Peon Awesome

Young's growth in the past few weeks has been astronomical. I'm not going to sit here and assume he's already hit his ceiling. His play has forced me to stop making any assumptions. I doubt after week 2, even the most die hard Panthers optimists and Bryce supporters envisioned any world where Bryce and Stroud could be uttered in the same breath with a straight face. The way Bryce Young is raising his game and CJ Stroud is regressing or at best stagnating, I suddenly don't think that's an outlandish possibility. And articles like this seem to hint it as well. But this is obviously still a time will tell situation.

Bryce Young went from being one of the historically worst performing QBs in NFL history to being lauded by pundits across the country for his recent performance and going toe to toe with 2 of the best teams in the league. Now Joe Schmo wants to poo poo on Huddlers being excited for the future since Bryce isn't Josh Allen yet. You must really have a miserable life. I honestly feel sorry for you.

You know it's interesting, I felt the same. For me, in part, in those 2 wins it kind of felt like those teams were mostly beating themselves and the Panthers were fortunate beneficiaries of their ineptitude. I felt perhaps more amusement at watching these other teams dysfunction than genuine happiness by the Panthers performance. Meanwhile for this Chiefs game, the Panthers rose to the occasion and nearly muscled out a win against a super talented team that wasn't making stupid mistakes. I was legitimately proud of the Panthers this week. It felt like for the first time in a while, we earned some real respect.

I had pretty much accepted that Bryce Young was never going to have a career here but this game legitimately gives me pause. He was really outstanding. We have 6 games left to see if it's a flash in the pan or true growth. It would certainly be better for the long term outlook of this team if he could pan out so we don't have to keep starting from scratch. I'm now keeping an open mind

The Chiefs have 6 including the #1 player on the list. The fact that it went to overtime pretty well reflects how fairly evenly they are on paper.

The way I see it, either Bryce will suck the team down which will deflate Diontae's value and then we can resign him for a bigger bargain than we could now. Or he'll help Bryce achieve new heights, in which case, I'm perfectly happy paying a premium for him and we'll have tons of money to do so.

You make a couple fair points. But there are some points of clarification. For one, I wasn't suggesting they'd be super bowl contenders in 2022 but 2023, considering they weren't that far without him. Although its fair to think they might have won an extra game or two with him and pick 36 could have been more like pick 42. Also, Burns didn't have to have as big of an impact as 4 starters, just pick 36, since they only traded pick 36. So my point is they could have made the same draft picks in the other rounds and signed a free agent guard and been in the same position. Also, the Rams don't trade 2 1sts and a 2nd and not sign Burns to a long-term contract. They're not going to let him play on his 5th year contract. His 2023 hit would've been modest and they wouldn't have had to make much of any extra sacrifices to fit him in.

Honestly it's a moot point but I think you're way off on this point. The Rams could easily find a serviceable free agent guard. Letting Burns feast next to Aaron Donald would have likely made them super bowl contenders. They barely lost to Detroit with a substandard pass rush. I could see Burns easily having 15+ sacks with Donald commanding triple teams. Don't get me wrong; even if the Rams won the super bowl every year with Burns, it'd still be good value for the Panthers so its definitely a big mistake that we turned it down. But people here kept saying the Rams would have been giving us top 10 picks. They already showed how wrong they were this year with the Rams making the playoffs and that's even without Burns impact.

This is probably the worst possible thing we can do. Best case in that scenario is we lose Burns, have to sit out free agency completely to not negate the comp pick and then get essentially the last pick of the 3rd round in 2025. The only viable options are tag and trade or sign to a long term extension. You're deluding yourself if you think we can't do better than what's essentially a 2025 4th round pick if we tag and trade him.

Patrick Willis getting in pretty much guarantees Luke will get in. Not sure if he'll be 1st ballot but that'd be great. I'm not going to squabble if he doesn't get in till his 2nd year if some people penalize him for his short career. But it's obvious the committee values dominance over longevity which bodes well.

Fitzgerald is a slam dunk first ballot hall of famer but he's not eligible yet. The others are a legitimate argument. I think there's just a logjam of comparably deserving candidates.

Not too surprised. They've got a lot of money invested in their original content on their own platforms (Peacock and Paramount+). If anything, staying out of this strengthens those services. Many people who only have cable for sports may opt to cancel their cable and sign up for this, Peacock and Paramount+ to make sure they don't miss any big sporting events. Fox doesn't have a paid streaming service and this can't get off the ground without ESPN since they have over 50% of the sports market, so makes sense those 2 would partner up.

The problem hasn't been Tepper stubbornly refusing to learn from his mistakes. Tepper's time has been a string of mistakes followed by a 180 shift that still fails. For instance, he hires a college coach with almost no NFL experience with a staff with almost no NFL experience, and then proceeds to hire Frank Reich, a highly experienced coach who assembled an experienced legitimate NFL staff. He was criticized for holding onto Rhule too long, so then he fires Reich midway through his 1st season. He also went from a couple retread veteran QBs to going all-in for a rookie. I think Tepper has shown he's willing to adapt. Just seemingly every move has stunk. I mean, if we take this example and let's say Canales fires Evero and replaces him with an absolute dud of a coordinator, I'm not going to applaud Tepper for being hands off. Bottom line, we need results, no matter how we get them.

This is an argument that bears out theoretically but not in reality. There's a reason guaranteed money is such a big deal. In your worst case scenario, Johnson gets $80 million for 1 year of work. He gets fired and either retires comfortably for the rest of his life if he wants or picks up a premium offensive coordinator position immediately if he wants to keep working. Or he can make half that money working in a position where 1/4 of the coaches get fired every year and coaches staying with the same team for more than 8 years is increasingly rare. Where best case scenario, he works 10 years to make what he made in 1 year in scenario 1, which is already more than he would spend in his lifetime.

We need a great coach and a great playcaller. They don't need to be the same person. People seem too stuck on the head coach having to call plays but that's absolutely not necessary and sometimes detrimental when it causes the coach to be overstretched. Two of the biggest turnarounds in recent history don't have offensive coaches: Houston and Detroit. 4 of the best coaches of this generation are not offensive: Mike Tomlin, John Harbaugh, Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll. I'm not saying we shouldn't hire an OC as the next head coacb. I'd be super excited if we could nab Ben Johnson. I just don't think we should be completely hellbent on hiring an OC that we essentially rule out hiring a DC from the jump. We just need to make sure any new head coach has a plan to bring along a promising offensive coordinator to fix this offense.