Sgt Schultz

Thanks for that. I knew there were incentives for him to earn the money back, but I have been too lazy to look up what they were. My suggestion for him is not to spend that additional money just yet. I could see the 70% of the games/snaps being met, but I think you listed them in the order they are likely to happen.

But in retrospect, maybe we should ask him to pick the next head coach for us.

He did agree to shave off about $3.5M of his contract. His fifth year should be the same as <gulp> Darnold's, $18.858M. The Browns are covering $10.5M, we are covering $4.858M. The remaining $3.5M he agreed to drop.

I'm trying to figure that out myself! But then again, I'm getting to that age that I forget things.

Ah, don't forget that important in-between step: Before buying another one, they stare at the ticket to make sure the numbers aren't going to magically change into the winners.

I got the distinct impression it worked out that way because the rumored other suitor was Seattle. Had they trotted out somebody else, we might well have had Darnold II, The Sequel.

Weeing the author talk about Mayfield not being as good as he thinks he is brings up something I posted somewhere here yesterday. Cleveland seems to consider any QB they get their hands on a savior. If you take a guy with the problem of thinking he is better than he is, and immediately fall to your knees whenever he walks onto the field, it is a recipe for disaster. And Mayfield is not the worst. Think Johhny Manziel. Mayfield should have a chip on his shoulder. That is normally a good thing, but the guy has a problem with interceptions, so we'll see. Favre often had a chip on his shoulder in big games, too, and it often resulted in some of the most mind-boggling interceptions one could ever see.

Ah yes......nobody circles the wagons like the Buffalo Bills.

I agree with that. Looking back at Hoodie's 20+ years in New England, I doubt that anybody can identify what his desired style of play is, based on the game films, or his "system" for building a team, based on the various ways he has pieced rosters together. He is the process, and his system is to win. Reid is a little more "visible" in what he likes to do, but still, there is that winning thing. If the guys I mentioned had a tell, it was how they handled things going to he11 around them and how they circled the wagons.

I don't know if Tepper was going to fire Rhule, but I think the conversation went about the same way it did when he asked Ron how he was going to fix the defense after 2018. The next thing you know, we were switching to a 3-4, kinda, sort, because Ron didn't have another answer (and Tepper liked the 3-4). When Rhule was asked how he was going to fix the offense, lacking any other answer he fired Brady.

Brady was 6-feet of man in 13 feet of water as an NFL OC. He worked for a guy who is 6-feet of man in 15 feet of water as an NFL HC. Maybe, if you put Brady in as the OC under Belichick or Reed, his “lift” is lightened and he gradually succeeds. Maybe. I’m not sure he works out under anybody else other than maybe McVeay…..even more maybe. His chances were certainly not enhanced by coming into a situation where he was one of the few coaches with NFL experience, working for a guy who had basically none. It falls into “what did we think was going to happen?” A red flag for college coaches and some NFL coaches is when they talk about how “their system” (“the process” here) leads to success. When has anybody heard Bill Belichick talk about his system? Reid? John Harbaugh? Tomlin? Don Shula? Bill Parcells? Bill Walsh? Joe Gibbs? Jimmy Johnson? It’s not that they don’t have a way they would like to do things, but given a choice between that or adjusting to what they have to work with, what is working in a given game, or what the opponent does, what they want to do goes out the window. "Their system/process" is to win by whatever means they can devise. An aside, it is my observation that OCs are more bull-headed about sticking to or returning to what they want to do (their system) than DCs. There's no shame in having a ceiling as a good NFL coordinator, position coach, college HC, college coordinator, etc. In fact, I respect people who reach their sweet spot, then either stick their toes in the water at the next step or seriously consider it and realize it is just not their cup of tea and return to what they are very good at or enjoy. Some eventually try again and a few of them succeed, with the benefit of more experience. Maybe Brady is one of those. But, the Brady experiment needed to end and it did. At the same time, he might have been a scapegoat since he was not the only guy on the sidelines that had no answers. As for Rhule, the deer in the headlights look last year and continuing to mumble about "the process" is not a promising look. I've been watching the NFL for a long time and seen that many times before, and it has never ended well.

I agree on the physical talent vs. metal ability and football knowledge. A guy like Darnold is living proof of that. So is Brady, in the opposite direction. So was Montana. You pair a guy up who can read a defense, recognize what is happening on any given play, and make quick decisions based with a coaching staff who approaches every week as a chess match and you get results. Seems as if most coaches play checkers with the chess pieces. Some play tiddly winks. The knock I heard on Jones was his ceiling was lower than that of the "big four," but in the situation he went into, that ceiling will either be raised a bit or rendered moot. I'm not comparing him to Brady, but go back in time I would not be surprised if the same concern followed him on draft day. Out of last year, I am not sure who I pity most right now: Wilson or Fields. It started out as Lawrence by a lot, but the Jags corrected their poor choice of coaches things started looking up.

Yeah, I am not a huge fan of Mayfield, but there is a limit. I've never met you, but you might be better than Darnold.

Matt's brother Mac did okay for himself in New England. Sorry, as the old saying went, the devil made me do it. Jones looked decent because Hoodie and company were smart enough to start with what he could execute and then add more as he got the hang of things. They did a good job of keeping the pressure off him while gradually pushing him forward at the same time. Most teams don't do that. They either expect the kid to run their whole offense, or they dumb it down to what he can do but never add pages back to the playbook as the season progresses. While I did not see the games, my guess is Jacksonville, the Jets, and da Bears all look more like the "most teams" category. Just throwing them out in the water against defenses who know their weaknesses, are licking their chops like hungry lions, and telling him to figure the mess out does not work so well.

It would probably help if Rhule booked some motivational seminars for people on Sunday afternoons, in places like Milwaukee, Des Moines, Little Rock, and San Antonio. Anywhere but Charlotte or where the city the Panthers happen to be playing a road game.

I wouldn't be too hard on them. Darnold does have Pro Bowl talent. Problem is that it takes more than talent alone to be a top-shelf NFL QB. I don't know if 7.1 is an accurate reflection of his talent or not. What I do know is his decision making is about a 1.4. A 1.1 from the Russian judge.

The Good The Panthers did not break the bank to acquire Mayfield, either in exchange with the Browns or in how much of his salary they ate. We stuck to our limit of how much salary we were willing to eat, which is good because the Browns screwed themselves and we did not need to dig them out. The fact that Mayfield was willing to part with $3M or so means he wants to play, not just watch the clock tick down on contract and move on He’s better than anybody else on the roster, with the jury still listening to evidence on Corral Perhaps this takes us back to the original idea with Bridgewater: give him two seasons, and along the way figure out if he is the answer or groom his successor Since Mayfield has been a starter and is in his “put up or shut up year” he should be motivated to perform. He’s playing for his next contract His contract is only for one year, so if it does not go well, we (hopefully) just let it lapse. The Bad The Browns decided they had gone as far as they were going to go with Mayfield. Before the Watson flirtations, the rumors were that they were looking to move on. That means they saw a definite ceiling to Mayfield and they thought they had hit it. The rebuttal to this is the people who saw the ceiling were.......the Browns. While he’s better than anybody else on the Panther roster, he is probably middle third QB at best. Being better than anybody else on the Panther roster is not exactly high praise. While his contract is only for one year, that assumes we do not do anything stupid……which we all know we have done before. It also means we have to figure out where he fits in our QB situation this year. This has the very real potential to delay any evaluation of Corral prior to the 2023 draft The Ugly This has little to do with Mayfield, but we are not exactly known for our prowess at evaluating QBs. We see things that nobody else sees because they are not there, and it may be related to...... Rhule or somebody on the staff thinks they can turn garbage into gold at the position. Who knows how highly they think of a guy who has actually had some semblance of success? As I said in the good, this perhaps puts us back to the plan we had with Bridgewater. The Ugly part of that is we are still there a couple of years later

That is probably a good benchmark right now, given all the unknowns. IF our 2020 draft class takes a major step forward, IF our OL, who is better on paper, gels on the field, IF CMC stays healthy IF Horn is who we think he is and stays healthy, IF our WRs stop dropping passes IF our defense steps up overall and is not just a minor impediment for opposing offenses IF our DL can hold its own and generate some pass rush IF our front 7 can at least slow down the run IF we get some TE involvement in our offense IF Mayfield is a top 15-ish QB and does not get hurt or Corral is game ready by the time it happens.... then we can win a lot more than 6, IF Rhule does not screw it up. IF half of those things happen, we could still win more than 6 with the same disclaimer at the end. I think the Falcons could well be the standard by which all dumpster fires are judged this year. The Jets are not out of the woods yet, either. Neither are the Texans.

Darnold will be holding a clipboard and waiting for either Mayfield or some other starter on a team with a depth chart of one credible QB to go down. I don't see the Panthers releasing him unless he has a sudden personality shift and becomes a locker room cancer. The money is spent whether he is on the roster or not. Walker should be the odd man out in this situation. I also have a hard time seeing who would be interested in Darnold, even if their starter goes down. Most likely, the sand runs out of Darnold's NFL hourglass in a Panther uniform at the end of this season.

I THINK their agreement with the ACC states that should they decide to join a conference for football, it will be the ACC. I have no idea what it would take to buy that out. Otherwise, that agreement is in place until something like 2036. Aside from that, you are correct. The Big 10 geographically makes the most sense, but looking at the proposed Big 12 and the fact Notre Dame has always wanted to play teams across the country, that may mean nothing. Notre Dame was around 4th in football revenue last year, 12th overall in athletic department revenue, and their endowment is 7th for individual schools (a cool $18B, only behind 4 Ivies, MIT, and Stanford). In other words, they have the endowment and revenue to operate their program any way they want. And they have. As for the Big 10 potential TV revenue vs. their contract with NBC, IF the Big 10 gets a huge deal, that will be ammunition for Notre Dame with NBC as their current contract, which was extended to 2025, winds down. NBC apparently wants to supplement that Notre Dame games on Saturdays, not replace them. With their endowment and football/athletic department revenue, adding $30M or so to join a conference and causes them to lose control of several things is really pocket change.

Among the things the NCAA and the conferences have to come to terms with is that their ability to hide behind the ruse of being the guardians of amateur collegiate sports is long gone. Nobody is buying that. Not people, not the government, not the courts, and probably not even them. That should give them a pause. It won't, because they have historically been so full of themselves that they have wandered into situations that they should have stayed far away from, but either hubris or pure stupidity drove them to keep pushing forward. At this point they are eating their own young. Somebody mentioned Notre Dame earlier as inevitably joining a conference (Big10, most likely). As long as they have a TV contract with a major network that they do not need to share with a group, they will stay independent. Apparently they put up good ratings numbers, although I have no earthly idea why. But then again, my favorite college football team is whoever is playing Notre Dame, so I am not an unbiased judge.

My guess is his voicemail box is full.

I was thinking something similar......although OK Corral is better than we hope to get out of Darnold or Walker. They need to work with him on the pre-snap reads before trotting him out there. Even in a simplified offense, if the opposing defense knows that is a problem, they will be shifting constantly to exploit it. Reads are an issue I would expect with almost any young QB.

Our problem on defense is we have potential, but that potential is unrealized as yet. Compound that with being put in bad positions too often by the offense, who either turned the ball over in our own end or and three-and-outs keeping them on the field, and you get the idea. We need some of our potential to become reality, the offense needs to stop being on the short list of our defense's worst enemies, and the defense creating some turnovers when they are put in bad situations or just find themselves in the red zone would all help. Sometimes a defense has to take control, and that looked beyond us last year.