KSpan

I get the sentiment but Carolina can't help that, and they've looked good in winning these first 2 weeks just like quality teams should in games they should win. Agreed though that a true litmus test is still outstanding.

Lamar has shown himself to ultimately be overrated. Dude kills it in lower stakes games but when the pressure is on he just doesn't seem to have it.

Weird things happens on Thursdays and this is just a wild card. It should be a good omen, yes, but in reality who knows what will happen.

Eh, Carolina has a long and storied history of making backups looks like All-Pros. Not sure I'd go that far at this point.

Are you implying that Tyrod Taylor is a QB to be feared?

I haven't seen anyone call him a 'snake' or anything similar, and being objectively skeptical and ultimately disappointed because of Teddy's historical and continued lackluster play is entirely separate from other QBs, Cam included. It's fair to note that his public actions did not appear to fully align with his reputation and that a team offloading a player like that given the financial commitment and loads of stories about how he fit exactly what the offense was hoping to do raises questions that will likely go forever unanswered for the typical fan.

The story was that Carolina signed him because he was what they wanted and good at what they wanted to run, so even assuming that's only a half-truth it should have seemingly been a better fit. The whole thing is odd because moving on that quickly indicated the staff saw nothing there redeemable/worth even considering a second year. I'm still a bit skeptical of Rhule but the motivation to jettison that quickly would seemingly be him not as advertised behind the scenes, even if only in Carolina for some reason, and the tension was so easy to see publicly.

It's just puzzling that he has this rep of being such a great leader and team player, yet flamed out so badly in that type of role in Carolina. Rhule and his staff are certainly a variable here but whatever happened things sure went south fast and they dumped Teddy as quickly as possible. I wouldn't be surprised if Teddy drank his own Kool Aid and wasn't so great behind the scenes (evidenced by the obvious frustration the staff had with him), but that's speculation on my part. Whatever it was though they couldn't wait to move on.

That's... that's just... beautiful.

What's weird about that? Not arguing the Meyer is likely to flame out but I bet a lot of coaches hate those conferences and Meyer, being a brand new head coach, has no precedent for participating in them.

Taylor is even more cautious/conservative than Teddy. His career arc reflects that.

That TD throw alone highlights the difference in dynamics between Sam and Teddy. It's a splash play and no guarantee of any kind of future success but Teddy does not have the physical ability to make that happen. It's exactly the type of quarterbacking capability that the best teams have in their toolbox. Also highlights the nonsense about 20 yards being a deep throw. That was a momentum-changing play and is the type that breaks games open. 20 yards is not an accurate metric for this capability.

I'm so confused.

Johnson and Chase Daniel have been in the league for 13 and 12 years, respectively, and have 529 passing attempts between them. That's impressive.

Thinking hard about it.

That was definitely a joke.

I always envision him going full Cajun and spewing sounds like Farmer Fran from The Waterboy whenever I see that clip.

They drafted Mahomes because they'd already determined that Smith wasn't going to get them where they wanted to be and fully intended to move on at that time. Like Teddy, Smith did not throw for many TDs, once going 21 straight games without throwing a TD to a WR in that Reid KC offense, and only hit his career high 26 when Mahomes was drafted and the writing was on the wall. Prior to that he had 23, 18, 20, and 15 TDs thrown and never broke 20 in San Fran. Mahomes, on the other hand, has thrown for 50, 26, and 38. Smith is absolutely a slightly better version of Teddy from the same mold. They may be 'starters' but that doesn't mean much if they can't beat the best competition.

Yup. Watched Smith for years here in KC and Teddy is a second tier Alex Smith. Same style and same mental limitations with being conservative. Smith had a better arm and better leadership, but ultimately that same nature capped his ceiling. With respect to the question, not really. Smith didn't have what it took to get the team over the hump without an elite defense, and the team needs to shoot better than that or be at constant risk of Garoppolo-led San Fran-type performances. For example, Denver's elite defense was beatable in the 2015 Super Bowl with better coaching; that game wasn't as lopsided as fans like to make it sound, even with the ugly plays Carolina had.

Call me skeptical of his 'leadership' when it actually matters.

Many couldn't stomach much, if any at all, of the first one.

Erving's been nicked throughout camp and Elflein's been unremarkable/unnoticed so yes, inclusive of that and camp in its entirety. This isn't complicated. No one is making a definitive statement but they both have years of performance to measure against and thus far are what they appeared to be.

Again, I'm not making definitive statements. The difference with FA though and particularly the guys signed is that there is already extensive film on them. Expectations can be reasonably set and thus far they're right on par with those performance-based expectations, which were fairly low.

I'm not calling out Fitterer per se, was just making the comment. I do think thoguh it's a bit worse though given the attention that the OL and LB corps needed heavy attention and that all of the FA additions in those areas haven't look good, with Perryman already gone entirely. Fortunately, the 2 drafted OL are showing some promise..

Just to play devil's advocate here, that means 3 of the top FAs signed this off-season at positions of need are injured (Erving), look bad (Elflein), or gone (Perryman). Not ideal.