BrianS

At least he's only on a one year deal there. GM was smart enough to know this was a possibility.

Jones isn't special, but he's very competent. I said before the draft there isn't a more Belichick QB in the draft than Mac Jones. I thought he would go there, and he did, and he's doing very well. We've all seen his physical ceiling. This is all you'll ever get from Jones physically. Mac Jones will make or break himself as a "franchise" guy based on his growth from the shoulders up. If he becomes a great student of the game, he'll likely play 15 years as a starter.

I don't think you can fairly rate a coach on credibility from the outside. If your coach is always tell the unvarnished truth to the outside your team will be at a competitive disadvantage. It's honestly refreshing to see that Rhule understands this. Rivera was too busy trying to obfuscate to say anything interesting. At least with Rhule, you hear interesting things, even if you can't believe any of them. What we don't know is what he says to his players behind the doors. Could be he's completely honest with them.

I like him as a quality backup, spot starter at a very affordable rate. If someone wants to pay him starting money best of luck to him.

I love your positivity, but sir, I don't think there is a QB in this league who would willingly come here to play behind this line. It really is on course to be historically awful. If the line was just average, it would be a very different story.

Cam was a unicorn, and comparing him to every other franchise QB is not relevant. As a free agent RB, why would you come play with Cam when you know he's going to be taking carries that you otherwise might get on any other team? That said, we did manage to bring in Tolbert. As a free agent receiver, why would you come play with Cam when the guy is a sub 60% passer and has Greg Olsen as his primary safety blanket? That said, we did manage to bring in Cotchery (who caught it) and Ginn (who had his best professional years here). Our interior OLine was generally really good in that era with Kalil / Turner / Norwell. We managed to bring in Michael Oher who barring injuries was our best LT since Gross. While it was a mistake, we also brought in Matt Kalil. Had he worked out, he would have been huge. Who, specifically, would you have wanted that we didn't get? Bear in mind, these were also the years of perpetual cap hell. Regardless of the fact it was self inflicted, it was still a fact of our situation.

When talking about being an attractive FA destination it comes down to your QB. Do you have a guy? If you clearly have that guy, you're an attractive destination. For QB's, in the rare instance that a franchise guy hits FA, the question is how does your offense look. Do you have a decent line, good receivers? I can understand why a QB might not "want" to come right now looking at our line.

I hear what he's saying, and in certain cases he is correct, but other things are also pretty clear cut. For example, our OLine sucks. It doesn't take a player or former player to see that. It doesn't take much more than someone who watches semi regularly to see it. Now, if he's saying there is more to the dropsies epidemic that has plagued our WR's, he may be correct. Because from the outside, it looks to me like our WR's are having terrible season on that front. The other thing he's missing here is that one of the great things about the NFL is that the games spark conversation. It's one of the things that's great about the NFL format as opposed to something like baseball where each game means almost nothing in and of itself.

I actually hope PJ starts. Rhule needs to see without a doubt that PJ is not an NFL QB. This staff needs to see that it's not OK to go into a season without a real backup. If you want to develop someone, make that developmental guy your THIRD QB. Not your first or second.

I don't disagree that Irving's effort left a lot to be desired. But there are other problems there. Play design being one of them. Paradis is being asked to get way downfield to the second level to seal a LB. He was never getting there. It was too far. It wasn't really clear who he was intended to block. He kept glancing at the DB on that side like that was the guy he was supposed to account for. Eventually he tried to reach that LB, but even if he fired off right away, I'm not sure he would have got there. Irving never looked back inside. Not once. He was looking outside the whole time. If he had looked inside, he certainly would have seen the ILB closing down. Who knows, he might have even tried to block him. He didn't try to get downfield to the safety that was coming up, never looked there either. He just watched Tremble and DJ put a hat on a hat. Not sure what his assignment was supposed to be, but with a hat on a hat outside like that, a veteran player should be looking for a bad guy to block, and Irving never did. If the players executed the play as it was designed, that design was just bad. Having a blocker with no assignment? Having a lineman have to really stretch to get downfield to a LB? Not sure if it was designed poorly or the players executed it poorly, but it was a mess.

You're right, we're not. But that doesn't mean run, run, pass, punt is going to fix our issues. Over reliance on either the run OR the pass is going to make you an easy target for a good defense. An unbalanced offense is simply not sustainable. Our sack numbers aren't problematic over the last four games. Our sack numbers are problematic over the entire season save the first two weeks. Oddly enough, the last two full games CMC has played. This is the part of CMC that a lot of people gloss over. The guy is a complete back. He brings balance to our offense. Yes, 100%, he's a great player. Can't argue that. But what's more important is that with him on the field, you just don't know what the Panthers will do. Run? Pass? Option? That's the real value. Unfortunately, while we have some good backs, none of them are the complete player that CMC is. Our backups make us predictable. And we've seen the results.

ZG has been in the league since 2017. Before this year, he's made greater than 80% of his FG's exactly once - a year when 2/3 of his kicks were under 40 yards. We need to see an entire year of this. It's possible the guy has figured something out. If so, I'm excited to have him here. Kickers should be largely judged on their consistency over a long term.

ffs. Stop it. Even if some crazy crap happens and we end up in the playoffs we are not a good team yet. We were never supposed to be. THIS YEAR. Next year squeaking into the playoffs should be a reasonable expectation, if we can identify and acquire an NFL QB while fixing the most egregious of our OLine problems. We aren't going to fix everything next offseason.

I'd like to remind everyone who loved the game plan that we scored 19 points against a very bad team. That gameplan isn't going to net consistent success. If it was that simple, we would have won a lot more games last year with TB5. Our biggest problem remains our OLine. While they looked somewhat better run blocking, the fact remains we kicked four FG's. We managed to hide the problems for a week. That's all we saw.

I'm glad to see Shaq playing well. Bottom line was that he HAD to have this kind of season if he wanted any chance of earning the dollars available to him on his contract. He's getting paid elite money. His cap number next year is very similar to Bobby Wagner. Let's hope he continues his high level of play. Certainly is nice to see.

The only teams that MIGHT be interested in trading for Donte are teams that have established themselves as playoff contenders and have gotten killed by injuries at corner. How many of those are there? Any? If you aren't a serious contender, you simply wait until the offseason when you can talk to Donte for FREE. There is no motivation for any other team to trade for Donte. Even in that scenario, Donte's value is highly suspect because he is a free agent this offseason. Pie in the sky trade speculation based on how well Donte is playing irrelevant. His trade value isn't set by how well he's playing. It's set by the market for his services. Right now, it's extremely limited. Donte is playing great. Sure, it would be great to get something for him. We won't. The guy is a FA this offseason and he'll probably get paid way more than we can afford, given other needs.

Mariota is "an" option, but frankly none of the FA's next year are inspiring: Brissett is probably the most promising of a bad, bad bunch. And most of them are OLD.

To me it's mind blowing the caliber of player we've lost to injury and otherwise shortened an amazing career. I'll give them that Kuechly was probably not preventable. He played the way he played. But Cam was 100% on the staff. I don't care that Cam "seems to take his biggest hits in the pocket" (still a problem) or that "he's big enough to take it". You don't run your MVP QB in a power scheme at the volume we did it. That's on them. I'm not sure what to make of CMC. There were no signs prior to last year that he would have these issues. A lot of folks cite his volume of touches, but when you look at it objectively, Barry Sanders had similar numbers of touches. It does sometimes seem like we're a little snakebit when it comes to injuries. Even in 2015, who is to say what might have been without all the injuries.

I don't. When do you anticipate the players giving up? To me it's obvious when it happens. Witness, Ron Rivera's last year. If you wish to wallow in misery because we lost badly, feel free. As I said, I anticipate we'll bounce back. I don't yet have evidence that the players have given up. We fought in every game last year save for a couple. I expect to see us fight this week. If we start to get repeatedly blown out without signs of a fight, that's a different story. But it's a story not yet written.

I'm not worried about Rhule until the players give up on him. Last week was not a good look, but I expect to see a reaction this week. It's ok to lose, it's not ok to lose without a fight.

With the season going the way it is, I'd prefer we not rush any of our players back from injury.

Yep, this. We're trying to rehab Darnold from a situation where he had entirely too much pressure on him from a horrible offensive line. So we then put him behind a line that arguably might be even worse? How was that EVER supposed to work? Darnold is Colin Kaepernick minus all the political baggage and a good offensive line. As Kaep's Oline fell off, he started to get exposed for what he was. A one read runner.

Chuba has been fine in the run game. Sometimes teams decide to take that away by stacking the box and forcing you to throw. Our line is DEFINITELY not good enough to run against a stacked box. The Saints stacked the box, but Sam lit them up. The Giants stacked the box, and . . . that happened. Expect more of this now that word is out that Sam is struggling. Run game and pass game work hand in hand. If Sam is completing throws downfield, box loosens up and we have a chance to run it. The whole offense is just in a really bad place. This is what happened to Cam his last year. Teams stacked up close to the LOS to stop the run and short pass because they knew Cam just couldn't beat them deep. Teams know Sam is struggling, so they force him to beat them. Some of this is on Sam. Some of it is on our receivers. Some is on our line. Sam completed 64% of his passes against the Giants. That's not terrible. It would have been around 70% if our receivers didn't have a collective case of the yips. Our line hasn't had a game allowing less than 3 sacks since WEEK TWO. That's terrible. Way too much pressure to put on a QB who you are trying to rehab from THIS EXACT PROBLEM.

New IR rules just make it easier / more beneficial to put guys there. That's all it is.

Before you poo on Minshew, you might want to look a little closer. Yes, the Jags were 7-25 over the last two seasons, the two where Minshew was on the roster. Minshew was 7-13. While that record isn't wonderful, what it does say is that WITHOUT him the Jags didn't win a single game. His stats look fine. On his career, he's at 63% overall completions. He made a huge jump from his rookie season to his second season, going from 60% to 66%. His TD% looks good at 4.5%, on par with Derek Carr. His INT% even better at 1.4%, on par with Aaron Rodgers. All of this while on a Jacksonville team that was, believe it or not, even worse than ours. Honestly, I would have much rather had Minshew and someone like Brissett in here than what we have. But that's just me.