Sgt Schultz

What are you talking about??? We once had Mike Shu........never mind.

I was fully expecting somebody to knock the snot out of him. If it was somebody on the opposing team, I am pretty sure nobody on the Bucs would have done anything to stop it. If it had been somebody on the Bucs, I don't think anybody else on the Bucs would have seen anything. Heck, if it had been one of the officials nobody would have cared. The guy was an embarrassment on every level.

I think the concern was that a seldom-used helmet would not conform to the shape of the players' heads as much as one they wore almost constantly. There is some rationale to that, I just don't know enough to know how much.

He really doesn't need to, and it shows a level of maturity that he recognizes that. Almost everybody, from the players to the Jets' receptionist have pretty much said it all. All that remains is for the receptionist to add that despite the fact he had his own parking spot, he regularly parked on the line and took up two!

Oh my, I forgot about Kiffin. There is a reason McDaniels has not gotten another NFL HC job. The Broncos should have fired him about 30 days after they hired him, and before he had even taken the field (gameday or practice) as an NFL HC. We are assembling a real "Hall of Shame" here.

No discussion of horrible NFL HC's can be complete without Greg Schiano. Guy didn't even know the friggin rules. He was one-and-done, at least. Or Mr. Dunkin Donuts 2015, Jim Tomsula. In fairness, he was hired because the 49ers couldn't get anyone else to take the job. And he looked like it. But it wasn't his fault he was hired, and he may not have even asked for the job! Add Mike Patricia to that list, too. And Pat Shurmur. They made Rivera and Fox look like Lombardi and Tom Landry.

I have AdBlock Plus installed on my browser, and it allowed me to block it (right clicked on the picture and selected Block Element). I've done that with a couple of those pictures over time.

Yeah, see my post above about some of us being chronically cynical and the rest having Stockholm Syndrome.

I'll be honest. I have game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals for 2019 on the TiVo. I've watched it probably 25 times since June 12, 2019. To this day, there is a point when the clock winds down to 12 seconds and Doc Emrick (the announcer) says "and the Blues on the bench realize they are going to be champions," I still get a lump in my throat. When I watched it live, at some point in the final few seconds I would describe myself as in stunned silence. I knew what was happening and appreciated it, but I just sat there and soaked it up.

I'm just as guilty as anybody. But I grew up and remain a St. Louis Blues fan. Even in 2019, when they were the hottest team for the last four months of the NHL season heading into the playoffs, my thoughts were "if this were not the Blues, they would be my favorite to win the Cup." Much to my amazement, they did. But I am still not past it with them, either.

Getting over that sort of trauma takes time. As Springsteen said, "you end up like a dog that's been beat too much til you spend half your life just covering up."

Add that after years of questionable talent acquisitions from our GMs and little to no development from our coaching staffs, we expect defeat to somehow be grabbed from the jaws of victory. Those who have not reached that point probably have some strange form of Stockholm Syndrome.

I remember that one (don't remember who, but I am old). Yeah, that was over the top. Especially when the odds are Darnold will wind up somewhere between Jamarcus Russell and Joe Montana, not mentioned in the same breath with Montana. Wait, that would be me (just ask my wife).

It has been my observation that some of the biggest melees on message boards are between people whose thoughts are not far apart. And I am not referring to you and me, because our discussions on this and other things have always been civil and relatively low-keyed. Well, maybe two sources: people whose views are pretty close or people trying to reason with morons.

I am less convinced than you seem to be that he is going to be bad here. Part of that is his age and raw talent, part of that is our HC's history of pulling people up beyond what they may have thought possible. Part of it is that he has had next to no development in stop one (and the hope he has not been ruined by it). I am not convinced they are all in on him, either. What I think I see in these tea leaves is they wanted 2-3 years out of Teddy with some mild hope he might be the guy. They wanted time to address the position. That lasted one. So they went after a guy who can give them the other two (if they want it), seems to address the hole in Teddy's resume, and will determine after this year or next whether they need to find a longer-term answer. For all we know, the move to Darnold may have been more spurred by Watson's situation than anything else. He might be nothing more than buying time to see how that shakes out, with the same caveat they had when they signed Teddy....who knows, he might be the guy? That and my biggest question is not who is the QB, it is still whether our OL can keep whoever is QB from getting killed back there. We certainly have more weapons for a young QB than the Jets do, but if our OL play does not improve they are just as likely to be eating our turf as they were MetLife turf.

For me, here's the rub.....the jury is out on the guy. Sure, his performance to date has not been good. The problem is that performance was on a poorly constructed, poorly coached team with a guy running the show that would not even allow audibles. I'm not sure I can draw many conclusions from that. Put Mahomes in that environment and the jury might be out on him, too. But, we know the history of reclamation projects under center. That is not on his side. When it works out, it can work out big. Most of the time, you wind up with a marginal starter or okay backup. The worst do not get a second chance. Rhule and company looked at Darnold and felt that they could develop him into something. I think they are hoping for something similar to what they expected from Bridgewater: a bridge while they find who they really want and maybe wind up being that guy in their offensive scheme. Had Teddy thrown downfield more, we would not be having this discussion. Had Darnold been bad with the Chargers, Vikings, Dolphins, or any one of about 24 other teams, we may not be having this discussion, either. But he was bad on a horrible team with an idiot for a HC. That leaves a lot of variables open. Or, as kungfoodude said earlier, we'll know soon enough. I doubt it will be in September, but by November we should have a decent barometer.

Eh, I see a lot of speculation and not much else. While it is highly doubtful we are "shopping" him, all sorts of names and ideas come up on draft day and a few days before. If his name was trotted out, it was not necessarily shopping him as much as seeing if somebody would pay a king's ransom for him or anybody else. That's the business. But all the speculation over something that originated on Walter Football? Next time I cross paths with the wino who hangs around near the center of town I'll ask him if he can confirm any of this.

Not to mention that he didn't coach. Looking at the totality of the numbers you put together, I don't think anybody up there did. Excellent research, BTW.

It'll never happen. I doubt he'll be around that long.

Our OL does not give me a good feeling, either. If Christenson and hopefully Brown can move into the starting lineup (and not by attrition) by weeks 8-12, it would be a good move. Otherwise, I hope they are better than last year, but that is not a high bar. While some point at numbers that place us just below the middle of the league, every number I see about QB time to release or pocket time indicates our ranking is skewed by one of the quickest snap to throw or snap to collapse times in the league. I'm not as convinced as the consensus around here that our OL was better than what Darnold had with the Jest. They ranked lower...but also had longer times by which to give up sacks. I'm hopeful about Darnold, but largely because he is 23. The two risks are that he was not able to turn the NFL corner to begin with, or his time with the Jest beat his ability to do that out of him. But, his attitude so far (including work ethic) should give him the chance to elevate himself, assuming he is capable and we don't get him killed. He certainly was not a statue with the Jest, but if we have yet another situation where his brain associates dropping back with running for his life, well, that is not exactly conducive for improvement in the passing game or better decision making.

That stench may have been him, or it may have been "hepp" from the owner, or Rivera's passive-aggressive way of shutting the owner up about Haskins. We have a buffoon move and both a head coach and an owner very capable of executing/directing a buffoon move. It does fit Danny Boy's M.O., though. I've said elsewhere, Danny Boy likes to mouth the words he is giving somebody total control, but then quietly undermine them by flexing his extensive football knowledge. The guy is a master at screwing things up without leaving his fingerprints on the wreckage, so who knows?

Ron was a good to great DC in Chicago and San Diego. Of course, that was a decade ago, and his middle name is not Adaptable, so who knows how he would do anymore? But it is hard for me to think he would be awful in that role today. His Achilles heel here was soft zone coverage, but that may have been dictate more by personnel than preference. We did adapt the one year we had a guy who played the role of a shutdown corner (Norman in 2015). I agree with CRA that DL play also contributes to that. Any team that can sack, pressure, or disrupt the timing of a QB using 4 rushers is going to be able to cover a lot of sins in the secondary. We watched the Giants get inside Brady's head twice in Superb Owls and the Bucs disrupt Mahomes in the last one by being able to do that consistently. Then there is his other asset of excessive loyalty. Washington was 6+ feet of man standing in 12+ feet of water as the DC. Not wanting to cut the legs out from under the guy is admirable, but at some point it was obvious he was not going to come up for air. Half a season later, Ron figured that out.

I've looked at them both, but find Spotrac easier to navigate. I think OTC is probably quicker on the draw when something changes. I have read that Spotrac grabs data from OTC (as well as other sources, and I believe they cite or link to OTC when they do). Keep in mind, Spotrac is trying to cover all sports while OTC concentrates just on the NFL.

When you have a RB blurt out something like that, you can guess he is from Stanford or Northwestern.

Pete Carroll did it with team #3, and 4 years into that (his 8th in the NFL). It really just depends on the situations they walk into. But, at some point the message does get stale. Rivera said that when he took the Panthers job, he thought the limit of that timeline was about 10 years. Almost on cue, he hit his limit. Among his faults, one of them was NOT a lack of understanding that guys like Landry, Shula, Knoll, and Belichick are very much exceptions, and even their style/message seemed to get stale at points in their tenures. Although they also adapted to one degree or another along the way.