BrianS

I feel like some of us are forgetting the mistake we made with Star and KK. We paid KK and let Star walk. The year before we let him walk, our defense 3rd against the run, 15th against the pass and 10th in scoring. One year later, we were 12th against the run, 15th against the pass and 19th in scoring. Having that big dude clogging the middle makes your defense better in ways that are very difficult to quantify to a player, but easily seen when looking at the defense as a whole.

The hope is that we don't have to use the tag on Brown, that we can just agree to a deal. That leaves us free to tag Burns and see what the market will turn up. If we let Burns just walk after turning down what we turned down - both from the Rams and the Bears - Tepper should fire the entire personnel department. Which may amount to firing himself, but that's another thing altogether.

To be fair, only Luke was still the player we loved. Cam had duct tape holding his shoulder on and Greg's foot was broken constantly. Luke had some concussions earlier, but over his last three years only had one which caused him to miss one game. Luke was still great.

That ship sailed when we refused to trade Brian Burns. By trading Burns we could STILL have Bryce, AND our picks AND another #1 pick AND DJ Moore. The stupidity of not taking that deal is just staggering now.

This, this is what we call an "agenda" kids. You can't look at targets vs receptions to determine drops. For instance Theilen has 100 targets and 77 receptions - did he "drop" 23 balls? No. Theilen has 4 drops this year. Chuba is a better player this year than last, who finds himself on a far worse team.

I disagree. Chuba has looked much improved, particularly in hanging on to the ball both as a runner and as a receiver.

And all three of those trophies are brought to you courtesy of one of the greatest coaches and talent evaluators of the modern football era - Jimmy Johnson. At the point those were won, Jones was just riding JJ's coattails to glory. Switzer took Johnson's team and got them to one more championship, but the roster was deteriorating. It still hasn't recovered. The only thing separating Jones and Tepper are 33 years of experience.

If a move is in the cards to replace Fitts, that move should already be under way. There is absolutely no advantage to waiting until the offseason to replace your roster builder. In fact, it's a distinct disadvantage. In order to build a roster, you need to know the current roster. This is experience a new GM can pick up right now, during the season, allowing them to enter the offseason with the needed knowledge to begin the process of fixing this mess. Because he's still here, I have significant doubts as to whether he will be shown the door.

I am actually not at all surprised by firing McCown. Who McCown may or may not have wanted is not at all relevant. You have to coach the guys on your squad. What is relevant is that Bryce has regressed as a player since coming here. It seems like more and more folks are finally catching on to how bad BY's mechanics have been this year. If you aren't, go look for the threads here, lots of good links in them. Then go back and watch his Bama footage. His mechanics are far better then. That falls squarely on the shoulders of McCown as the QB coach. I don't expect improvement this year. Hopefully Bryce has the self awareness to look at his own tape this offseason and realize there is a problem. Hopefully he will look to work on it on his own. But as much as I respect McCown's ability to watch tape, whatever methods he was using to coach Bryce up were not working.

A few points to consider. Firstly, this isn't statistically bad, this is historically bad. Bad stats can happen. But seriously, it takes a lot to end up at the bottom of a list of 431 names. Think about some of the names on that list. Tajh Boyd. Bryce Petty. Nathan Peterman. These are bad, bad players . . . and BY is at the bottom. That's scary. Secondly, he's going to get next season to turn it around. There is nothing we can do this offseason to fix the QB spot. If you bring in a guy, Bryce is done. Now maybe he should be, but I don't believe you can give up on a guy you invested that much in after only one season. No! It doesn't look good right now, but he should get that chance. Finally, we have to be honest. By the middle of next season, we will know about Bryce. And if it's a bust, we have to be ready to call it a bust and move on. Let's not hang on hoping for a miracle.

You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried!

You're wrong on multiple counts. Cam was toast and needed to go. We didn't handle it well, at all, but the decision was the right one. The potential compensatory pick for Cam is a flea on the a^# of the issue. Bridgewater had a three year contract. He should have been here for all of it. How much did we sacrifice for deciding Bridgewater wasn't our guy after one year? The mistake wasn't signing Bridgewater, though perhaps we overpaid a bit, the mistake was getting rid of him. How many draft picks did we surrender by cutting TB5? How many players did we then get rid of because of it? How much dead cap did we incur? It was an absolutely horror show, and it all goes back to our owner not being patient. Make no mistake, our owner drove the QB frenzy train.

You missed the point. Brady could be single and never work another day in his life. His wife's earning potential was irrelevant. Brady wanted to win championships. He took less money to facilitate that. We hear players talk all the time about how they want to win championships, compete at the highest level, etc. All the talking points you expect. The difference is that most of them don't really mean it.

Yards per attempt is not the metric we should judge Bryce by. We should be looking at Air Yards per Attempt. That's the metric that tells us how far he was TRYING to throw the ball. It currently sits at 4.7 air yards per attempt. Honestly, his interceptions aren't overly concerning. He's currently throwing INT's at a rate of 2.5%. It's not awful. During his Panthers career, Delhomme threw them at a rate of 3.3%. And Jake was great. Would you take young Jake back today? I sure would. What is concerning is his TD rate. It's only 2.8%. That's a problem. Cam and Jake both threw TD's at a rate of 4.5%. There is plenty of fault to go around with our offense. But BY needs to control what he can control. Be mechanically sound, make the right read, get the ball out on time. Those things show up on film. If your QB is doing those things, you can see on film that he is not the problem.

Eventually QB's will learn the lesson Brady tried to teach them. If you want to win multiple championships, you have to take less money so the team can surround you with weapons. As great as Mahomes is - and he's a far more talented QB that Brady - he can't do it alone.

While you are not wrong, it doesn't really delve to the level of nuance required to make the statement you've made. It's not like they had the draft capital or salary cap to simply replace everything. This is a coaching problem - or perhaps a meddling owner problem. If a coach looked at this line and said "They can block wide zone" you'd have to ask "Based on what evidence?" If the rumors of our owner forcing BY on the staff are true, it's very possible the mess is 100% on the owners plate. Think of CJ Stroud at QB with our run scheme from last year. That looks a lot different than BY in . . . whatever this is we have this year. I think Reich needs to go, but it may not even be his fault.

Two things can be true here. Was Wilks better than what we have now? Yes, he was. At the same time, he wasn't the answer. He was gonna be a guy who occasionally got us to the playoffs. He was Riverboat Ron all over again. I can give the organization props for trying something different to change the math. This didn't work. Let's try something else. Unfortunately, I think we're still a bit more than 12 months away from "something else".

Someone needs to tell John Ellis that's not how it works. Air yards and YAC are not at all related. YAC has nothing to do with the QB, and air yards have nothing to do with the receiver. In TB5's single season in Carolina, he averaged 7.2 Air Yards per Attempt. We all said Teddy had no arm and couldn't throw deep. We were children. BY is averaging 4.7 Air Yards per Attempt. It's so ludicrously bad I understand why we have people still trying to defend him. It can't really be this bad, can it? I'm afraid so kids. It's another example of a great college QB who currently looks like they just can't play at this level. Twelve months from now we'll know for sure. It's going to be a long 12 months.

In 2010, we went 2-14 and were awful. The current level of awful. We drafted a QB at #1. We went 6-10 in 2011. We were still a work in progress. But it was obvious we had THE GUY. Don't tell me we can't expect the same thing from Bryce Young. Yes we can. They were each picked at the top of the draft. I want BY to show me he's THE GUY. I don't care if we win. I don't care if there are mistakes. I just want to see WOW!

We've run RPO. People get RPO confused with zone read all the time. What Cam did was a zone read. It's primarily a running play where you are reading a key defender to decide whether the tailback gets the ball or the QB pulls and runs. Sometimes you'll have a pass option worked into that, but it's usually designed as a run. We would be so far beyond stupid to have Bryce do any of this it doesn't even bear conversation. An RPO is a play that often looks similar to a zone read at the mesh point. The difference is that the QB is reading a key defender to decide if the tailback gets the ball or he pulls it to throw. This is the stuff Bryce "should" be good at. We were sold he was a super smart guy, reading that defender and creating a no win scenario for him should be right in BY's wheelhouse.

That QB draw in Green Bay was legendary.

The only chance we have is to franchise Burns and flip him for 2 firsts. Even if you assume he's our best player, we aren't 1.5 years away. We're two. If we don't flip Burns, we're even farther.

It makes absolutely zero sense to let Reich go during the season. None. There is nothing to be gained. None of the candidates who we might want to talk to are available. If you're cleaning house, it does make some sense to show Fitts the door. You can start that search now, you can take your time and do it right. Maybe even hire consultants and get out of the way if you're Tepper. Then when it's time to hire a coach, you have a new GM in place and can bring in other consultants to help the GM bring in the new HC.

Just getting ready to say the same thing. No one is saying anything about the situation in SD except to say that if JH had a defense he'd be winning a lot more games.

I think he'll get there. He's relying less on his legs and more on his brain these days. I expect the Ravens will be in the AFC title game game this year. That Burrow injury combined with the Watson injury basically handed them the division.