kungfoodude

You don't trust the source? You mean the virus? Well, I mean, it's a virus. I don't think it really has much capability to lie.

It's one rep in practice. Not great but he is gonna have ample opportunities to make up for it.

It's probably a bit early to jump to that conclusion.

The comforting thing about all conspiracy theorists is how completely uniform they are in thought process. Doesn't matter the specific conspiracy or slant, they all are the same. The concerning thing is how widespread conspiracy theories are becoming. I mean, at this point these aren't even niche, this is flat out mainstream. That is what is so concerning. I attribute this directly to people not being savvy about the media that they consume. The fact is, the overwhelming majority of the world's population is not intelligent enough to digest information without filtering. I never would have thought that I would end up with this viewpoint but I have been involved in the internet since almost it's inception(not back in the DARPA days, obviously) and I have watched this unbelievably powerful way to access information eventually turn into something I never expected almost three decades ago. It isn't a way to spread information, it has devolved into a way to spread disinformation and "choose your own adventure" facts. Frankly, mass media has basically followed that trend to mirror it. You couldn't have convinced me that would be the result 30 years ago.

The idea of suppressing "evidence" is literally conspiracy theory garbage. There are few examples in recent memory of a medical treatment with such transparent and large data sets. Do people have side effects? Yep. Have some been bad and even lethal? Yep. Are the percentages very low? Yep. Anecdotal evidence isn't completely valueless, but if you base your decisions purely on statistical outliers, that is just not smart. I would want to go out and draft a player based on one good game in college, verses 20 mediocre to bad games. Now, Marty Hurney probably would. Do you want to be Marty Hurney?

The anti-vax movement is not purely a modern thing. There is a tradition of it for religious reasons going back quite some time. The modern era is really no different. Politics and idiocy are the new religions, so it does fit. The 90's/2000's anti-vax movement(from the "liberal" bastions, no less) has been so thoroughly debunked that it's more of a litmus test for critical thinking anymore. The anti-vax movement against these new vaccines will end up being a similar situation, most likely. I definitely can see a scenario in a decade or so how the volumes of research will make this movement look just as foolish as the last major one. The leaders of this version are just as much sideshow personalities as the last one.

I'd say it is usually a harbinger of things to come more than anything.

Having a sophomore slump would lead to actual hot seat talk in 2022. Lots of variables, though. Is Darnold still a bust? Does our new OL fall apart? Is the defense underwhelming? Do we simply catch the injury bug and never recover? The red zone struggles seemed to be about 50/50 Brady and Teddy last season, for instance.

Yep.

He is vaccinated. You know that, right?

Wow. This is the result of the team having a monopoly over the content. What a fuging terrible view of that play.

I had the J&J vaccine two days before it was pulled in the US. I decided to put it through the wringer and went directly from the shot to brewery tours in the area. It was actually pretty funny how it wrecked me for about 10 hours as I was hammered. But, I am also not a huge pussy so I didn't have any fear about it after reading the research.

It depends on the metrics we look at. I think scheme(Brady) and QB(Teddy) made our OL stand out more in some stats that it should have. We will see this year because we don't have an OL friendly QB. If anything, he should be a big negative for them. So, if our OL excels, it will be a huge positive towards that narrative that we were/are a much better OL than expected.

Sort of. We have all been fooled by legacy Panthers teams. I will say that starting out beating the poo out of four straight teams should get blood flowing to any Panthers fans loins. However, given franchise history, it would be wise to douse our swollen members in some ice water until we can sustain that success. Jokes aside, that is the thing I remember most about the 2015 season. It was so surreal that I just kept waiting for the other shoe to drop during the regular season. It almost felt like some sort of dream. By playoff time, I was convinced we were easily the best team in the NFL. Honestly, I felt the same way post-Super Bowl. IMO, that was the worst team we faced all playoffs.

Unsurprisingly, you aren't really understanding what I am saying.

I think on paper it definitely isn't an upgrade, especially considering Okung. Even without it is basically a push. My concern is that Darnold has been a massive bust and at least a portion of that can be attributed to a poor offensive line. I was not a fan of the Teddy signing nor was I a fan of his play but we do have to fully admit that he made our OL look much better than it was, even while dinking and dunking to an ineffective overall offense. Darnold isn't that guy. He is a classic gunslinger and they traditionally fare very poorly when pressured. So, to me that is a big concern. The kid has been an absolute disaster in his career so far and putting up a poor offensive line in front of him is not the path to success, even with our plethora of offensive weapons. Ultimately, we need to set him up to be successful, not just with scheme and weapons but with OL talent, as well.

I would be surprised if our 3rd rounder makes the starting lineup. It would be(hopefully) a very pleasant surprise. I was low on him during the draft and I haven't seen really any early takes that make me think otherwise. But, this is also where the rubber meets the road. We should know in the next couple of weeks at least what our two deep looks like. Outside that, it will take a few games to see what we have as a unit. And, that is under the assumption that we can stay healthy. That is honestly one of the biggest concerns. Our FA signings have very big injury red flags, so continuity may suffer if we aren't able to keep them healthy. It was a big problem with last year's unit, as well.

I think we made a huge upgrade in our two deep but basically no upgrade in our starting OL. This is, of course, all theoretical. They have taken no actual snaps as a unit yet.

We added basically nothing and lost little if you don't include Okung. So, I suppose if you don't include him it is a push. And it was a much, much worse line than some of the stats even indicate because of Teddy.

Well, I have functioning eyeballs and a brain. It does help. Similarly, I actually watched our games.

I can't make you be smarter.

On paper is is probably worse. Okung, despite being missing for most of the year was leaps and bounds better than whatever we are considering for LT(assuming Moton stays at RT). The OG's guards are either a push or worse. IMO, there is a very high probability we are worse than last year along the starting line but better at the backup slots.

Well he is likely to be behind one if the worst OL's he has ever had, so I don't know how exciting that stat is.

Agreed. I am glad to have him back but his playcalling left a lot to be desired last season. He wasn't bad but far, far from perfect. Hopefully he keeps improving like our young players do.