Khyber53

With the exception of our first series, it was a game of our reserves vs their reserves, with a lot of camp bodies thrown in. Their guys were better than our guys. Their guys committed almost no penalties. Our guys were still struggling with it. Outside of that first pick, the most impactful player on our defense was Luvu, a guy who basically just got here this week. From this, and the general timidity of our play calling (soft, soft, soft zone defense) our coaching looks like they are expecting their three opening opponents this season will be Campbell, UNC-Asheville and Dartmouth. Sure hope what they are showing right now isn't how they are prepping for the regular season. The sky isn't falling, but only a fool watches clouds gather and doesn't think there's a chance of rain.

Yes, we weren't playing many of our starters, even during the first series. Yes, a bunch of those guys won't see the field in the coming year. So, we have to keep that in mind, but here are a couple of takes: 1. Slye isn't going to cut it, sorry, but there's going to be a kid from ECU available at the end of preseason that looked pretty good. 2. We have an excellent punter. 3. I'm not as worried about our linebackers group as I was before. 4. Teddy Bridgewater may have been right about one thing: Brady apparently isn't big on practicing for red zone and goal line plays. Three runs at the middle of the line in a row from the 3? 5. We have the makings of an offensive line, if they can get the mixture right. 6. Dan Arnold, maybe. Tommy Tremble, definitely. Giovanni Ricci is an upgrade over Ian Thomas. 7. We're still playing a zone defense that's softer than a pack of Hostess Twinkies. 8. CMC and DJ Moore will greatly improve the offense. 9. Sam Darnold? We know barely anything more about him than we did before. We did learn that he can stand in the pocket and not immediately start a Claussian-type screaming run for the sidelines at the snap of the ball. So there's that I guess. Wow, that was a pathetic showing. Will Grier was one of our best performers out there. Let that sink in. Doesn't mean the sky is falling, but I sure expected to see things a bit better than that.

Six receivers with Cannon taking the last spot for returner duties. It's a great group but that seventh guy's spot is needed for o-line depth.

Right now, I don't think I can even guess at how we will turn out for this season. We have some historically weak opponents. I'm not sold on our coaching staff yet. We're taking a roll of the dice when it comes to QB. We have a lot of really great young talent. The o-line projects to be okay to really bad. Defense fields some excellent players, play calling and philosophy were soft and suspect last season. Same guy calling the defense from the sidelines like he was a high school coaching volunteer with a borrowed clip board. We could be 3-14 or 14-3 before this all shakes out.

Dang. Well, at least you gave it a shot.

Slime tends to stick to everything it touches. Let him go to someone else's locker room or stay in Houston.

It's pretty darned good. Give it a Wednesday night once or twice.

True, it's worth a roll of the dice. Sometimes a guy like James Gunn comes around and just starts making hits. He did a great job with Guardians and The Suicide Squad, but he also went into battle with a bunch of nearly forgotten characters, which may have helped him immensely. He won the fanboys, he wasn't made to work with the big guns like Superman or Iron Man, the Hulk or Batman. He got to work his vision and create cinema versions of characters most people had never heard of. I'd been reading the Guardians of the Galaxy since back in the day when it was Vance Astro, Charlie-27, Yondu, Martinex and Nikki, but I loved that he ran with the second version of the team then tipped his hat to the originals with the Ravagers. Most folks just got to enjoy a rollicking good time in a sci-fi AND superhero blockbuster series. And it just worked. And for The Suicide Squad he was somehow able to keep the studios from inserting Jared Leto's terrible version of the Joker into the story (that scenery chewing performance by Leto almost ruined Ayer's Suicide Squad movie for no real effect). Really, Harley Quinn was the only character most folks knew and that was in his favor. He did cast some relatively big names, though, and played them beautifully in the first invasion group for wonderful shock effect. Still, Gunn has the advantage of being a good filmmaker who just really needed a vehicle that fit his style. He got it from both franchises. Lest we think it's easy to do, remember that acclaimed directors Ang Lee and Edward Norton both managed to screw up The Hulk because, well, they just didn't fit the material.

I think you've hit the nail on the head here with that observation. That rookie wall is going to be real and probably higher than ever before. But what's a coach to do? It's not like every team isn't facing the same situation. And for vets, I wonder how teams that went deep into the playoffs last season will fair as this longer season wears on. Will we see more injuries or weariness from the Bucs and Chiefs?

There's no way this puts a jinx on players, right?

Character counts.

Pro Wrestling is America's Kabuki theater and I've loved it since my childhood. I remember Roddy Piper's first appearance on NWA wrestling, I remember Gene Anderson getting horribly injured and retiring from the Minnesota Wrecking Crew. It's so great to see the kids and grandkids of those guys wrestling today and putting on even better shows. Sadly, WWE has had bad work from their creative teams for the last two years that the shows are barely watchable. AEW, however, seems to be really getting it right. AEWs wrestlers just really try harder to put on a good show and their creatives aren't booking the same matches over and over again. The women wrestlers, however, are much much much better on WWE than AEW -- they're much more skillful, quicker in and out of their breaks and actually have some decent storylines.

Sadly, he is. Not saying ours is great, or even good, maybe mediocre, but the Jets were a mess and that o-line was even more problematic than ours.

6-9, 88 yards, 1 TD. 8 yards rushing.

$30 million should certainly be able to soften the blow.

Poor guy, hope he can recover from this fully.

Really, draft Jim Breuer? Halftimes would be better I guess.

I think they're just playing him up a bit, maybe trade him for another very late round pick before he's cut. Honestly, he just hasn't moved up enough to be more than a TE3, even on this team. Could pick up a camp cut quicker and cheaper.

If they go with the Washington Football Team, then the rest of us should just call them The 'Balls. Their stadium would then have to be known as The Scrotum.

Good luck to Manhertz. Good that he was a Panther, good that he's getting more opportunities to continue his career. We needed change, hope it works well for him, too.

Maybe a little bit of column A, a bit of column B. If Dan is our GM next year, then there'll have been a collapse of epic proportions. A clean the entire house effort like Chip Kelly being shown the door in Philly thing. Let's hope instead we get the season we're all needing. 13-4 with a run at the championship.

There's a metric f-ton of truth to this. An injury to Darnold in pre-season (happened with Cam, remember) would leave the Darnold question unanswered for who knows how long. And even if he did come back mid-season there'd be a built in excuse if he didn't live up to expectations. Right now, there's no reason really to not trot Walker and Grier out behind our evolving/revolving O-line until things are solidified (for better or worse). Let Sam get the practices in, but let someone else wear the target as we build that line. I'm worried very little that Darnold will flop because he got no snaps in the pre-season. I am worried that an injury could leave the future of this team hanging for yet another year. Give the guy a chance to fly or flop on opening day, not in a sloppy, pointless preseason game.

There won't be another Luke Kuechly for a generation. Butkus, Singletary, Kuechly. Legends all.

I agree with everything else in your post except this. All coaches play favorites to some degree. Rhule has flexed his Temple and Baylor preferences already and rightly so (dance with the ones that brung ya so to say). And he doesn't have enough time in coaching for us to really see any tendencies, except that even after lackluster results last season he stuck by his OC, DC and SC. And there were troubling games where he kept sending in Teddy Bridgewater even after it was obvious Teddy wasn't getting it done. This year will tell us a lot, hopefully it will be good news. Right?