woahfraze

This is the perfect reason you can’t box score scout. At half today, he’s got a 10.3 YPA and a QB Rating of 100. Whereas the past 3 games, he’s had a lower QB Rating (low 80s), which has been due mostly to relatively low completion percentage and YPA. But if you watch the film, the last three games, he’s played with more anticipation, made better reads, and threatened down the field more than he has today. His numbers were deflated by drops that would have increased his TD%, YPA, and completion percentage. Today, he’s playing worse but his numbers are buoyed by an 83 yard TD. It’s also a good reminder that level of play can fluctuate. Just because he played better the past few games doesn’t mean it would continue forever. But it also doesn’t mean that him playing like he is today will continue forever. Signs are pointing up. He’s got to improve more, but he has the ability to, he’s not hopeless.

I was an apologist last year. I certainly didn’t think he shouldered none of the blame for the poo show we all endured. He was not put in a good situation to succeed between the offensive line, coaching scheme/playing calling, etc., but he also wasn’t playing well enough. Those things can both be true at the same time, and all the deficiencies can reinforce and amplify one another. But I was out on him after Game 2 this year. To come into the season with a much improved situation and a whole offseason of being within a pro football infrastructure, his play those two games was unacceptable. So color me very surprised that he’s returned from his benching and played this way. Something has clearly clicked. He’s got more improving to do, but anyone who remains a full on hater is ignoring a lot of good tape that he’s putting out. Whether he can perform more consistently remains to be seen, but he’s showing that he can be a functional NFL QB working from the pocket, who can also excel outside of structure. Obviously you want more out of the No. 1 overall than a mid-level starter. I think he has the potential to be more. Probably not an elite level ceiling, but an above average one. He’s not there yet, but there’s hope. He could also plateau where he’s at. Or regress. We just don’t know.

Ok? Where in my post did I defend Bryce? I described the effort as I saw it and then said I didn’t see anything that makes me think he’ll ever get there? Why are you quoting me with this?

The bar is really low, but certainly showed some progress. He had some nice plays but also lots of bad ones. It was an inconsistent effort. The stats would be better if David Moore doesn’t drop a deep shot that Bryce put in a good spot and if the Saints CB doesn’t make an incredible interception on a play where the officials should have called DPI on another deep shot. That was a really nice deep throw to the outside, which is where he’s really struggled. He had plays where stepped up and navigated the pocket better than he has in the past. But he also had a bunch of plays where he didn’t manage the pocket well at all. And a lot of plays where he was to quick to dump the ball down behind or at the line of scrimmage. Those types of plays are drive killers and mostly negate the positives he showed. So I don’t really take much away from this game. He performed better than he’s done in the past because it went from zero positives to a handful of positives. But that’s not the bar we should be judging him by. We need to see more consistency from him. And we need to see it over a sustained period of time. Right now, there are no indications we’ll ever see that.

My wife is destroying everyone in our fantasy football league, so maybe she does know more than me hahaha

^yep, this tracks.

The reverse jinx to the rescue!

Before the TD, I just said out loud to my wife that we absolutely losing this game by 2. TD plus failed conversion and then D can’t hold Saints.

That was a damn hold on Horn

Yep, pretty much. Bryce has proven that he isn’t the guy. But zooming out, it’s astounding how poorly the front office has operated over the last 4-5 years. They’ve drafted poorly, and where they’ve managed to identify good talent, they’ve ended up trading it away. And in the process of trading it away, through a combination of poor timing on their part and poor in the moment negotiating, managed to get a poor return for that talent. And because the drafting and free agency moves have not worked out, they’ve compounded the issues by trying to patch holes in the roster via trades where they have overpaid. I don’t think they could have done a worse job in all of the areas. I’m not sure you could do a worse job intentionally trying to be bad. It’s crazy. We can blame the coaches for not getting the most out of the talent in the roster. They are not blameless in all this. A better culture, some better scheming, some better development could have kept us from being quite so bad. But at the end of the day, this mess falls at the feet of Scott Fitterer. Such a shame Tepper kept Dan Morgan on, because he’s culpable for the mess too as Fitterer’s right hand man. And of course you’ve got the blame Tepper for making the wrong decisions on who to place in the GM and scouting roles. I’m not as big a believer that he’s interfering and overriding the front office people. There may be some of that. Regardless, he is responsible for hiring them, so he takes blame too. Just total top to bottom failure.

He had nowhere to throw both on the initial blitz or after he broke out of the pocket. So there’s an issue there with either scheme/play call, blitz recognition, not having a hit route etc, and with WRs coming back to ball on scramble. But jeez, Bryce, you have to have situational awareness to throw it away and preserve the FG attempt

It’s astounding how consistently bad we are. You’d think there’d be some plays here and there that were positive, but literally zero good things have happened for the team. Only bad.

True on the drives. Tough to say what the worst call was. The missed travel allowed hot/lucky GT to bank in a three. So certainly a big missed call. But that’s just how it is sometimes. They made their shots. We didn’t. So while the missed foul at the end of the game certainly was huge and we likely win if it was called, we can’t say we deserved to win with how we played. At the end of the day, I think what all fans want is some damn consistency from the refs. You see a crazy amount of variance not just game to game but within a single game itself. How are the players supposed to know how aggressively they can defend? Why are hand checks called and then the next play a defender allowed to body a driver putting up a layup without a call? I see this every single game for both teams it’s not just a UNC thing. For example, I think at least two or three of the fouls against Cadeau were BS. He’s got to be more disciplined with reaching in. His last two were of that variety, one when a GT guard was driving the basket and was legit a foul as he reached around the back not just at the ball, and the other way out on the perimeter. That latter one I think was BS. May have been a letter of the law hand check, but when the refs are allowing defenders to bump dribblers and impede their path, I think it’s ridiculous to call this sort of thing in the interest of “freedom of movement.” I don’t recall all three of the other fouls exactly, but they were in the paint after getting backed down and I think he did a really good job of just keeping his hands straight up to contest the shot. A lot is being made of his body language afterward and their certainly is a pattern of foul trouble so maybe I’m wrong and he is doing something that makes the refs call these sorts of fouls, but I honestly feel for the kid because this is not the first game I’ve walked away from thinking WTF is he supposed to do on plays like this and that he hasn’t been fouling on them.

That’s probably on Chark. We don’t know if he ran the wrong route or if Bryce threw the wrong route. But typically when you see that, it’s on the WR. He turned in when Bryce expected him to turn out.

Because the Bucs recovered it in the end zone and never got out of the end zone into the field of play. It would only be a safety if Bucs has possession outside end zone and then went back into the end zone and got tackled.

For me what it really comes down to is can Bryce get more consistently comfortable in the pocket. If he can do that, I think he’ll be OK. Probably not an elite guy. And certainly not worth what we gave up for him. But a perfectly fine QB. On the last drive, he hung in the pocket and found the open man. I think a lot of his trouble has been poor footwork beyond his “normal” tip toe hopping where he hasn’t trusted the protection (often rightly so, sometimes not). When his feet aren’t ready to throw, he’s either late on pulling the trigger on the right read or he can’t get enough my zip on the ball. If he can clean all that up in the offseason, maybe we have a chance in a bad NFC South in 2024.

Defense. I know the conditions were terrible and not conducive to throwing the ball, and I know Desmond Ridder and Arthur Smith are ass, but collectively holding them to 200 yards and one score when for most of the day the offense wasn’t giving them time to rest at all was an impressive display. Happy Bryce has some good throws on the final drive and the offense did what it needed, but even in the rainy conditions, no one on offense deserves games balls when they only mustered 9 points. Chuba would probably be the closest to deserving.

Estatic for the win. But sad we’ve fallen so far that we’re celebrating a 9-7 win a nor’easter against an awful opponent where pretty much any weird thing could happen due to the wind and rain.

Lol, Ridder so bad.

Burns getting massively held. Wtf ref?

Have a feeling this will only result in a FG for us lol

These two teams are setting back NFL offenses decades so far today.

I mean it’s still a mix of both. I’ve long been a Bryce defender, but as the season has progressed, I’ve come around to the perspective that he’s definitely a big part of the problem. I still think he’s better than he’s shown, but that at this point, he’s shellshocked. And I do still believe the offensive line, the WRs, and scheme (route combos) really make/made it hard on him. But he’s missing too many plays when the rest of the offense does execute. Everything is such a poo show and all the deficiencies play off each other and multiply to give us the historically bad offensive production that we have. Bryce is a part of that. It remains to be seen whether the situation and he himself can improve into a workable offense over the course of the next year. But I’m off the “he can be a franchise QB train.” I see serviceable at best if everything comes together perfectly, which of course is unlikely. And living “in the middle” of the NFL hierarchy is not where we want to be long term (although god it would feel so much better than where we are now…)

This. What bearing does our past have on our present when we have a new owner and no culture to speak of? It might be different if we had continuity of culture throughout all those years set from the top down, but that’s not the case. We need to build a new identity.

I’ve sat through 1-15 and 2-14 seasons before. Why would this be any different? I know we don’t have a high first round pick to look forward to like we had in those years, and today’s situation seems super bleak—and it may be the worst we’ve experienced in franchise history—but those times also seemed pretty hopeless. I won’t stop being a fan.