Khyber53

Way back in my younger days as a reporter, I had to go and cover a D.A.R.E. graduation event at a local school. They had two NASCAR racing teams there for the kids to meet. Teams sponsored by two different beer companies, one of which had just won the Winston Cup (wow, really back in the day, and a cigarette brand if you didn't know). The kids were having a ball and were in awe of the drivers and crew members, they loved seeing the cars. I leaned over to the DARE officer from the Sheriff's Department and said, "You do realize that you told these kids to swear they'd never drink or smoke or use drugs and look who sponsors all this." The look of realization just washed across his face and he glanced side-eyed back at me and said, "Well, poo." Advertising and marketing are so fuging pervasive in everything we do that the public really doesn't stand a chance anymore. And gambling is doing a full on press for this generation and the next. Sports gambling has always existed and always will, but this industrialized one is more than parasitic, it's viral. I'm not sure if the patient will survive it, but if it does, there will be a mighty shock to the system before it lets go.

And pass production has gone for worse over the last three weeks with our opponents stacking the box versus the run. It's not supposed to work that way. Ever. But I agree with your assessments on reshuffling the pecking order of WRs. XL is just not cutting it. Renfrow might not have been lighting it up but he was at least getting attention. Coker is regressing. Tet cannot seem to get open, at least visibly. Tremayne needs to be getting playing time and Horn, well, maybe the practice squad for him for a bit. And someone call Hendon Hooker or Mike White and ask them nicely to come back for a roster spot. Or start scouring other teams' practice squads for a QB to poach.

Sadly, this.

I thought it was great when I saw it earlier in the week, too. But I think it showed that the team has matured quite enough to not be driven hard yet. And I know, it's a long way to the bye week still. And Atlanta won't be the same pushover we fought earlier. Maturity checks, reality checks...

Well poo. There goes that.

We took a victory Monday off, had Keegan-Michael Key in for a zoom speaker and generally had a great time living on the laughs and loves of beating Green Bay. And then the Saints came to town and had their first rookie QB win a game since 1981... 1981. fug.

Time to move White up to QB2, let Andy enjoy a weekend with the kids and get the quick hook ready for Bryce. We're so incredibly one dimensional at the moment that New Orleans could just stack the box knowing that Bryce couldn't and wouldn't out throw the coverage. The sad part is how much worse the score could have been today.

We played down to our opponents this week. I think we took more time reveling in the McKringleberry thing than game planning, and it showed. But yeah, after today, I can't even speak in hopes that Bryce will have a game where he shows out. I don't know if its a popgun arm or timidness or bad field vision or just bad play calling but you can't win many games with less than 125 yards passing. I'm sorry. We will be stuck with a difficult row to hoe for as long as he is our starter. All an opposing team needs to do is cover the intermediate and short passing lanes and that's it. That's why our receivers can't get open... they have so little space to work in. The team? We still have needs, but fewer than before. Canales? One week he makes me believe, one week I think it must have been a fluke.

Just sit back and enjoy the feeling when the arrogant bastards are proven wrong. Hope we get to do that many, many more times this season.

Time to do to them what we did to the Falcons. Take care of your division and the rest just writes itself.

Fried Shrimp Po' Boys are today's feasting on the foes item. Bugles on the side. What are y'all serving?

I just keep looking at the D-line a lot like I look at the rest of the team: We're an unfinished product. I think we shored up the center of the line first and spent wisely on the edges in the draft this season. Wonnum hasn't been very noteworthy but Scourton has been very good against the run, which we desperately needed. Princely, well, I just don't have a big enough sample size to say anything but that he and Scourton are playing like rookies. Next season... I can just see us continuing the strengthen across the board. Maybe there is a plan in place and it is beginning to work.

Good insights. Maybe he's not a fully realized safety yet, but he's getting his game into place. It's a danged hard job to be a professional football player.

We need Coker to step up no matter what. He's been a little below his capabilities since he got back from his injury. He was, at one time, supplanting XL on the field. We need that guy back.

Honestly, coming into this season, I'd never heard of him. Glad we grabbed him, seems to be a fantastic pick up!

Thanks, man! I really appreciate it! Writing can be a lonely and quiet career. And here's this week's story, run on our secondary channel. Editors really shortened it, but I just write the scripts.

Looks like Mays will be our C this week, ain't no one really shining as a TE yet, the XL thing may just be the old adage that you never see the real WR until the third season. And I'm not saying he's anti-Bryce, but just that he's a realist. Working with what he has. And a lot of the decisions as to who gets playing time are made based on stuff you and I will never see, because it's behind the scenes. Time will tell, but in the meantime, what a curious season this has been and one with more opportunity than we've seen in a while. I plan on enjoying the roller coaster ride for what it is and I'm looking forward to next season as well. I've said it before, and it bears repeating, something's being built here and it looks like it might be good if we're patient.

I agree whole-heartedly. Or perhaps Canales has already made his decision about the future and he's just minimalizing Bryce because, well, that's the only option. It's not like we can promote Dalton to starter (he's just spent), we don't have anyone else on the bench for real and we are past the trade deadline. And the few free agents that are out there are rusty and unreliable at this point. After writing that, I'm pretty sure that Canales has a change at QB already in his plans for next season. It would take miraculous play from Bryce to change that at this point.

I sure hope so. Everything seems to be pointing to the table being set for it. Really, as I've said before, Bryce is in the position to make his statement about what his future will be.

He's not trying to build a winner... yet. He's building a locker room. He's building a place where the players know they are part of a team and that they are valued. Now, if we all had a crystal ball and a genie with a wish, we could go back and have us a Tom Brady just waiting in the wings. But that was one team, one time. Not a viable strategy for building a team. Ask Belichick. He couldn't manufacture it again once the miracle moved on.

There's an old unwritten rule in the NFL that you don't lose your starting position due to injury. The guys in the locker room know it and live by it. Rico knew it coming in and he never said a word otherwise except for praise for Chuba. And when Chuba came back, the Coach put him back as the starter and gave him the lead job for the game. And now it seems like Rico is in the first chair and Chuba is the supporting running back. We may see it move back and forth. And that might not be based on prior game performance but because of injury or fatigue issues we have no knowledge of, or because one or the other can handle the game plan details better than the other. It could be something as simple as one of the guys being better at pass protection from the left or right side and they are comparing that with where they are seeing tendencies from the opposing team. More than anything, I think that it's much like our inactivity at the trade deadline, Canales is building a very solid, traditional pro football culture here. And it may sometimes deal with more of what the players expect than what their fantasy football stats are.

I'm seeing so many teams moving to a run heavy offensive style. It's a cyclical league and I'm here for it. I love smash mouth football. And we did a text book job of it against Green Bay.

Cowboys. Patriots. Couldn't ask for two bigger villains.

I think we're all struggling with what things are right now and what they have been. It's like getting ready to have bandages removed after a long period of injury. The healing, the new growth, they aren't going to be pretty, there's going to be some ongoing issues for a while at best and there's every chance that we're going to have to go back into the bandage situation all over again. And that sucks. But it's also a place where maybe, just maybe, the recovery is going to finally start happening. The bad days will be getting behind us. It's not going to happen this year, but I believe from what I see that this year is showing that improvement. We focus on the QB because that's what all the pundits focus on, because it's the flashiest and most heralded position on the field. No one wants to put out a tweet about how a center is holding down their job and anchoring a line. They rarely celebrate that blocking tight end or special teams gunner. That fourth CB on the depth chart? Not a mention. And yet, those guys are the kind that we've been building here, we're building the lunch pail guys AND finding some future stars. Is Bryce one of them? Might be a cornerstone of the team in the future as the second QB, might somehow just show out to end the season. Might flame out like many expect. But if that uncertainty is all we concentrate on, we're just going to miserably look at this team and maybe miss out on some solid green shoots that are finally beginning to poke through into the sunlight.

Hooker is a Greensboro native, so I was pulling for him to make it here. Sorry that it didn't work out. Of course, I'm not saying he's dead in the water. Baker Mayfield and Same Darnold were flameouts here, so maybe he finds a new home elsewhere and rises up from these ashes. Our QB room sucks, but it might be something about how it was built and how it is developed. Either way, he wore the uniform here so he deserves our respect and a good luck on the way out the door.