CRA

SB is all about the casual fan. Not the hardcore fan. Storylines matter. Clicks, views, eyeballs. That's money in today's world. Not just the game. The entire lead up too.

Kelce brothers is a big one. 2 highly entertaining people. That why you seem them doing their podcast and all that. Andy/Philly is a big one. The Bengals was a fine story line last year. Put Burrow on the map. Which the league does want. The underdog story lead by the "cool kid". But they just milked that last year. They just did it. It's not the same story anymore. It doesn't have as much juice putting Burrow/Bengals right back. Burrow to some degree is manufactured anyway in terms of his coolness. Super Bowl isn't just about the game. It's about milking the storyline and making money off it all along the way. yeah, I think they get more eyeballs in interest switching it up to KC this year. Not rigged. Influenced. See that over and over and over again in the sport. Sports have always been influenced. Fairness rarely exists in the world.

story lines. eyeballs. Ultimately money. more for the machine to work with surrounding the game if it is KC over the Bengals.

Rigged is the wrong word IMO. The refs were influence outcomes. Not guarantee them.

I thought the refs putting their finger on the scale was most evident the last series each team had. Non call on a KC roughing the passer. Non call on the block in the back on the game winning punt return. Non calls on the holding on the Mahomes run. Head official ran the crew with the most flags all season. Then in the end they kept them all in their pocket because it would have helped the Bengals.

Well, sometimes you don’t have a dog in the fight. Like last night. And you simply see the NFL putting their thumb on the scale to steer the game toward their preference. and yeah, there is a reason in today’s world of tech advances the billion dollar game is steered by a part time good old boys club employee.

Again, we went .500 with one of the weakest schedules in the league. If it wasn’t so weak, Wilks doesn’t go .500 most likely with the talent we had. Because we had holes that weren’t as glaring vs the weak opponents. you can’t ignore who Wilks could and couldn’t beat. And what we could and couldn’t do based on opponent. my issue is simply claiming a HC should win next year. If we have a tough schedule, this roster has too many holes IMO. For Wilks or Frank to be expected to win and rioting if we don’t? I would expect either to compete to be around .500 next year. Give or take. That’s not how I define winning though. Roster isn’t build to actually compete yet to do something that matters. Frank isn’t inheriting that type roster. Guess we will see what they do in the off-season to change that

I agree you don't know what you SOS will be heading into any season. But we know what it was. We know what it was for the 2022 Panthers. Weak and easy. And Wilks went .500 with that. Wilks did adapt from what Rhule did. And it allowed us to be competitive w/ a weak schedule. But we couldn't run the ball worth a poo vs good run defenses. Good overall teams easily handled the Wilks' Panthers. Wilks selective did what you are praising him on. Opponent is relevant. I'm sure Frank would love to have CMC to make his life easy on a QB like Purdy. A Deboo would be even more icing on the cake. And a Kittle. 49ers have probably the 2 best overall backfield/receiving threats in the entire NFL in CMC/Deboo. Plus a top 3 TE. It's not just scheme and coaching for why Purdy is working out right now. The talent around the QB is on a different planet in SF right now to deal with inexperienced QB play. Take away CMC/Deboo/Kittle and give Shanahan Foreman, Moore, Thomas.....and Purdy most likely isn't being celebrated to the extent he is.

I mean, you just listed a bunch of holes right there. Saying we will just fill them doesn't mean it is that easy. Just start with offense. QB is a massive hole. The entire QB depth chart. We still have holes in our receiving game at WR and TE. We have a 27 year old journey man RB and our run game completely was nonexistent vs teams that could play the run down the stretch. Seems like a pretty big red flag going up. We got DB holes. We got LB holes We got DE/pass rush holes. Which is why when we stepped on the field vs a really good team like the Bengals down the stretch. It was non-competitive from the start. The narrative that this is now basically a win now team handed to Frank doesn't fly for me. Our schedule being so weak had a lot to do with us making it to 7 wins.

Panthers also had the 27th hardest schedule in 2023. Wilks played some very basic football down the stretch. Roster still has a lot of issues. They just aren't as evident against bad teams paired w/ solid coaching (Wilks).

They traded CMC immediately after they fired Rhule. There was no cat to let out of the bag. Tepper just didn't account for how horrific Matt Rhule actually was. And that just running the most simplistic stuff highlighted how the NFL is in fact designed for teams to go .500. Takes special people to go drastically north or south of .500.

zoom

Facebook and Twitter mobs generally are a poor reflection of the masses on any subject though. wanting Wilks is a fine take. Lot of the social media stuff are casual fans or frankly not actual Panther fans. Not all. A decent chunk. Most hardcore fans that fill the seats year in and year out…..aren’t likely to poll heavily toward Wilks being the guy we should hire. Probably a more even split or leans offensive IMO.

sounds like Fox was a consultant used to help Bradley as they tried to change schemes up this past year.

I don't see him as DC but I could easily see him in a similar position to what he was doing in Indy.

It is what it is

That wasn't Reich's record though. He was 3-5-1 last year in Indy.

what is 4-12 in reference to?

By what metric? Reich has had a couple winning seasons in the NFL as a HC. Including back to back. Gone to the playoffs a couple times as well.

John Freaking Fox with the photobomb in the back.

Now, let's see who he hires as coordinators. Then I will decide to get excited or not. I fear Tepper forgets why he fired Ron Rivera. And might over correct after Rhule blew up in his face. I don't want us to be the good old boys coaching tree of retread names we have seen all over the league.

again, you are hyper focusing on Arnold. As I said, you can call him a ham and cheese sandwich. It could of literally been a sandwich. We lost the trade. A 3rd for CJ was dumb given the red flags and their inability to deal..... and that we are supposed to be rebuilding. Supposed to be. And this example is just a part of the bigger picture criticism of how our roster and assets have been managed (given we were supposed to be rebuilding). When your model of rebuilding is trading draft picks to acquire the waste that several horrible franchises don't want......I would say you are doing it wrong. That has been the Panthers of late. Then on top of that odd duck strategy, they went through a window where they were adding win now one year Super Bowl play rentals. Nothing about that shows our front office employs people with an effective plan to build from the ground up.

You said he had easily the worst stats of any MVP in the last 20 years. That's just false. It doesn't need much explanation. 2015 Cam Newton - 45 total TDs. 4400+ total yards. That's more production than several of them. Just start 20 years ago. Which was your timeline and work your way up. 2003 McNair - 28 total TDs. 3300+ total yards. Cam Newton accounted for more TDs than 7 previous QB winners and then there were RBs. So yeah, he easily doesn't have the worst. Because he had better stats than a handful of them.

There is no mental gymnastics. You can call Arnold a stale ham and cheese sandwich. It doesn't matter. A stale ham and cheese sandwich and a 3rd round pick.......was Carolina getting taken by Urban/Jags. It's not drooling over Arnold. He was average. Hence me never calling him anything but a roleplayer. Something this roster doesn't even have. So we made a hole bigger. Which then leads to more mistakes. Overpaying a TE that isn't even as good as Arnold lol. A rebuilding team gave away another draft pick and this time a 3rd. For garbage. We lost that trade no matter how you define Arnold. It's just one of many examples of Fitt's bad. It's only relevant because it pertains to the poor job of managing the roster and our assets.......for a team that was suppose to be building from the ground up.