kungfoodude

Why is it a no-brainer? I mean the idea of a hold out made me laugh out loud.

Oh, oh. I see what you are saying. Yeah but not all of those were draft for draft replacements. Jones was a dumpster dive. The overall point I was making is that it is becoming more common to see this quick pivots as people realize their mistakes. It happens with a lot of busts historically at QB. IDK about "most teams" have fast, capable WR's. It's a mixed bag across the league. There are the Hopkins, Evans, etc that aren't sub-4.5 guys and are still star players.

I will work on that now and post it.

Buddy, look at the litany of horrific draft mistakes that were made from that era. Assuming a "no-brainer" pick is made by us is pure insanity. There is a reason Fitterer is far and away the worst GM this franchise has ever had. I am confused about the bolded statement. What do you mean "find a top 6 draft pick for cheap" versus "paying too much for a 3rd rounder." These seem to be incongruent statements. I am very sure about Bryce because he has pretty conclusively proven what he is and what his limitations will always be. I don't think his mindset will ever change enough to fix that. We do have a couple of sub 4.5 WR's. Horn Jr. and.....lol....XL. This is why I don't get too hyperfocused on 40 times. Doesn't mean I don't want speedsters but if you look at the top 5 40 time guys at every combine you don't that often see them being top WR's.

Of course. He should have been given it sooner, for that matter. I agree that we need to mine Day 2/3 for the next couple of drafts to find an excellent, speedy WR. Not some RAS idiot, someone who can actually catch the ball and has route running tools that can be sharpened.

You are aware I am very bearish on the QB position as it stands now but I also think there are bones there for a good offense. I am sure you are also aware that I also think we have one of the worst OC's in the NFL, so that is a limiting factor too. If TMac continues to develop, the sky is the limit. He could be a Hopkins/Fitzgerald type of player for us. Coker has a much lower ceiling but let's say it peaks at(who I think is an excellent comp) Jacobi Meyers. A crafty, excellent route running possession WR that will be a dependable option on 3rd downs and be enough of a threat to allow your deep threats to run free. I do think we should continue to try to upgrade the WR corps. Tremayne and Horn Jr. could be something but having a true #2 or #3 guy could elevate us to a top 10 WR corps for a long time. This should be something we should be pursuing in the draft/free agency over the next couple of offseasons. Another reason I dislike Canales. His personnel management makes me miss Ron Rivera and his awful roster management.

I don't think we don't call things aggressively, for a Canales offense, anyway. We don't have a QB who makes aggressive throws nor stresses defenses downfield. He is at a career low on 20+ attempts per game and his career 10-20 QB rating is abysmal. That will always be a limiting factor IF you are looking for a high flying, downfield offense. I am not even that concerned about it, I just want to see effective offense and we decidedly do not possess that. A large chunk of that is Bryce. I think the second biggest chunk is Canales. All the other components(XL included) are fairly minor in comparison to those two things. I am an advocate of attempting to improve at QB. I am not focused on finding "The QB." We failed at that with Bryce. So let's just get better. If that's a one year vet or a draftee or a cheap trade or some combination of any/all, we should do that. We have to get that QB better. Bryce will fail in 2026 and we need to have REALISTIC options to take over when that happens. That ain't Andy Dalton or Hendon Hooker or Jack Plummer or Mike White or....you get the picture. Be serious about hedging that Bryce bet and not just having to make do if he struggles or gets injured. My mind is definitely made up on Canales. It's year two and he hasn't improved much, nor do I think the bones of a good HC are there. Ron Rivera got to that point after two seasons and he was open about the changes he had to make and advice he got to make that leap in year 3. If we don't see the same after next year, how is he not just Brian Daboll?

You are making a lot of pretty big logical leaps to get where you are. What would you say about starting Jalen Coker, Brycen Tremayne and Jimmy Horn Jr. are you starting 3? And let's say Tremble as your primary receiving TE. Elite?

We definitely improved from 2024 to 2025, to me the results were less important than the roster in that regard. It's better. It's still a very bad roster but continuing to be better is the goal. The changes we are talking about at QB are about spending LESS resources. Not picking up Bryce's 5th is a big potential savings. Significantly better QB's have been had in recent years for half or less than what Bryce will get in 2026. To say nothing of an extension(the ridiculous subject of this thread) which would cripple roster building by saddling it with a bloated QB contract for an awful QB. The price for Bryce, I mean who is even making that argument anymore? I don't think you are seeing anyone in this thread discussing trading up to #1 for Mendoza. We are talking about cheap backup and FA QB's and Day 2 and 3 draft guys. That is literally tied to the idea of roster building. IMPROVE at QB while you build the roster so that we can actually potentially attract a franchise QB or when you make that big move up(SF for Lance) that your roster is so good that the impact is largely negated. After all, improving over Bryce is an extremely low bar to hit. Let's not assume that standing pat would have resulted in a sudden spurge in good decision making. Don't forget who was making all those roster calls at the time. Bryce or not, we would have fuged it up in some way because we had idiots at the helm. We may still yet. Also, it's easy to say we can't get in the habit of switching QB's like that but there are also plenty of situations where that flip was the correct decision. Richardson to Jones, Rosen to Murray, Fields to Williams, Lance to Purdy(technically some nuance to this), etc. There is no real danger of Bryce leaving and suddenly becoming an elite QB. We all do know this, no matter how big of a Bryce stan you may be. His ceiling is middling game manager. So there isn't some crazy risk of moving on.

Yes but I think he is relatively impervious to some level of improving after seeing that Gruden interview about his footwork. He can be a slightly below average starting QB, IMO. He has those abilities. But he is his own worst enemy. I think in the way Tebl0w was. He is pretty convinced that he has this figured out and he is doing all the right things, when that is clearly not the case. That's not an inordinate amount of one score games, it's in the fairly typical range. Also, we finished at -70. Even the Seahawks leading the NFL at +191 had 10 one score games. I don't think XL to Coker is going to suddenly turn us elite. We have way more issues than XL. Again, it's way too early to say we WILL take a step back but it's far from unlikely either.

Or Dillion Gabriel or Justin Fields or Shadur Sanders or Spencer Rattler or Carson Wentz or Brady Cook or....

$19 mil AAV would be the sub-franchise QB tier. That would be the 20th largest QB salary. The QB's in the category feature a LOT of better QB's than Bryce(not including rookie deals).

TMac has work to do but he is the first potentially elite WR we have had in a long time. I am not worried about his catch% for a rookie(not uncommon for it to be lower than elite the first couple of years). Coker is tracking well. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, because he technically has had very, very modest overall production but if he is given the correct opportunities, I do think he could be one of the best UDFA's we have ever had. It's going to be about the coaching staff actually finally realizing it.

I do think this place suffers from being very myopic. I am lucky enough to usually get to watch most NFL games, hence why I constantly point out that there legitimately have been several QB's make starts this NFL season that are worse than Bryce. But it was also clear that Bryce is in the bottom 20% of that overall group.

The issue with that is that Coker and Tremayne are also good blockers. They also don't get bone headed penalties or make insanely critical erros. So that one thing he does well isn't unique on this specific WR Corps. I think XL is also not an NFL player, TBH. IMO, he will actually be worse next year, whether it will be here or elsewhere(hopefully).

I think the biggest loss was BC. He fills in at average to above average for so many roles. That one hurt. We need to find another guy like that in the draft. Cousins is on his last legs at 38. His physical abilities seem to be in clear decline. Cousins is, at very best, 4% better than Ghost of Dalton. Watch those games again, you will see the same general physical decline. They are both old as hell. It's not like everyone can be Brady/Rodgers. Cousins is a lateral movement from Dalton. I am not interested at all.

We went 7-3 in one score games. It's not very likely we will be able to be that lucky in those sort of matchups. Possible but not likely. It's impossible to make much of a prediction for next season at this juncture but it wouldn't be a shock to see a step backwards depending on the outcome of the offseason. Also, that schedule projection is tough. The "no better options" for a $26.5 mil price tag is wild to me. Even in 2027 that is likely to be top 20-25 money at QB. Why in the world would anyone want to pay that for a backup caliber QB???

It's not optimistic at all. He has an unquestionably higher ceiling than Bryce. He played better than Bryce in his EXTREMELY limited action. That doesn't mean he is will be signficantly better than Bryce nor does that mean he should be a guy you put all your eggs in his basket. But if you want a valid option to replace Bryce when he fails in 2026, he is a very, very valid option. The one thing you cam say for Willis in the limited action is that from his time in Tennessee until now, you see consistent improvement. That isn't something you see with Bryce. I made a QB Success Metric and one thing that stood out from the data was how many 6th and 7th round "shots in the dark" that teams took. That was very eye opening. I don't think we do that enough. Frankly, unless we are happy with our #2 and/or #3 QB, that should be something we do at LEAST once every other season. And all the depth that we lack almost across the entire roster. Now you see why I say the roster is so bad? So you think we should extend him? That's fine in theory but while we played whack a mole at QB, the entire roster kept getting worse and so did the QB. Just because the roster is bad doesn't mean you just give up with a bad QB. I would hope no one here is advocating for throwing a giant bag of money at Malik Willis or really a chunk of these options. That has no value at all.

It's still a bottom 5 roster. It was the worst in the NFL last season and it didn't make a massive leap to NFL average, despite how well the offseason went overall. The point being, it did get better. That and we answered some important questions about the core of the roster moving forward. Consistency is the goal. You want to be the Steelers/Ravens/49ers/Packers/etc. Smart, effective roster and contract management that avoids rebuilding and is constantly retooling so that your valleys are never very deep. You always want to fluctuate between a fringe SB contender to strong SB contender. Now we have been consistent under Tepper but it's been chaotic and losing(8 straight). That's our consistency. Hence why I would rather move on from Bryce. He is a lateral movement or backwards movement when it comes to building a consistent roster.

Money and draft capital are big factors. We shouldn't be spending wildly in either case unless we are making a long term commitment and the target is worthy of such. I would be nervous to see this coaching staff and FO do that because I question their competence. I will also say I don't think it even has to be about this idea of "competition" or a "camp competition." If you even go into 2026 with a new QB(or QB's) as depth, they need to be better than or potentially better than Bryce. That should be the case if for no other reason than when Bryce fails, we have some sort of viable options still available to try. What does Dalton accomplish? I would gladly take Willis.....details depending. It definitely isn't going to be on a long term, high value contract. That's crazy. His ceiling is astronomically higher than Bryce and in his limited action in GB this year, he was significantly more effective than Bryce. Smaaaaaall sample size, though. And 0-2 in that sample size, as well. Not someone that anyone should be hyping as a long term answer.

I am not here to say if he is or isn't an option. I would also say that we shouldn't be hyper focused on a long term QB. That contributed to how badly we fuged up the Bryce Young pick. We aren't in a position with this bad of a roster to be QB desperate. Just focus on getting BETTER and potentially better options. Bryce is clearly a bust so continuing this is just pointless. Build the roster, IMPROVE at QB and keep moving forward.

It's possible but I think if you look at the potential options available it's unlikely. He is going to be a FA that some teams love and some teams are highly skeptical of. Not trying to make a direct comparison(which is very unfair to Willis) but you didn't see a big market unfold for Kyle Allen after his "success" streak in Carolina. It's possible you get a team or two willing to pay a Justin Fields level contract($20 mil AAV), but I think a Mac Jones level deal is more likely. Shorter and for less money overall.

QB is our biggest need but even bringing in Pat Mahomes is not going to turn this team into a consistent contender. We are still at least a couple of very good offseasons away from even thinking about consistency. Make no mistake, this is still a bad roster. We have to keep plugging away at improving it and we need more 2025 offseasons than 2024 offseasons.

I am not in favor of "going all out." That is a bad plan. I have said repeatedly if we are going to keep Bryce for next season(I am not in favor of this either), that we should jettison Dalton and add both a FA/veteran QB capable of being better than Bryce(smaller bar than Bryce is) AND a DRAFTED rookie QB from Day 2/3. Let's get some darts on the board at QB to upgrade while the rest of the roster builds. If we can build a good roster, eventually we can either attract a good veteran QB FA or make another Bryce-like move up because one of our few remaining weaknesses is just QB.

Several of those guys you listed are upgrades over Bryce and several more are potential upgrades. There will be other starting(or former) QB's coming available too(Geno Smith, Kyler Murray, Kirk Cousins, etc). Or there are backups that can clearly be upgrades(Mac Jones, Jacoby Brissett, Davis Mills, etc). Now, how realistic any of these options are is questionable. For any of the acquisition options, price would be a big factor. For any of the older veterans their motivation for even wanting to come to a team like this is pretty questionable. That extends to several other FA candidates, as well. Are we operating in a therotical world where Bryce is still here and presumed to be the starter? That is going to eliminate some options. Are we operating in a theoretical world where it is a "competition" and Bryce is still here? Or is Bryce gone completely? Those are all factors that make various of these scenarios both more and less "realistic." But, if the question is can we upgrade over Bryce? There is no question we can do so through free agency or potentially the draft.