Sgt Schultz

Right now, there is a meeting in Lincoln, NE where the AD is trying to explain to The Process that they cannot offer a FA NFL QB a football scholarship.

That always stems the great debate about how many "busts" might have been decent had they been drafted by a team that could develop a QB, or at a minimum, put a young QB in a position to succeed rather than almost assure failure. And how many great good QBs might have been washed out had they gone to a dumpster fire. Great QBs probably will always find a way to be great, and bad ones will always find a way to be bad. But that middle group, which is probably the majority, wind up being functions of coaching. Some manage to salvage careers anyway, but are left wondering what might have been.

Eh, we have to finish getting out of our own way before we worry about who else might be in our way.

I think the record may be the last thread he started, but I don't remember the exact number so it could be close.

I always thought that if Cam's contract had two years remaining at that point, we would have seen him in 2020. The fact he had only one year, he wanted a new contract, his shoulder recovery was a big unknown, the team was basically being torn down and rebuilt, Tepper did not appear to be one of his biggest fans, and we had a new coaching staff created a time bomb that exploded. If that had played out, we would have at least been able to answer the question of his shoulder before we moved forward. But nobody was going to give him a $25M or $30M deal for 2021 (and beyond, perhaps with more money on the table) with that hanging over things. And nobody did.

All that is true, but none of it tells me he would have or did learn a thing from Cam. When Cam came back, it was solely to take the heat off Rhule. Basically, Cam was a tool to give the fans something to cheer for, get them off Rhule's back for a while, and save his bacon (for the time being, as it turned out). Rhule had to be gracious. Honestly, I doubt if he even understood what he was thanking Cam for other than that. But, I agree that Rhule didn't know how to deal with an NFL team or the many personalities on that team, and he still does not. He assumed that they respond to the same things 18-21 year olds respond to. The problem is he does not believe that he does not know that. We've all seen Rhules before. They take something as complex as an NFL team and reduce it to something they understand, whether it conforms or not. It usually does not. They wind up creating a fiasco and then blaming somebody else for the mess. I can't isolate a single decision to roll back that would have made things different for him. The underlying problem is the guy does not seem to be self-aware enough to know what he does not know and then find the person/people that do. And, I don't believe for one minute that the decision to bring in people who did have experience was his.

I don't think Rhule would have learned anything from Cam. It's not that having Cam around would not have given him the opportunity to learn, but Rhule thinks he knows everything, and anybody who doesn't believe that is simply "not OOU." The Process is basically a cult leader, and Cam would not have been OOU. I think The Process knew that from the start and that was why Cam was sent packing, just as much as Cam's shoulder and the uncertainty of any recovery. The Process can not tolerate a big personalty to compete with, especially one endeared to the fans. He could have learned a lot from Bridgewater, too, as it turned out. But instead of listening, he had to be exiled, too. Hell, he could have learned a lot from the janitor had he just been willing to admit he didn't know everything.

They were 1-11 this year. If everybody decided to transfer I am not sure anyone would notice. One of Colorado's major issues is recruiting. The state of Colorado does not produce enough talent to make them competitive, so they have to hit the road to California and Texas and compete with schools who are not doormats. Deion can at least bring something to that discussion. They've had two winning seasons (one being 4-2 in 2020) in the last 17 years, which is how long the kids they are recruiting have been alive. That is not exactly a legacy of football excellence.

That is more realistic than us winning out. I think we will lodge somewhere in the middle, 2-3 or maybe 3-2 if we The Steelers have found their footing, so they will not be a pushover. Tomlin is no slouch, so it is no surprise they are stabilizing. The Seahawks have come down to earth a bit, but they are still not the disaster everybody expected back in September. Like Tomlin, Carroll is not exactly The Process. Before the season began, my big concern about these two was that by the time we played them, their respective coaches would have figured things out and stopped the bleeding. The Lions have won 4 out of their last 5, with the lone loss in the dying seconds on Thanksgiving against the Bills. The remaining two are against the Saints and Bucs, both on the road. What is going in our favor is that of those five opponents, only the Steelers rank in the top half of the league (5th) against the run in yards per carry. The Steelers are also 7th in rushing yards allowed, while Tampa creeps into the upper half of the league based on that measure. So, we may be able to avoid our lacking QB play in 3 or 4 of the remaining games unless we manage to fall behind big early on. It is not the toughest schedule in the NFL by any stretch, and every one of those games is winnable. If this were the Bills, Chiefs, Eagles, or Vikings we'd be filling pretty good. But it is not a cakewalk, and for the Panthers, every one of them is loseable, too.

That leads to another problem. Regardless of what they think of Hackett, I doubt they are going to get anybody interested in the job with Wilson burning an enormous hole in their cap and their ability to build an offense. They created quite a mess for themselves by being so desperate for a QB they pushed that many chips into the center of the table. They are at a point where they either hope Wilson can hit mediocrity or draft somebody who can and just accept that $161M handicap. They could be trying to win 13-10 games for several years.

Like society itself, this place goes from one extreme to another and can do so in the span of about three hours. Neither ever settles anywhere in the middle. 5.5 seems like a good over/under. We have not won two games in a row all season. We've beaten one non-NFCS team, and they are a team that can't score in a house of ill repute. I'm less concerned about the fact we have not won a road game, but that is out there. No matter which QB is our starting QB, they do not exactly strike fear in opposing defenses. I can realistically see us getting to 6-11. 7-10 is about the upper limit until we shake off some of the above demons. But this talk of running the table is just another extreme for the place to bounce off of. Let's try winning two in a row first and see where we go from there.

Michigan airports, train stations, government buildings, a dormitory, and perhaps Ann Arbor itself will be renamed in his honor. There will be a Michigan state holiday in his name. And probably a bank or two, just because most of their assets will be in his name from that contract. The last time Michigan was a NC was '97, as a co-champ with Nebraska. The last time they were the consensus NC was 1947.

For now, he has a two-game winning streak against Ohio State. That hasn't happened since Lloyd Carr was the coach in 2000 & 01. After wanting to name a campus men's room (or maybe just a stall) after him two years ago, they probably eyeing up a cathedral to name after him now. Before that, OSU won 15 of 16 (including a 37-7 win in 2010 later vacated, but the beating still happened). Michigan hasn't won three in a row against OSU since '95-'97. If he does that, they may want to name one of the Great Lakes after him. After that, Mt. Rushmore. Barring some scandal his stock in Ann Arbor is pretty good right now. Hell, he probably can't even pay for his own drinks these days.

The only real changes was that the Browns, Packers, Raidahs, and Steelers all "graduated" from the 4-win club. They were all behind us to start with, but it gives us a bit of a cushion. Would have been nice if the Rams and Broncos would have held on. We still would have been ahead of the Broncos (I think) because of last week's win, but that would have tightened that up a little bit. Detroit and Seattle would not have been so amused, since they own those picks.

There were a lot of reasons for that, though. Let's remember, after they pushed Harbaugh out, they did not have any credible HC candidates that wanted to talk to them seriously. They wound up hiring Mr. Dunkin Donuts 2015 as their HC. Then there was the QB situation. Harbaugh wanted to develop Kaepernick, and that process actually started in 2014. It ended when Harbaugh left. The only thing Tomsula knew about QBs were they were hard to catch. So they did the easy thing, and ran Kaepernick out in the RPO again, despite the fact that the league had caught up to it. I believe they openly shopped Kaepernick after Harbaugh was dispatched, and didn't get any bites big enough for what they wanted. They were also an aging team at that point. They were pretty much heading into a rebuild at that point. Here is an article from March of 2015 that describes their situation pretty well. Most of those things were going to happen even if Harbaugh had been there. The only wild card was probably whether Kaepernick was going to become more of a QB than a runner who took the snap. There is no guarantee that was going to work, either, but he and Harbaugh were on the same page about the next steps. Here is an article from March 2015 that describes what the 49ers were up against back then. https://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/03/colin-kaepernick-trade-49ers-rumors-san-francisco Moral of the story was 2015 was going to be a down year, even with Harbaugh. It takes a vivid imagination to think he was going to roll a 12-4 or 11-5 with that team and an Owl run. The fact that they hired a DL coach to run the entire show made it worse, and put them in a situation where there only taker for 2016 was a guy who was pretty much being dispatched from the NFL (Chip Kelly). They were an effing mess the likes that even we can't touch.

The NFL is not a good learning place for somebody beyond their third or fourth year in the league. By the time they get to year five, teams would much rather try and teach somebody in year one. They are generally much cheaper and much less tainted by their previous experiences.

Well, Idi Amin was arguably better than Dan Snyder. It's close, though. Tepper is not the second-worst, either. Khan, Haslam, Amy Adams Strunk, Mike Brown, Mark Davis, and Spanos would all be "ahead" of him on that list, and I am probably forgetting a few. Jones is probably "ahead" of him, too, since he really believes he is a GM.

To whatever degree the fans at B of A did The Process in, I pass along my congratulations and sincere gratitude.

At some point, somebody needs to sit him down and get him some professional help. We may be thumbing through the channels in a month or two and find him on Dr. Phil. I've seen similar things out of people before, most who were fired or pushed out (the Government rarely fires anybody for anything, they just move them to a different position and generally one that did not exist the day before). It generally does not end well. His undoing, if he doesn't dial it back, may be in his contract details. I have not seen anything about his contract with the Panthers or Nebraska, but the typical one contains a "code of conduct" clause. He may want to have someone explain that to him, because they are usually vague and boil down to "thou shalt not embarrass the employer." That could impact his buyout from the Panthers and his future at Nebraska. They would not be the first university to get rid of a coach who became a burden using that.

Come on now, it shouldn't be too hard since there are not a lot of wins to choose from.

I honestly think all were mistakes. The first mistake (hiring him) can be traced to Hurney and meat balls. Hurney is basically a BS artist masquerading as an NFL executive, and he was drawn to another BS artist who quite clearly was not an X's and O's guy or game strategist. Tepper sat in a room with two BS artists, one talking about the success of his process, sports science (which there is no evidence he knows anything about), culture, etc. The other BS artist is nodding enthusiastically and wants his fellow BS artist hired, and he wolfs down more meat balls. Perhaps had Tepper had a few years under his belt as an NFL owner, he would have excused himself, stepped out, began the process of firing the BS artist he already has on staff and broken off further discussion with the BS artist not yet under his employment. The duration of the contract, amount, and level of control given to a college coach with a cup of coffee of NFL experience was pure lunacy. Ironically, Philadelphia did something similar by giving Kelly control after a couple of years and it led to his downfall fairly quickly, so we do not learn from the experiences of others. I was never The Process was brought back for year three. Tepper is either patience or overly cautious about sending people packing. Hurney got a year longer than he should have, and Rivera's last year was almost a pre-ordained failure. Given that, I thought it was unlikely Rhule was going to be sent packing. In light of what we now know, not firing him was more hope than realistic possibility. The Process was clearly clueless about why the team was losing last year, and he was equally clueless about what to do about it even if he had figured out why. He knows one way of doing things and it was never going to work. Tepper thought that having him bring in experienced coaches would help, but given that he was a control freak, that was never going to work for long, if at all.

Unlike The Process, I wish him the best. Just not here.

Definitely! The shine will wear off that star soon enough. Nebraska has a definite ceiling as long as they are in the same conference with Ohio State, Michigan, and sometimes Penn State, barring a dramatic decline in those programs. When this started, I was hoping for Rhule's sake that he went to Arizona State or Colorado because of aspirations/expectations and the size of the mountain he will need to climb. After this, I'm glad he went there.

He doesn't consider the possibility that the experienced NFL coaches didn't connect with the way he wanted to do things because he had no idea what he was doing at the NFL level, and they picked up on that pretty quickly. It's comical the way he talks about having the rug pulled out from under him when the four or five year plan became a two year plan. He didn't get canned for now winning an Owl in two or three years. He got canned for not making any progress in over two years, even though the roster got better (as he tries to take credit for). Even after last year's debacle, had this team made progress and finished 8-9 or so, we'd have been subjected to year four of The Process. But that was beyond him. Of course, it can't be him. And if in three years Nebraska is 3-8 again, that won't be on him, either.

Matt Rhule will be able to blend in in the Midwest. It is not because the Midwest is fully of disingenuous, narcissistic, shallow clowns. Usually quite the opposite. But, if you have ever driven on a midwest country road and looked at the field as you drove by, you might see him him. There stands a horse, slowly making its way westbound. You are looking at the east end.