the midst of a disastrous season marked by one of the leakiest offensive lines in football. An owner whose tutelage in the game involved nine years as a minority owner of the Steelers has now forgotten everything he saw in Pittsburgh. Tepper has employed three head coaches and three interim coaches in the past four calendar years. The Steelers have employed three head coaches in the last 54 years. Tepper is Carolina’s biggest impediment to success. It’s easy, and justifiable, for an owner to be impatient and angry at being 1-10 after trading up to pick a quarterback with the top pick in the draft. But intelligent people who understand the market and world they’re living in should understand what it takes to succeed in it. Tepper doesn’t. His kneejerk reaction is: We stink, and the quarterback we passed on is setting the league on fire, and our quarterback looks like he’s a JV player. Heads must roll. The specter of C.J. Stroud’s overwhelming success in turning around Houston overnight after Young went one and Stroud two in the draft should have zero to do with Carolina’s decision-making. But let’s be real. An emotional owner like Tepper has to find the juxtaposition between his QB and Houston’s unacceptable. So Reich walks the plank. The Panthers won five of their last eight games last year, which led some in Carolina to think the franchise, with some good defensive pieces, was just a quarterback away from contention. Let’s look how they won those five games. Carolina rushed for an average of 226 yards per game in those five wins, an astounding 5.1 yards per rush—after trading Christian McCaffrey. More astounding: Carolina had a fifties-era run-pass ratio of 69-31, crazy at a time when the average rushing rate is about 41 percent per game. The Panthers didn’t trade a huge ransom to be a counter-culture running team. Changing to a passing team, particularly after trading the number one receiver as part of the package to draft Young, wasn’t going to happen overnight. Changing a football philosophy takes time. Chuck Noll was 1-13 his first year in Pittsburgh, Bill Walsh 2-14 in his first year in San Francisco, Jimmy Johnson 1-15 in his first year in Dallas. They went on to win 10 Super Bowls, total, with those teams. Not saying Reich would have won anything, but how can you know, 10 months into his tenure? (In Detroit, Dan Campbell in his first 11 games was 0-10-1; he’s 20-14 since.) Young hasn’t played well overall. But he’s also been under significant pressure consistently. Over his first 11 games, he’s the only regular starter this year to have faced pressure on at least a third of his pass-drops each game, per Next Gen Stats. Not healthy for a good passing game, particularly after trading your best receiver. One more Next Gen negative: Carolina left tackle Ikem Ekwonu has allowed the fourth-most pressures (62) among all offensive linemen—and center Bradley Bozeman is worst in the league at his position in sacks (eight) and pressures (40) allowed. There’s one other thing, as told to me by one NFL offensive coach with a long history in the league: “One thing these owners who fire people quickly don’t understand is what it takes to build a team, particularly a team with a rookie quarterback. The quarterback comes in his first year after the draft, and it’s a short offseason, and if he’s going to start right away, it’s an accelerated process. So you go through that first year, and you’re looking forward to correcting all his mistakes and continuing to build him up in a full off-season in year two. So you fire his head coach who I’m sure was pretty hands-on and his quarterback coach in the middle of his first year, and he works with other people for the rest of that year, and then everybody gets fired, and then there’s a third group that comes in to coach the young quarterback. I mean, maybe they’ll keep the coaches who stayed after Reich, but I doubt it. So the young quarterback getting coached by three different sets of people in his first 12 months as your franchise quarterback. How is that healthy?” It isn’t. It’s lunacy. What is bothersome about Tepper is he camped out in Matt Rhule’s driveway in Waco, Texas, waiting for him to come back from vacation with his family in January 2020, just so he could get the first shot at hiring him. He gave Rhule a rich seven-year contract, and fired him a month into the third season. He hired Reich, who taught Carson Wentz in his best year in Philly, who was hands-on with Nick Foles in the Super Bowl year, who had playoff years with Andrew Luck and Philip Rivers in Indy, and then he got dumb in his first 10 months in Carolina. How does Tepper entrust him on a clear rebuild with a patchwork offensive line and after trading the number one receiver—and then fire him when the team is awful three months in? I feel for the fans in Carolina. The Panthers will have to either franchise or overpay their best player, edge rusher Brian Burns, a free agent in March, to stay on this sinking ship. After dealing McCaffrey and D.J. Moore in the last 14 months, they’ve got massive offensive holes and their only proven, reliable receiver, Adam Thielen, will be 34 next opening day. The way to not fix things is with impatience, which is Tepper’s best trait. The Panthers are miles from hopelessness, and the captain of the ship leads the league in panic. He’s Steinbrenner without the winning. Now the question is: Is there anyone in his life, or in the Panthers’ organization, who can keep David Tepper from driving this franchise off a cliff?

I don't really think we have much chance of getting Ben Johnson. I'd be good with getting Frank Smith, though.

I don't have that much of a problem with it once we get this far into the season. Guys like this might not have a full year in them but sometimes they've still got enough left to play five or six games.

I don't believe either of the Teppers are actually making deals or closing transactions directly or anything of that sort. With Dave though, I think he expresses preferences over players he wants, players he doesn't care for, how he wants things done, etc. That's really all the meddling he or any owner has to do to royally screw things up.

Tepper was reported to be pretty pissed at Matt Rhule over the way the Bridgewater thing turned out. He also "expressed himself" publicly in a way that made it pretty difficult to bring Bridgewater back. Thing is, what we've learned since is that Bridgewater was essentially right about Rhule.

This is the option I like best...

From what I've read, Rhule was pretty much dead set against taking a rookie. He looked at them the same as a college freshman. The way he handled Corral pretty well validated that.

Patience is governed by wisdom. If you don't have the wisdom to know when to be patient (and when not to) then you're going to get it wrong. The wisdom is what Tepper truly lacks. The rest is just a consequence of that.

Candidates who don't want to derail their career by going to a terrible situation most definitely "give a poo"

Video isn't especially dramatic, but...

But hey, there's this...

Not getting him killed is kind of a big deal. Would also be good to not reinforce any of the bad habits that are building from his being under constant pressure.