BrianS

If I was Thomas Brown, I would definitely want Dalton to start the last game. I think it's important for his ongoing career to show that "It's not me".

Here's what Spotrac says about our upcoming free agents: I would take Burns, Brown and Luvu at those deals right now. We just don't have the cap to do it.

In complete fairness, if I were Tepper I'd have paid a lot of money to have Hurney picking our first rounders the last three years.

Yea, exactly. If Penix is there we should take Penix. The guy would be the top pick in the draft if people weren't wringing their hands about his injury history.

No. We don't. Say we choose Penix. We now have two QB's. SO WHAT! If both succeed, we can still trade one and get a first plus more. But chances are one of them fails. Odds are it's Bryce. It's all baloney anyway. Penix isn't going to fall to 33. He's the best QB in the draft, the only way he gets out of the top 5 is if people get scared of his injuries. Bearing in mind he's played two complete seasons in a row now, with none.

I'd love Penix, and if by some miracle he's there at 33 you don't walk to the podium with the card, you RUN.

Ugh. I think you're right. I know it's been said before, but can we just hire Hurney as a first round specialist?

My dude. You keep throwing this 50 sack number out like it's all on our line and the truth is it's not. Let me throw some numbers at you. Bear in mind these are team stats, not player stats, which is important since many teams have used multiple QB's this year. First, pressure rate. Our pressure rate is similar to that of the Browns, Lions and Chiefs . . . three playoff teams. The Bengals and the Texans also had similar pressure rates - two pretty good teams. Will Levis with the Titans has done pretty well (compared to Bryce) with more pressure. Despite having the lowest pressure rate in the league, how has Taysom / Jameis / Carr looked in New Orleans? Now, look at pocket time. The time from snap until either the ball is out or pressure arrives. Interesting that the two teams with the highest pocket times also have higher pressure rates than we do. BY's pocket time is within a tenth of a second of the vast majority of the league. Also interesting that Stroud shows the exact same pocket time as Bryce. Things that make you go hmmmmmm. A great deal of our problems this year has been our QB's inability to make fast decisions. Our OL certainly must shoulder it's share of the blame, but it's not the only problem. Likely it's not even the main problem. Just looking at it statistically, Stroud has been given largely the same sort of protection that Young has been given. Yet Stroud manages to make those fast decisions and get the ball out either to a receiver or out of play. Our team is bad. Our scheme is bad. Both can be true. Just like we can have a bad QB and a bad OL.

Troll skill rating: 2/10

Colts have played basically the entire season with their backup QB. Man I sure am glad we didn't hire that Steichen guy.

This is a media narrative that needs to be killed off. Purdy doesn't get significantly more YAC than any of the top 10 QB's. Here's a quick table: Purdy gets 32 fewer yards per game from YAC than Mahomes does . . . and no one is remotely saying Mahomes benefits overly from YAC. Purdy gets 18 yards per game more than the LEAST YAC - closer to the bottom than the top! The other thing that then pops off the page is that Purdy has thrown far fewer passes per game than the rest of this crew. So with fewer attempts and YAC differences largely irrelevant Purdy has put up top 10 yardage numbers. The only remaining answer is that Purdy throws it farther downfield than these other guys. Yep, Air Yards per completion checks out. The only guy who throws it farther is Stroud. The truth is that Purdy is a top QB this year. Maybe it doesn't last. Maybe the situation in SF changes. Anything can happen. But credit where credit is due. The guy has played exceptional football this year as a whole. Bonus round, because we're the cursed fan base of the Carolina Panthers: If Stroud had played 16 games this year, his line would be - 4393 yards on 342 completions out of 541 attempts. Yes, CJ Stroud would be the second leading yardage QB in the league.

This is not Mingo's problem. At all. His stats are very comparable with most rookie WR's taken in the first three rounds with one exception: Catch Percentage. His is 50%. He has the same problem another of our round 2 flops had: Devin Funchess. I know nobody wants to hear it, but there it is. He's a big receiver who plays small. He needs to spend time learning to body people up and use his hands. You can't teach 6'2", 220lbs. Hopefully someone can teach him to catch 70% of his targets and impose himself on DB's.

Stop. Thinking. Like. This. What he gets for sacks is irrelevant. Completely. He is there to take up two blockers on every play and allow our LB's to actually play the game. He needs to push the pocket so the QB cannot step up. If he does these things he's worth top DT money.

Jeremy Chinn is still employed? Who knew!

DJ Moore - having his best year as a pro. Christian McCaffrey - having his best year as a pro. It's us. No doubt. I hate to think we'd be better off with Hurney as our GM . . . but I think we might be.

It's deserved. He's done an awful job of steering this franchise since he took over, and now he is seemingly pissed that his poor leadership has created the worst team in the league.

I would really have liked to see Brady C and Ickey swapped when things went downhill this year just to see if we had a LT on the roster we didn't know about. And yea, it sure does seem like we have had a lot more injuries the last couple years - strangely right around the time we switched to turf. Hmmmmm.

Honestly, the difference between 30 million and 15 million per year in the overall scheme of your life is irrelevant. Burns is gonna walk away from football with a MINIMUM of 100 million in the bank. He is set for life. If he really wants to be here - which is what he's saying - then the money shouldn't matter. I still think we franchise him, just to protect our interests. It's a $19 million offer, and it gives us the chance to see if we can still get those two firsts for him. If someone were to offer him $25 million per season I would take the draft picks and RUN.

And that's probably about right. The guy just doesn't impact / change games. More often than not, you see him getting ridden around behind the QB - when he even gets close. He doesn't get sacks, he doesn't really make a lot of tackles . . . and if you're counting on another player to "unlock" him that's dead solid evidence he's not a game changer. Honestly, I think he'd be better of as a situational pass rusher. He doesn't defend the run very well so don't have him in there. Maybe if he's still here, next year will show us something different. This is our first year in the 3-4 and that's never an easy transition. We've had a ton of injuries. I'm curious if he finally figures it out . . . but not at top money.

You need a coach who gives you an advantage. Period. Has nothing to do with the old "leader of men" trope. What kind of culture did the Dolphins have before McDaniel? The Lions before the current staff? Bengals? All the teams that turned things around got two things right: Coach and QB. That's it. You get those two things right and your franchise can flip immediately.

I think the HoF needs to start looking at different stats. Total yardage isn't a great way to look at receiving, especially between eras. Yards per game or yards per reception might be better.

You're going through a lot of mental gymnastics to make it look like CMC was a 10M a year player for us and he wasn't. If we kept him, he would have cost us 16M (average) per year - there is no getting around that. In terms of THIS year, it would have cost us 2M LESS (18M versus 16M) to keep him than trade him. Next year we save 16M versus keeping him.

Incorrect. CMC was going to cost us $16M annually. Because we paid his signing bonus, it accelerated when we traded him and we're paying the rest of it off this year. That's where his dead cap number with us came from. San Fran didn't have to take any of that on, so they get him for $10M per year, which is a freaking steal.

I agree with Mr Scot, 1000 yards isn't the bar it used to be. But likewise, Chubba has shown us this year that he is, in fact, a legit NFL RB and can be counted on. I no longer think of Chubba as part of the problem, instead I think he can be part of the solution.