Khyber53

Not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but if you haven't read Ready Player One by Earnest Cline, you should. It's the most fun book I have read in decades. Fantastic. His next book, Armada, is coming out in two weeks. It should be a smash hit. Trust me on Ready Player One, this is a book you'll read and re-read.

Sure looks good on paper, and the group has a much better feel to it. Plenty of reason to be optimistic. Won't know for sure until they take the field in week 1, but I think we might be onto something good here.

(Man, there are some weird quote formatting issues.)

Ehh, he got Delhomme prior to training camp the second year he was here. Give him two years and I think the Bears will be contenders. Getting Manning in Denver was a miracle, he'll not find that in Chicago this year. Fox's smash-mouth style doesn't put a premium on the QB position. He needs a good one, but not a great one. It will require a great defense, though, and he can build those. He also has a bit of luck and that seems to work for him.

​Fox being Foxy usually brings a team to the Super Bowl within his first two years. There's a great reason he isn't out of a job for long.

Just can't wait to see it happen on the field. Great post for football and the life adventure stuff!

He'll go to Denver.

​That nuanced push off in the endzone was Proehl's bread and butter play. No one did it better and if I recall, that was his Super Bowl TD pass with us. If a receiver can learn to do it as well as he did, that receiver will have just as long of a career.

Jon's a goner. It's the jaw dropper move if you haven't read the books. And they made a big deal of walking the giant in, the giant that will be the distraction that gets Jon killed. It won't happen before they get Tarley headed south for Maester training, though.

​It's complicated...

One time, I was moving furniture and one of the other guys was a big time body builder. The guy had muscles on top of muscles, a real Mr. Universe kind of guy. The problem was, he couldn't work worth a damn. He could lift weights, but a couch or a dresser and you could see him struggling. There's just a big difference between lifting weights in a controlled environment and having to use your muscle to push, pull and throw things around that are actively and intelligently resisting you. That's what I've always seen in Brandon Williams. You look at him and think he'd make Brian Urlacher crap his pants during a tackle attempt. It just never played out that way on the field.

I hope Bersin breaks through this year and becomes the slot receiver we need. We need him to become a Ricky Proehl type of player. Proehl had this innate knack for finding just the right spot in the center of a defense between the linebackers and safeties. A place where you had an open moment to catch the ball before you got plastered, sort of like the eye of a hurricane. Luckily Bersin has just that guy to teach him now. And while everyone is writing off Cotchery (myself kind of included), Brown isn't exactly a lock for an active roster spot. And Ginn is getting long in the tooth with nine years in the league. Should someone else start lighting it up as a punt returner in training camp, you might see Ginn looking elsewhere for employment. It's still early and these guys haven't been working in pads or 98 degrees with no shade. Someone we're not even expecting might emerge before this is all over with.

I love reading stories like this. Undrafted guys working hard and making it in the big leagues. All hail the underdogs!

Actually, a case can be made that Newton came into a situation that wasn't better than what Jake walked into. Newton had Smitty, Lafell, Olsen, Jeremy Shockey, DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart, and his offensive line included Jordan Gross, Travelle Wharton and Ryan Kalil. That's a pretty good group. Delhomme had Smitty (who emerged that year), Moose, Proehl, Mangum, Stephen Davis and DeShaun Foster (good, but not Double Trouble in their prime), and an offensive line that included Jordan Gross, Todd Steussie, and Jeff Mitchell. Remember also that Smith didn't emerge as a receiving threat until later in the season, netting 7 TDs in the regular season, along with Moose's 3 TDs. I mean you can compare all you want, but the question remains, can Cam win the big one? That's a multi- multi-multi- million dollar question this year. Can you answer that question without going all man crush on Cam?

Umm, I was just comparing their first four years with the team, not 7 years versus 4. Did you not check your math? If you'll look, you'll see in those stats compared, Cam had even played a couple more games than Jake in the four year span. Cam is a great athlete and a heck of a football player, we're lucky to have him. He has not, however, lived up to his billing. I sure hope he does and I will keep cheering him on each Sunday that he is with us. But man, you've got to step back and say, "Okay Superman, show us that it's about something more than this."

And yet, Cam still hasn't reached Jake's level of wins. We're all propping Cam up and stroking his ego. The truth is he hasn't brought us a ring, or even real competitiveness yet. If he doesn't do something great this year, we're going to be sitting there like Falcons fans with Mike Vick, or Chargers fans with Phillip Rivers, or Minnesota Vikings fans with Daunte Culpepper... Look at our franchise quarterback, he's great on paper but meh in the wins column. He's got the skills, he's got the tools and he's been given no end of praise. Let's see him pick a team up and win something big.

There's only one factor that really matters outside of Madden when it comes to franchise quarterbacks -- games won. Right now, in a comparison of first four years with the team, Cam has a record of 30-31-1, which isn't exactly lighting up the field. Heck, it doesn't even compare favorably to Jake Delhomme's record of 35-25 for the same time span. That's Jake Delhomme beating him out as our quarterback over a four year span. Playoff record for each during the same span: Cam 1-2, Jake 5-2. You can throw out all of the excuses for Cam that you want, but when you look back at a quarterback's career, the questions are a) Did they win games? Did they win the big games? So when I look at Cam's record and it can't even match up to Jake's, yeah I would choose Watt over Cam with a roll of the dice as to who our QB would have been. I still hold out hope that Cam will be more of a winner than a celebrity this year. Franchise QBs play in the Pro Bowl, great quarterbacks are busy preparing for the Super Bowl.

Tough call, but the following year we could end up with Luck... yeah, if we could do that.

Stewie doesn't do preseason and he tends to get hurt each year. Can't remember a year when he didn't have to sit out one or two games at least. He's neither soft nor lazy, but he can be a bit fragile. He's had the benefit of splitting carries with Williams for years, and when he plays he is a monster, but he has some weak spots. Now, he is the lead back and Williams isn't on hand to either spell him or soften up the defense. It's all on his shoulders. I think he can do it, but heaven help us if he gets dinged up early.

I started out as a Falcons fan back in like 1977 and carried through with them until the Panthers franchise was born. Heck, I even remember pulling for the very short-lived Charlotte Hornets WFL team in first grade. Growing up as a Falcons fan through the 70s, 80s and 90s was a long string of disappointment, and honestly it got my butt kicked on the school bus a time or two by Dallas and Pittsburgh fans. I still hate those teams to this day. When the Panthers came along, I dumped the Falcons fast... I deserved a change and had earned it. Haven't regretted it since.

Simms stayed in for a few more plays after the big hit, if I recall. He wasn't short on toughness. It's kind of petty to call him a wimp because he spleen was ruptured and he was never able to get his career back on track. The kid was stuck behind a terrible O-line that day and the Panthers turned him into a tackling dummy that day. He's lucky to be alive, really. Rough moment aside, though, as broadcasters/talking heads, the Simms deserve a lot of criticism. It's like they thought they should have been where the Manning family is today in football and the bitterness just seeps through.

Those two games almost swirl together to make one game in my memory. Such a year! That first game was something else. It started off so badly with Peete that I was just like, "Well, here we go again" with another lost season. Then Fox pulled Peete and sent Jake in. I was like, "Del-what? Who's this guy? Some back-up from the Saints? Goodbye 2003, maybe next year..." Then this pretty non-descript Cajun dude with a bad haircut proceeded to show everyone that he might not have the pedigree, but that he sure had a helluva lot of fight in him. That game set the tone for the entire team and built a fanbase that started to believe it ain't over till that last second ticks away. And on the next week's game, I believe it might have been Jenkins that blocked the extra point, though Peppers had some pivotal blocks during the year. Coach Fox also cemented his reputation for taking teams off of the trash heap and getting them competitive again.

2003 Tampa Bay game, we'd won the week before, but this was the game where the Cardiac Cats were born and Jake Delhomme showed he could pick a team up and bring them back from the brink of defeat. Last minute blocked extra point, a team digging in and beating a division rival. You could just feel something magical happening. That was just an incredible year: 11-5 regular season record, 5 overtime games (one double overtime in the playoffs), Super Bowl ... it was the Bad News Bears making it to the World Series. Magical year even if we walked away without the Lombardi trophy.