SameDamnThing

Eric Shelton was a big time bust for being a 2nd rounder. Rashad Anderson had injury trouble, but for a 1st round pick that's a tough one.

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it's truly a shame that someone thinks they get to gatekeep my level of enthusiasm

I said it at the time the proposed trade didn't happen for all those assets that we wrote Burns a blank check by telling him we valued him at this impossible compensation package. they gave him the power to write his own deal at that point. I don't know how you can reject a package of that size and then balk at paying when it comes time to do so. You valued the man like a Top 10 player in the game based on what you turned down for him, which was a massive mistake. But now that you've done it, you can't walk away from it or look for a worse package now. It makes you look stupid.

I think the appropriate reaction here is to be happy for the Panthers that we have Bryce Young, and be happy for Matt Corral that he was able to address the concerns about his character by being patient, staying out of trouble, and looking decent enough to draw NFL interest and perhaps continue his career with a new opportunity. he was dealt a bad hand and he did what he could with it.

Brandon LaFell was an excellent second option that year. It might have been the best year he had in the league. Shockey, Olson, and Stew were all prioritized as pass catching targets ahead of the rest of those guys aside from Smith. So for me, it looks like we had a number one, a number two, and several 4th or 5th WR on that 2011 team. This team has Thelen as a generous number one/high end two, Chark as a high end two that is injury prone, a number three in TMJ, and Mingo who is a wild card with a lot of potential. I would take the 2023 group even though the passing assembly with Greg has a hall of very good TE and Shockey as a pro bowl TE skews it heavily in favor of 2011. The WR group alone, it's hard to defend 2011 as being better and my memories of LaFell are kinder than most.

the movie made him out to be some braindead r-tard with superhuman strength like dude from Of Mice and Men that had the exact same story arc as The Waterboy.

I think behind RB, LB is the position that has gone from glitz to gutter quicker than any other. the reason is the number of high speed collisions and how quickly it takes miles off. there's no such thing as a franchise middle linebacker anymore. new names are at the top of the league in tackles on a yearly basis. guys you've never heard of in a lot of cases. there was a time not so long ago the league leading tacklers were considered the best defensive players in the game. it's just so weird how quickly that changed. people see a guy like this coming off double digit missed games at 28 and wonder if he can still play. it's wild. that would have been relatively young for a linebacker in the early 2000's.

you guys have to respect how much pressure is on these guys to produce right away and how much it is impacting their games. nobody is moving naturally and nobody is playing the role they're going to play when the games start to count. miller isn't going to be our primary offensive weapon. he's going to be on the end of a lot of inside-out passes from a driving Lamelo for open shots. I wanted Scoot too, but I only wanted him because I liked him as a franchise PG better than Melo who I don't trust to stay healthy over a full season after watching his brother struggle and have his career cut short. I don't think people understand how hard Lavar worked these kids and how much miles it put on their body, but that's another story. Miller will get those passes and either shoot or move the ball quickly to the next open man. He'll get some touches to take to the rim, but we wanted his shooting at the wing position because we haven't really had a true wing that could do it. we've been trying to plug guys like PJ into that job and undersized guys like Oubre and Rozier, but no real rim drivers. Miles played there, but his outside shooting wasn't good enough to be a real threat. I don't think anyone should be expecting 25 ppg for anyone in this class their first season. I think you'll see a lot of these guys get 22-26 minutes per game and 13-15 ppg. They're teenagers and they need to be stretched into these 82 game 30 plus minute nights. Wemby is going to be more than fine, but they need to manage his minutes. Miller will be the same. The guards in this class might move a little faster in progression, but be closer to their ceilings.

Wemby will be fine unless he starts having trouble with his feet or back. zion's problem was never corrected because I'm not sure they can fix it. his foot falls are heel heavy and that's not how you're supposed to strike the ground from a physiological standpoint. that's why he looks so funny when he runs like he's stomping. it puts immense stress on his lower body. you're supposed to run on the ball of your foot more towards the front. other than fixing that from a physiological standpoint, the only other solution is to take pressure off by losing weight and so far he hasn't been able to do it. Wemby reminds me a little of a young Anthony Davis with more length. they made a big deal about AD playing point guard in HS until a dramatic growth spurt and having good enough ball handling to drive to the basket at 7 feet and I see a bit of that in Wemby.

There are a lot of reasons for this, but none more glaring than the advent of advanced stat metrics and the ability to determine how offensive linemen are performing. There used to be destination places where RB would usually put up yards. I remember when Terrell Davis retired and the Broncos made Olandis Gary and Clinton Portis into stars behind that line. The Chiefs are perhaps the best example. Priest Holmes to Larry Johnson to Jamaal Charles and a few in between. Teams with poor lines would strike out on RB all the time in the draft with high picks regardless. The Saints were a good example. Ricky Williams and Reggie Bush, two of the most dynamic runners in NCAA history, couldn't do squat behind those lines. Teams started to look at what was going on with that and realized the blocking performance in front of the RB was exponentially more important provided you had a RB who was aware enough of the blocking schemes to take the 4 yards the line would create for them on every carry. That isn't an "easy" thing to find, but it's something you can find a hell of a lot easier than you can build an offensive line. I think a turning point was when LeVeon Bell was holding the Steelers hostage for gobs of money and the Steelers and James Conner came in and replicated his effectiveness. That was one of the last examples that confirmed the theory. The return of a star name at RB vs. a league average running back behind the same offensive line is negligible. Teams are now building out their running game in reverse. Guards and Centers. Tackles and Tight Ends. Running back is being viewed, fairly justifiably, as a product of those other units performance. There are a handful of guys around the league that are so far above league average that they command a premium, but that's probably about it. It's the same way you used to never see teams go for it on 4th and inches in the first half of football games where now it's a pretty common outcome if you're in no-man's land between the 40's.

Giannis had similar questions around his game, but these kids are 19. Wemby is like a 7'4" wing with the way he can dribble drive in and finish at the rim. they're not going to be asking him to take a lot of jump shots. the mid range game is basically dead anyways. he will have to hit his open 3's to maximize his game. I don't know if anyone is expecting 30-15 right away for him, but he can be as good as he wants to be with that size and length. especially with fewer teams having stout defensive centers to keep him out of the paint. he needs time to put on good weight, but his frame suggests it won't be a problem.

murder miller, murder miles, and wannabe melo. the most likeable team in the league.

I will also say this. the league has changed so much regarding movement of star players that you can't play the game where you prefer a kid at 19 to an established star at 25 if you think your window is cracking open. we've filled some big spots with Melo and Williams and Bridges for all his trouble is important to that window right now too. You've got those 3 and if you can keep them together for 4 years total you've done something rare. If you get the kid at 19 and wait for him to become what Ingram is at 25, everybody but Williams is probably gone from here. we've sold hope too much already and if some of these teams looking to tear it down want to reset their window with this pick, they're too far out for an Ingram to make a difference for them but we are not. You can't project this team 3 years out and say Melo and Bridges will both be here for Brandon Miller's time... even if you believe he can meet or exceed Ingram.

Ingram would be such a good fit. I think we have a mini bull version of Zion with Bridges who plays that rim rocking power game, but we don't have anybody like Ingram who can play the wing. I think NO would be silly to trade him, but if they're going broke and they want to unhitch from Zion too, be bad enough to make it count. And before people go saying I believe Bridges makes Zion redundant, Zion is about twice the player as Bridges but from a stylistic standpoint it's a style of player we have. Who do we have like Ingram who can be a secondary usage percentage guy to take some of that off Melo to do some off ball things.