1of10Charnatives

Ehhhhh... yeah that's starting to get in the range of take the money and run. Burns is a talented pass rusher in his prime, but he has flaws. Your chances of being able to replace him with even younger, cheaper talent and still come out ahead start to look crazy in this context. Pass rushers can be capable of making an immediate impact if talent and opportunity are there, so trading away Burns only means the delay til we get their picks, not additional years down the road for a drafted rusher to mature.

I'm not assuming anything about Tepper's ability. Note the wording of my post: "Tepper knows or at least thinks, most of the bad decisions were on Fhule." That wasn't a statement of Tepper's ability, just an observation that as owner, he should have a greater knowledge than you or I of exactly who advocated for what within the FO. If he cans Fhule, but keeps Fitts and reports are that Fitts is very safe, we can infer Tepper's likely perception, and Tepper has greater direct knowledge than you or I. One would hope that means he's making a better decision, but I'm not assuming so either at this point, given Tepper's overall track record to date.

This for me is the key. It's really hard to know how good or bad of a GM Fitts is because we don't know how much Fhule factored into all the decisions. All we can infer is that him being very safe would seem to imply Tepper knows or at least thinks most of the prior bad decisions were on Fhule and not Fitts.

Yes but can he play tackle? Oh wait, that was last season's hot post.

You sir, have a point. Run D does need shoring up, and sure, Clete Blakeman is an awful ref and should probably be stabbed in the eyeball with a fork repeatedly. I can be a reasonable man.

I think we're not too far off in our thinking. Agreed that you still have to get a decent player, but for the most important position, QB, history and the numbers say that your odds of getting the guy you need even when picking in the first round aren't great, but it's still your greatest overall need by far as a team. Where things get really tricky is when you have that mid to high first round pick like we will, if none of the QB prospects look outstanding, but a pass rusher does, what do you do then? I honestly don't know. Regarding the WR thing, I just think that everyone wants to look at the WR's so much because what they do shows up on highlight reels. Let's look at something else the last 3 champs also had: solid OL play. I think it's instructive that when KC had solid OL play then won the SB. The next year, with the same WR corps, when their OL play faltered, Tampa's defense took advantage and that was the difference in the game. The thrilling game this past season arguably came down to the Ram's ability to take apart Cincy's OL protection. I've never said WR play doesn't matter. My contention is it's a lot easier to get good to great WR play than it is to get good to great OL play, and in a zero sum league where what matters isn't just being good, but being better than your competition, I think that's often the difference. I will grant that passing by a great WR prospect to draft a dubious OT is still not the way to go however. First and foremost you need talent.

What if the BPA is a kicker? Sebastian Janikowski anyone?

You may well be right that I'm being a tad overly optimistic about the amount of tape out there on PJ. It's just nice to have at least some reason to enjoy watching. Prior to the last couple games, our QB play was not at a level that gave us a reasonable chance to win most games. Obviously by end of the season we'll have a better idea, but at least now we have a reason to stay interested.

If all these teams are flourishing because of WR talent, then by definition isn't that talent solid, not elite? I never said you don't need WR production, but your argument actually supports my point, that solid WR production is abundantly available, as witness how many teams are able to acquire it. You yourself just said that you don't need to go WR round 1. You're basically calling solid elite and pretending that negates my point. By the end of the season we'll have a better idea of whether TMJ is just flashing or has real promise. Either way, if he just flashed, finding a replacement as you've already mentioned, doesn't require a high round focus. Fixing QB almost certainly does. Getting an elite pass rusher is incredibly hard to do in later rounds compared to finding receiver talent later. For all the focus on 1st round hyped WR prospects, the production gap between these guys and later drafted round options does not compare to the gap between 1st round QB's and later rounds, or 1st round pass rushers etc. How many elite WR's are there in this league? Your post seems to imply a lot. I'd say that's hyperbole of the word elite, not an actual undermining of my point.

I used to think this way, but I'm moving away from this line of thought as I look at which positions contribute most to playoff success and which positions there are big dropoffs from elite talent to baseline. My argument goes like this: The dropoff from elite QB play to average matters greatly in a league that revolves around the QB. Elite QB play is scarce, and is the single biggest factor by far in winning. The dropoff from elite CB play to average is huge, elite QB play is scarce, and matters greatly to winning. The dropoff from solid OL play to pourous is continously overlooked by most fans but can't be overstated in it's importance to offensive performance in both the passing game and running game. Average QB's look solid behind solid offensive lines, and awful behind awful OL's. Get yourself a QB, an OL, and a secondary. The dropoff from elite WR, RB and non pass rushing LB's to solid matters little to winning in the end and solid options at these positions are abundant and cheap league wide. Do not invest high picks in these areas unless you are solid at the key ones. Having an elite WR makes you feel good about your fantasy team, but elite WR's are not remotely the main drivers of playoff success, and they suck up draft capital and cap space better used elsewhere.

I'm well aware he has a 50% completion percentage. Did you actually watch the game? Did you actually read my post and respond to my argument, or did you just kneejerk with a stat?

Why in the name of all that's holy am I looking at yet another thread about drafting a WR in the first when WR at present looks like a strength on this team (DJ solid, TMJ showing obvious potential now the Fhule is gone) when QB is the desperate need and the key weakness of our defense is like of pass rush outside of Burns? Stop drooling over frisbee catching dogs because you're too focused on fantasy football and look at what's needed to actually win a SB. WR talent is abundant around the league and little evidence exists that elite WR talent matters to playoff success vs the two positions I named.

No. Get your ADD under control for a minute and focus. It's not war and peace, it's 3 paragraphs.

The one does not preclude the other. They can both be true.

Three things: 1. I don't want to be overly optimistic, Lord knows that can bite you in the ass with backup QB's a time or two, but watching PJ throw the ball in this game, even though his stats don't look amazing, the one interception while bad, was a somewhat fluky great play by a long defensive end. Didn't look to me like the point at which it was intercepted is one you normally as a QB have to worry about that. Moreover, many of PJ's non caught throws didn't look like flat out bad throws, but the sort of thing that might come from a lack of reps and chemistry and timing with your WR's and that could improve with practice and game reps. I just do not get the same gut feeling anymore of "This isn't going anywhere good" watching PJ of this season that I did in the past and that I get when watching Mayfield and Darnold. They look lost and overwhelmed, PJ is starting to look like a guy who is figuring it out and just needs to continue to fine tune chemistry and timing with his WR's. Most importantly, he seems to have eliminated horribad decisions from his throws. One of the most encouraging aspects of this is he isn't the unknown quantity that defenses have no film on, and we should expect them to soon figure out. Before the last few games, there was enough film already on him to study his tendencies. I'm not prepared to proclaim him the solution at QB, but PJ's evolution at this moment just has a different gut feel. I am seeing him make impressive throw after impressive throw. To the eye test, he just looks like a guy getting better at his craft. 2. The rest of our roster seems to have pretty solid talent. QB is just the major weak spot, followed somewhat by a lack of pass rush outside of Burns. Whether we draft a QB or PJ becomes some sort of revelation by end of season, pass rush should still be a major focus in the draft. Marcus Mariotta got off to a horrible start 2 of 5 when we got early pressure, but as their line figured out our pressure and neutralized it, Mariotta started completing pass after pass after pass. The way to stop journeymen from looking like All Pros is to get in their face. Our secondary is good, but no secondary can hold out for 5 seconds. 3. As easy as it is to hate the call on DJ, for all the conspiracy theorists out there saying the refs are always fuging us, you're conveniantly overlooking the ST penalty against the Falcons where their player tried to flop when barely touched by (think it was) Hartfield. I also was inclined to bitch about the inconsistency of calling that penalty on DJ and think dark thoughts about the deck being stacked against us on purpose, but rewatching the game forced me to confront the reality of this call. If the refs were really out to get us, this is one they don't call the way they did. Players try to bait the refs all the time, very rarely does the baiting player get called for a penalty the way this Falcons STer did. If you're going to even try to pretend you're being objective, you have to weigh this into consideration. It weighs strongly against the notion of deliberate malice on the refs part. I'm perfectly fine with saying NFL refs suck and are wildy inconsistent, but that's about it. Except when it comes to Ed Hochuli and Jerome Boger. fug those guys. Right in the ass. With a big rubber dildo. Sideways.

Yeah I view our present problem as having a desperate need, likely being in solid position to get, but options QB wise looking pretty meh. Folks, before you get too over excited about this QB crop, please take a look at this table and try to remember how hyped the vast majority of gentlemen in the first round on it were coming out of college. Most of whom did not have enviable NFL careers. DraftHistory.com

This. Park at light rail in Pineville, ride the light rail in. Profit.

One of the particularly galling things about this list is how Charlotte's general cost of living is nowhere near the level of these other markets. Looking at the list, cost to follow seems to bear little relationship to actual winning (Let the league impose revenue rules that correlate more highly with winning and see what happens there), but the other five entraints could at least make noises about the high cost of living generally in their markets. Charlotte's place on this list is so obviously out of whack in comparison to the general cost of living of most other NFL markets.

Interesting. Can't blame the Packers for trying, but clearly we're not giving up DJ. I'm excited to see what he and TMJ can become by season's end if PJ keeps up even decent QB play. Might be an eye opener.

Why would you want to use valuable draft capitol to acquire a player at a position pretty obviously not of need for us (DJ looks great, TMJ obviously was being massively hindered by Fhule, and now looks solid), and where solid talent is easily found in later rounds or FA, and scant evidence exists that elite talent correlates highly with playoff success? We need pass rushers to take the pressure off of Burns and to give us leverage when he becomes a FA. We need to continue to stock our OL with talent because injuries are a real thing in the NFL, and we need another long term solution at safety all more than we need to worry about acquiring the latest bright shiny toy at WR. A top shelf pass catcher at TE wouldn't hurt either. He can be on the field at the same time with DJ and TMJ easier than Downs could. People get way too focused on WR's and RB's because of fantasy without examining how much they actually contribute to an actual football team's playoff success or thinking about how easy it is to find nearly as good production for far cheaper when looking around the league at those positions. They are both easily replaceable with solid talent. It rarely pays to focus on trying to obtain elite talent there, when other crucial positions have a much steeper drop off in talent from top shelf and matter more to actual winning.

It's far from certain CMC winds up in the HOF. Plenty of players with all the talent in the world didn't make HOF because injuries limited their careers. At this juncture, this far into a RB career, are you telling me you'd bet AGAINST this happening to CMC? I didn't think so. So let's not pretend we just gave up a HOFer in that trade. We gave up a very talented player with a problematic contract, unsettling injury history, and at a juncture where he's unlikely to have more than one or two more productive seasons left in him at most. I love CMC too, but that's the reality.

*buys a random carolina jersey and gets to work with his paint brush.*

Yup. 3 weeks ago to me PJ was a waste of a roster space. Now....he seems at worst worth continuing to give a shot to see what he can become. This is the sort of situation everyone should love to be proven wrong in. I know I am. I am jaded enough as a fan not to expect him to develop into our franchise qb, but I think it's obvious he's earned the shot to show what he can do, and it's in the team's best interest to continue in that path for now.

*throws poop at his lofty throne.*

If you've never heard of or seen Barry Sanders, sure.