kungfoodude

Yeah, we were probably fuged with that Darnold/OL combo from the start, so it isn't really worth getting worked up over. I hope when we get the full defense back, those guys will start to dominate again. I think when CMC comes back, we might be able to establish the run on a more consistent basis and try to take the ball out of Darnold's hands as much as possible. That's probably our best path to success this season on that side of the ball. Overall, we still are loaded with offensive weapons for 2022 and have a potentially scary defense. Just need to keep building that roster.

Usually the tanking talk starts in earnest when we are in a top 10 draft pick position in the second half of the season. We are sitting at 15th at the moment so I don't think we will see that sort of jumping off the cliff for a few weeks. Also, this is a trash QB draft so I don't think there will be as many "tankers" as before.

Agreed. It is crazy how deep our CB's are.

Yes, his 28 yds/GM and zero TD's have really been the thing that has ground our offense to a halt.

I can see how you might feel that way but this roster is tremendously more talented and deep than it was at the beginning of this process. The QB and OL situation has been grossly mismanaged but the almost all of the rest of the roster has been improved dramatically. I have no qualms with the roster building outside QB/OL. If we fix that, this may very well be a good team.

True but this may be the worst we have fielded and I don't want to see an elite QB come in here and watch another career ended by lack of protection. That's why I am not opposed to seeing Darnold in 2022 if we still don't have the OL project completed. I'd rather use him as a sacrificial lamb than trot out a promising rookie or proven veteran to get shelled while they figure that all out. It's so frustrating how they have completely ignored the OL as a priority. The free agency(outside Moton) and draft moves have been APPALLING. Not even Hurney ignored OL like this.

The Cam ship has sailed and it seems clear Cam just isn't the player he was here. Not to mention, I don't particularly want to see one of our franchises best players come back and get battered and fuging bruised behind this OL. That's not a triumphant return, it's just sad.

https://theriotreport.com/earning-the-right-to-win-what-matt-rhule-can-learn-from-mentor-tom-coughlin/

https://pantherswire.usatoday.com/2020/09/07/panthers-radiers-matt-rhule-jon-gruden-mentor/ Tried to find the Coughlin comment but found this instead. LOL....fuging ouch.

Or that the Rams didn't want Matt Stafford. But, even Watson or Stafford wouldn't be successful behind this OL. That's the fuging tragedy. We don't need to see one of the worst QB's in the NFL fail to see how terrible they are.

Yeah, and he may not have thought he needed it or might not be close enough with people to help him out. I believe he has referenced Tom Coughlin at some point(his head coach when he was with the Giants in 2012) so perhaps he picks his brain on occasion.

Go through the 2020 posts and you will see weeks of lauding his completion percentage and how we needed to fix various aspects of the offense and defense to help him out. It's the same thing this season. People want to ignore the very obvious, neither of them are good NFL starters. I suppose at least Teddy is a game manager that can at least try to not fug up for an elite defense. Darnold is just simply not an NFL caliber starter. He wasn't and he isn't. It doesn't take much watching tape to figure that out.

We have shown time and time again in 2020 and 2021 that we cannot make those short yardage plays because of that awful OL. Even CMC has been stuffed in those scenarios for us. This is not an offense set up to succeed, it is set up to fail. If we had a decent OL last season, Teddy is still probably our QB(shudder to think it but it's likely true) because he could be a marginally capable game managing QB that just simply doesn't lose us games. Instead, we opted for the bottom tier gunslinger and put AN EVEN WORSE OL in front of him and then ask Brady to just make do with what we have. Unreal. We assemble the worst OL/QB combination in the NFL and believe that will just suddenly work out. That said, Brady isn't above reproach. He does struggle with some situational playcalling and there are obvious times where he gets too cute or ignores some basic football 101 concepts. He's learning too. I would like to at least see how he performs with a competent OL and starting caliber NFL QB.

Yeah....continue to believe that if you want. It's going to end up with similar results.

You did see what we did to the roster after 2019, right? I don't know that I have ever seen a more clear definition of "rebuilding" in professional sports.

I mean, it sounds good in theory but cold calling people you have absolutely no relationship with at all is sort of the definition of a panic move. If he feels the need to do it and it will help, by all means do so. But I think typically those kind interactions are with mentors or peers you have an established relationship with and even more so, trust their opinions and criticisms.

We already can see after six games a lot of the things that are wrong, the question will be are there more issues than the obvious ones? If we just need an NFL caliber OL and an average quality NFL starter(these are the most glaringly obvious problems), then there is no reason to really panic after a 6 win year. Those are reasonable problems to fix. If the problem clearly is the coaches, that's a far tougher problem to fix. Same with larger roster issues. All that makes the prospect of rebuilding longer and longer.

Well, he did ink that deal AFTER the Darnold trade, so it isn't like he didn't have the option of leaving. I think there is something clearly going on because his mistakes are very clearly mental.

Yeah, for all the grief Brady gets for some of the "WTF" play calls, we don't have the luxury of running simple plays that most teams could execute with reasonable success rates.

I think supposedly he has but his call list is also likely to be much smaller than Ron's was.

We are literally missing starters at S, so that is less of a problem, IMO. The defense just needs some additional depth and an upgrade or two. The OL is a complete fuging disaster. Literally almost no salvageable parts. That is the five alarm fire that has to be addressed. After that, we have to upgrade to a starting caliber QB. You get both of those problems solved and we are probably looking at a winning team. Not a contending team, but a winning team.

The "business decision" comment stood out to me. I will be curious to see how the next game goes.

Associate head coach, assistant head coach....something. I distinctly remember quite a few Huddlers saying they hoped we would get some longer tenured NFL coaches on the staff to help them out. It just didn't really happen. The bulk of the NFL experience on the staff currently is with the positional coaches, of which only one has any experience at the NFL coordinator level. I think that will prove to be a mistake in the long run.

Yeah, I honestly think this was just a bridge too far for him to jump this early in his career. This might end up being one of those situations where his early failures propel him to later career success. For his sake, I hope so. But, in the meantime, I don't know what we can really do to remedy the issues. The OL is what it is, Darnold is what he is and I don't think Rhule is the guy to step in and take over playcalling duties to alleviate some of the problems. The best we can hope for is that they circle the wagons week to week and just kind of start to figure out how to salvage what we have on offense and attack our opponents weaknesses rather than just running our scripts.

He has never been consistent in his entire career. Even without a historically bad WR performance, his warts are pretty obvious at this juncture. We aren't seeing much of anything different. He still struggles even with a clean pocket, sometimes even more than when he is pressured. He just isn't the guy. Unfortunately for all of us, we didn't even set him up to where we saw him fail on his own accord, we gave him one of the worst OL's in the league.