Ricky Spanish

Hurst was a 25 YO rookie TE when he was drafted. He has done about as well as I expected him to do since he has been drafted. We haven't been able to do much at the position ever since Greg started getting injured and Cam couldn't throw the ball any more. He's a very fluid athlete with great hands. Looking at his previous stops he didn't explode for various reasons: BAL- they happened to draft a Mark Andrews so they didn't use Hurst as much. Hurst is an Average TE, Andrews is a top 3. Simple as that. ATL - 4th option behind Julio, Gage, and Ridley but Still had a good year in 2020. Then fell off with the new Staff in 2021 after drafting a generational talent at the position in Pitts that year. New scheme wasn't great for the team all around and the entire passing offense struggled since Arthur Smith loves to run the ball. CIN - Afterthought in a loaded offense, 5th in terms of targets but still caught damn near everything thrown his way (76% Catch rate). Dude's career Catch rate is really good (71%) and TEs tend to have the best years of their careers from their late 20's into their early 30s. I would not be surprised to see Hurst put up similar respectable numbers to what he did in ATL in 2020 - 500 yards, 6TDs. Dude wasn't worth a first rounder, but to me that was more because of his age than anything. He is an AVG TE where we had a bottom 3 TE Room under Rhule, and we aren't breaking the bank to pay him. I don't anticipate we have a certified #1 receiver this year. I expect our top 3 to hover around similar stats. So if Chark, TMJ, and Thielen each get an average of 700 yards, Hurst gets 500, Sanders gets 400, Mingo gets another 400, and Shenault/Byrd/everyone else add another 200 Total - That gives Bryce 3,600 yards passing, which is pretty damn good for a rookie and puts him at #12 in passing yards last season behind Aaron Rodgers. I trust this staff to scheme these guys open, and I trust Bryce, hell even Andy Dalton, to throw to any of these dudes that are open.

I really can't understand this ranking. Based on personnel alone we are firmly in the middle of the pack. Even excluding Sanders who is coming off a pro-bowl year, our weapons are average across the board. That means we have no superstars but it also means we have no weak links all the way down. If someone goes down, we aren't in trouble, in fact our production from the WR position probably won't decrease much at all, it's not because they're bad, they just aren't superstars.

I expect us to be this season's version of the Jaguars. Slow start, ramped up to playoff contender by the end of the season. Coaching staff is too talented to finish dead last in our division, especially when Dennis Allen coaches in our division. Fun Fact, Dennis Allen has a worse Career Win Percentage than Matt Rhule:

If I knew how to do it, it would have been done ages ago.

And we have a D Coordinator who has a reputation for scheming to his players' strengths instead of trying to force them into fitting the scheme. I'm getting hype guys.

That's where I am at the moment. Whichever unit is stronger, it helps the weaker unit. Between the two groups, when healthy, we're deeper at CB. The available Pass rushers via trade/FA are better than the current CBs available via trade/FA. It'd be easier to upgrade the pass rushing unit, which would in turn help the DBs. The available DBs are a bunch of castoffs and JAGs.

His vision is honestly not great, but he has a second gear that he hits when he does get to a hole and then busts out chunk yardage. I think Foreman is a better pure RB with lower top-end speed, but Sanders is faster and a better receiver out of the backfield so he's more versatile. I think we probably slightly payed too much for him but I get why we did it. Even then, his contract is not Cap breaking and we can maneuver it easily enough if he starts to suck.

Same number of meaningful games that we have played in his tenure

Some guy is going around trying to interview every starting QB the Browns have had since 99 and he recently sat down with our good buddy DA. The majority of the interview is about his time in Cleveland, but around the 26 Minute Mark (I have it time stamped) He talks about his time in Arizona and how dysfunctional the organization was, which then directly leads to his time in Carolina since AZ never filed the paperwork to actually release him.. Once he gets to talking about us, it's all praise about how much he loved it. Talks about the super bowl run, his relationship with Cam, and becoming the "The Bucc Fuccer" DA was good people. Entertaining interview all around and provides solid insight on his time in Cleveland and that dysfunction as well. Will keep my eyes out for when he interviews Delhomme.

This is Article is our weekly reminder: Fuck Matt Rhule.

That was some good times.

I tend to be very pragmatic and cautious with my predictions for our record each year. If Young can stay healthy and play halfway decently I see no reason we can't win 10 games this season and at least make the playoffs as a wildcard team. The completely overhauled offensive skill groups, our New offensive brain trust, our new DC with the talent already on the roster, there's no reason we shouldn't make the playoffs.

I hope all these QBs succeed a little bit less than Bryce does, But I hope they do succeed. The NFL is more fun when it has good QBs playing at high levels.

Even if Reich isn't a great coach, I don't get slimey incompetence vibes like I did with Rhule.

I have him stashed in both my dynasty leagues. Low risk, high reward stash and I have the room for him.

9. Carolina Panthers What went right: Carolina got a quarterback and a coaching staff. Trading up to the No. 1 overall pick didn't come cheap. But an organization that desperately tried to acquire Matthew Stafford and Russell Wilson, drafted Matt Corral and dealt for Sam Darnold and Baker Mayfield finally landed its quarterback of the future. Again, I don't want to predict how players will turn out before they've played an NFL snap, but coming out of this offseason with top quarterback Bryce Young was a huge step forward for the Panthers after the half measures of years past. I'm more confident in talking about their coaching hires. Everything went haywire for new Carolina head coach Frank Reich in Indianapolis a year ago, but the former Eagles assistant had done excellent work with the Colts up to that point, consistently getting more out of his quarterbacks than other coaches had in the years before or after. New defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero is one of the few people to come out of the 2022 Broncos season smelling like a rose after leading their defense to a 10th-place finish in DVOA. What went wrong: I'm not so sure about the playmakers around Young in 2023. I'm certain the Panthers didn't want to trade away DJ Moore in their deal with the Bears, but if that was the cost of doing business for a potential franchise quarterback, it needed to happen. Moore's departure left them with Laviska Shenault Jr. as their No. 1 wide receiver. Moves had to be made. I didn't love the signing of Adam Thielen, who will turn 33 in August, has played one full season over the past four and just finished an inefficient campaign with the Vikings. Seventy catches and 716 yards sounds reasonable enough for a veteran wide receiver, but he ran 656 routes, the second most of any player in football. He averaged a woeful 1.09 yards per route run, which ranked 83rd out of 97 qualifying wideouts. Some of that is a product of playing alongside Justin Jefferson, but Thielen was at 1.69 with Jefferson the year before. Thielen is still going to have a two-touchdown game at some point in 2023, but I'm not sure he is a starting-caliber receiver anymore. No. 1 overall pick Bryce Young doesn't have elite playmakers around him, but the Panthers have a solid roster on defense. (Photo by Jacob Kupferman/Getty Images) I'm more optimistic about the DJ Chark and Hayden Hurst signings, and the Panthers supplemented those by using a second-round pick on wideout Jonathan Mingo. No issues there. Signing Miles Sanders to a four-year, $25.4 million deal seemed more curious, even if it's more like a two-year, $13.2 million pact in reality. Sanders has been an efficient running back and is coming off a career year with Philadelphia, but he also was playing behind a great offensive line and was buoyed by the gravity of teams focusing on what quarterback Jalen Hurts could do on the ground. The back's receiving workload also disappeared, with Sanders racking up more receiving yards as a rookie (509) than he did over the three ensuing seasons combined (433). Some of that might be a product of the Eagles' system, but the Panthers essentially gave Sanders the Austin Ekeler contract without that sort of production. Would they really have been worse off if they had just brought back D'Onta Foreman? Or should they have been more aggressive about trading for Ekeler? What's left to do: Figure out what to do with Jeremy Chinn. A second-round pick in 2020, Chinn looked like a potential star at safety for after his first two years in the league. He took a step backward last season, though, and the Panthers signed new safeties Vonn Bell and Xavier Woods in free agency. Chinn is probably not going to be a safety whom you want playing the deep half all that often, but he can be a valuable contributor as a box defender. He could even play some snaps at linebacker in passing situations, but Carolina is set there with Shaq Thompson and 2022 breakout player Frankie Luvu. Can Evero carve out a meaningful hybrid role for Chinn? Does the impending free agent's future lay elsewhere.

"We demand/deserve answers"

Honestly, I'd rather overpay a DE than a RB. It is not financially beneficial to break the bank on RBs in today's NFL. You pay DEs big money because their production is hard to replace. You can easily replace 80-90% of an All-pro RB's production with rookies and vet journeyman, and pay 1/10th the cost to do so. Sanders' deal is probably the most money I'd be comfortable handing a RB these days.

Remember when Charles Johnson got paid and reset the DE Market? He did pretty well, good enough to almost live up to the contract. I think that Burns is better at this point in his career than Johnson was, and I don't think he'll get a contract that resets the market. He's a pro-bowl Pass Rusher. Those guys get paid regardless of who the team is. If we don't give him a contract, someone else will. He's more valuable to us because we have 0 other proven pass rushers on our team. The cap is also going up each year. I don't blink at these contracts anymore. We actually have a GM/FO that is capable of working the money into future void years, something Hurney and Gettleman were completely incapable of. Pay him a top 5 DE contract this season. Watch that become a top 10 DE contract next offseason. Then watch it become a top 15 contract the next year. By then he still won't even be 30, he'll be 28 and up for a potential extension. We may end up overpaying him, but pass rusher is one of the three positions you overpay for, OT and QB being the other two.

Here's mine: Little Caesar's is the best chain pizza restaurant simply based on the cost/quality. I can get a hot and ready Large pepperoni pizza for $7.40, tax included, on the fly, and it is a perfectly fine pizza. Does it taste better than other chain pizzas? Not necessarily. Are Dominos or Papa Johns twice as good as Little Caesar's? Absolutely not. Domino's Large pepperoni is over $14, Papa John's is over $15. They might be slightly better, but I can get two average tasting Pizzas for the price of one slightly above average pizza from anywhere else making Little Caesar's the Pizza of the people.

I finally read this thread for the first time. There certainly are some spicy takes in here.

Ain't no laws when you're drinking Claws baby.

Any snaps that Corral gets this pre-season will be more than he had last pre-season. I hope Corral succeeds one day, but his road to NFL Starter got 10x harder the moment he was drafted under Matt Rhule, and then another 10x harder the moment he got hurt.

Complicated legacy. He did some great things but I don't think he was a great guy based on the long list of women he either assaulted or tried to murder