tukafan21

I don't know if Shanahan can fix him either at this point, it will be tougher to do after another bad coaching stint the Darnold had here. But I think if Darnold went to someone like Shanahan right after the Jets, we'd be talking about him as at worst an above average starter, if not better.

Maybe I should have clarified lol With the coaching staff we had, it was a god awful trade, because they clearly were NOT the right ones to fix him. But for a QB needy team like we were at the time, with players like CMC and Moore, I don't think giving up a 2nd round pick for someone who has the physical tools that Darnold has is a bad trade, in a vacuum. With the proper coaching, I think that would have been a really good offensive squad.

Completely false, I was very much on board with going after Darnold even before we knew the team wanted him, and I'm still not convinced the trade was a bad one. He's a player with all the physical tools you could want in a QB in today's game, his problem has always been in his head. Darnold had the worst imaginable coaching possible with the Jets and then somehow got equally bad coaching here. If he started his career with a coach like Shannahan, there's a chance we're talking about Darnold as an elite QB in this league. The fact that Shannahan was willing to dump Lance and all they had invested in him to go with Darnold instead, actually tells me that he's likely better than he showed in New York or here, and it was the coaching that ruined him.

If we're so bad this year that it would get Reich fired, it could be hard to attract a quality HC who would then be saddled with Bryce, who subsequently would have likely had a really bad season. I also think Tepper knows the analytics say it's best to hire a GM and HC at the same time and he's supposedly an analytics guy who hasn't followed that one yet. I think Reich and Fitterer are both tied here for at least this season and the next, but if we're not contending for the playoffs at the end of next year, they're both fired and replaced by a new combo. Although I could also see him firing Fitterer after this season and giving Morgan the job and 2 years to make something happen next to Reich for 3 full seasons to prove Bryce was the right guy. If it's not working by then, you blow it all up and start completely fresh in 2026.

Again, the team tanking is the wrong way to look at it because the players and coaches would never do it, closest is for a GM to purposefully put together a crap team, like the Cardinals have done this year. It's really about fans wanting the team to lose and being okay or even happy when they do, because you know it's for the best for the franchise long term.

Bryce is the wrong QB for that kind of offense. He's supposed to be the mental savant, you want an offense that is passing based so he can do his thing, particularly pre-snap. That's something you wouldn't get with a run based offense. That would have been a scary team with AR though, takes pressure off him and add his running ability to the mix, could lead the league in rushing.

I'm not for purposefully tanking, that isn't good for team morale, but I've always said that as a fan, I have no problem rooting for us to lose during seasons like that, I know it is what's best for franchise long term. I can stomach a really bad year or two if I know it's getting us the draft picks needed to turn things around, particularly if it's for a QB. I almost enjoyed the 2010 season, no, not early in the season, but after maybe 6 or 7 games, I was happier with each loss than I normally am from wins. At the time it was because I thought it would get us Luck, but getting Cam in the end was totally worth it of course. I personally wanted us to keep Rhule for the season because I felt like it would have ended up having a Top 3 pick, which then yea, we take our QB while keeping Moore and the rest of the picks, which would make this season feel just fine right now. I've never understood why you want to root for your team to win meaningless late season games in lost seasons, you feel good for a day or so but can significantly hurt your draft positioning. In seasons you're actively building up your team and you're just getting there, like the Lions last year, then it's different, then you want to win them to help build towards the next year, that wasn't us last year.

We gave up 2 firsts, 2 seconds, and Moore to get Bryce If we make that trade for Burns and get 2 firsts and a second, that means we'd still have a first rounder this upcoming here, maybe even our own and then still have two firsts in 2025 as opposed to right now, only having 1 first in 2025. So basically the same situation we're in right now where people want to trade Burns for 2 firsts. Or, we'd have given one of those firsts to the Bears and kept Moore, either way, I'd rather be in that situation right now, having that first rounder next year would make this season easier to be okay with how it's going. Especially if it was our own, and with how ours and the Rams seasons ended, there's a chance the Bears would have preferred to have their pick over ours.

I will call this out every time I see someone say we should have taken Parsons. Parsons was viewed by every team as a MLB, the last thing we needed at that time was to spend a top 10 pick on a MLB. The only reason Parsons has become maybe the premier pass rusher in the league is because the Cowboys had such injury issues that they started using him to rush the passer and he was too good at it to not move him there permanently. People can be upset about taking Horn over a number of players, but Parsons just shouldn't be one of them

More power to you lol I'm in Detroit and already told my friends the other day that I'm not going to pay what its gonna cost to go to the game here in a few weeks just to get abused by the Detroit fans while watching us get beat. I'll go and watch it at someone's house with them, but just not able to drag myself through the rest to watch in person.

I'm not too concerned yet because so many teams want offensive minded HC's these days, much harder for the DC's to get the jobs. Plus he's probably at least 2nd in line for DC's to get a HC job, gotta think teams will go hard after Quinn again this year if they want to go the defensive minded route. We also badly need him to stay one more year before getting a HC job so that we get those two 3rd round picks for him, need to re-stock our draft pick shelves

There is also the 4th camp that I fall into I'm certainly not in the "this is fine" camp and I'm not in the "we don't know what this is yet" camp either. I wouldn't consider myself in the "this is a dumpster fire" camp either, because I expected struggles this year. I'm in the "depressed that my pre-draft fears are coming true and the trade was a terrible value for the risk but know Bryce can still always turn it around" camp. I still see potential in Bryce, you'd have to be blind/dumb not to, but my initial fears of him just not being big/strong enough to be elite in this league have come back with a vengance. You can't trade what we gave up to get him and he not be an elite QB, even a pretty good one isn't worth what we gave up. Again, we traded CMC, Moore, two 1sts, and one 2nd for Bryce, DJ Johnson, and a 5th. Until/unless Bryce leads us to a SB (or at least perennial contenders with him being the reason why) then I'll never be okay with the value we gave up for the risk on Bryce. And right now, with how the season started, it just has me frustrated, maybe with myself, because I let all the Bryce hype/talk push my initial concerns with him out of my mind for a few months only for them to come flooding back really quickly.

Yea... I hate this argument regardless of the player/position. The "well they did this against NFL level players in the SEC" is the most flawed argument ever. The SEC had 62 players drafted this year. From that, 20 of them came from Alabama and Georgia (10 each) with another 12 coming from Florida and LSU (6 each), with Auburn, Tennessee, and South Carolina having 5 each. I'm not going to go through each team and count out how many players were defensive, but obviously you can assume about half the players drafted were on offense, give or take. Then consider that there are a few more players who aren't NFL draft eligible yet and are already that good, plus others who will be good enough in a few years but aren't there yet. So realistically, outside of 2 or maybe a 3rd team in the SEC each season, most teams have either none or at most 1-3 NFL quality level players on their defense in a given season, and even then, it's what, maybe a 25% chance that they're even a player who would be a pass rusher? (when talking about Bryce "escaping tackles from NFL level players in college") Yes, the SEC is by far and away the best conference in college football and yes, it prepares you for the NFL better than others. But the "they did this against NFL level players in the SEC" is just a fallacy as they really aren't performing against NFL level players most of the time, just really good college players.

Well first, I can guarantee I'm not one of those people who only now hate the trade, I'm not going to bother trying to search for old posts of mine, but I guarantee you won't find a single post I ever made about being happy with it, I despised it from day 1. I can only think of one throw off the top of my head of his that really impressed me, it was the one this week where he was rolling out to his left near our own end zone and then quickly flipped his hips open to throw around the defender to the open WR, it was a really nice throw on the move and it stood out right away. I don't hate the kid or think he's a garbage player, I just never saw him as a high level NFL QB with today's game and where it's continuing to move towards. Everything keeps getting bigger, faster, stronger, which in itself does allow for more QB's like Bryce to come into the league, smaller mobile QB's who can make things happen outside the pocket. My issue with him has always been his size/strength as the smaller QB's who have been successful in this league are just built entirely different than Young. Guys like Brees, Wilson, Kyler, Hurts, etc, are all thick, stocky, strong, well built players, particularly their lower body, while Bryce just isn't built that way, he's just small. But all of that is why I hated the trade so much then and am just angrier now after my pre-draft Bryce concerns are showing, because I always felt the cost vs risk was so horrible and now that risk is looking even riskier.

I think what it is, is that a lot of people didn't want Bryce to begin with (let alone the trade). We have then been told by every coach, player, "expert", and fan that he has this super brain and was the most pro ready QB in the bunch and that he's exceeded all expectations. Then we see this........ So for people like myself, it's a flooding back of all our concerns over him in the first place, the things we've tried our best to ignore and get excited about Bryce ever since the pick was official, since he was then our QB and we want him to do well. Which is why I keep hammering home that I'm less upset about Bryce the player right now than I am about just getting re-pissed off about the trade, which is still so much worse than the Bryce pick because of the value vs risk being off the charts against us here.

His height has nothing to do with it, him and tons of other QB's his height have been just fine throughout the history of college football, and the linemen in the NFL aren't any taller than those in college, they're just better football players. When you're just talking about the ability to see his WRs due to his height vs the linemen height, the quality of the players in front of you makes no difference, so it's no different for him. I was never concerned about his height and I'm still not, it was always about his frame and overall strength

I can appreciate that, just hard for me to do with this one. For example, watching us lose every week in 2010 was so much easier to stomach and I never got angry during that season, because I knew at the end of that poo rainbow was going to be a high draft pick. This one hurts because we're terrible and there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, just more hurt.

If you're just watching someone throw such as in a combine or pro day type of setting, yes that's the case, but not in a game. Because it's never about pure arm strength anyways, it's about getting the ball to where it needs to be in comparison to the defenders, when the DB is able to close the gap because the ball takes too long to get there, it's clear as day and easier to see on TV since you can see the whole field at once.

I'd actually argue the opposite When you're in person in the stands, you can't see the whole picture as easily, where the QB is, where the WR is, where the DB is, and depending on your viewing angle, seeing the flight path of the ball can distort the velocity of the pass. But watching on tv, you can see the whole picture at once and see how quickly the ball closes the gap between the QB and WR, as well as see how quickly the ball gets there vs the DB closing on the WR.

That's one that I'm actually giving him a pass on, although it's definitely not the best look given his play so far, I actually think there is a decent chance that it was more on Sanders than Bryce They broke the huddle and as any good QB would do, he immediately started surveying the defense and making his reads and used his peripheral vision to know where Sanders was and just lined up next to him without looking for the Center. If you watch the replay, not only does Sanders push him into place, but he then also steps to his left, hence my point that he might have initially lined up too far to the right as well and Bryce just lined up the proper distance to his left while looking at the defense and not for the Center.

When like 80% of his passes are within 5 yards of the LOS, you could make the argument that his 67% completion percentage is actually too low. I'm not saying it is, just pointing out that using his completion % as a talking point to back him up isn't really fair when most of them are dink and dunk passes. His throws just don't have the necessary zip on them in today's NFL, I'd be pretty confident in saying he has the weakest arm strength of any starting QB in the entire league, that's not something you want to see in the #1 overall pick that we traded away the farm to get. And if part of his game is his escape ability, getting sacked by someone's finger tips grazing his shoulder pads isn't a ringing endorsement of that ability either. I don't blame people for trying to find some positives in his game, which even I'll admit, there are some. But his physical traits are NOT one of them, they're his biggest limitation, no question about it.

This all fell apart at "top tier QB talent" as I never once have thought Bryce was that, even at my highest point of optimism, it never reached that. He has a top tier QB brain, but not talent, significant difference between the two. I was hoping (and still do hope) that brain can overcome the physical limitations he has, and it's very possible that happens. But right now, his physical limitations actually look worse than I was even expecting, and that's not acceptable when we traded away everything we did to get him. It's risk vs reward and we took far too big of a risk given the limited upside of the reward.

Good for him, he's able to make his reads Doesn't mean poo if he doesn't have the physical abilities to make the plays. If only people could have seen him not be able to escape finger tip sacks and have the arm strength to make the necessary throws at this level.

What?!?!?! Being upset that we're not going to have our own Top 5 pick in a draft that will have possibly upwards of 4 or 5 QB's who could all go in the Top 10 of said draft is overvaluing it? That's absolute nonsense, just look at the value we gave up to move up to take a QB with serious question marks. Williams is widely viewed as the best QB prospect in a very long time, if we gave up what we did to take Bryce, if anything, i'm undervaluing our draft pick next year, not overvaluing it.

Right?!?! He's not a safety, he's not a NB, he's a LB who can be shifted around all over the field as needed on a per play call basis. His rookie year was about the only thing Rhule's staff ever got correct and he was looking like a future all-pro type of player. Ever since then, coaches have been trying to shove him into a neat little box and force him to play a position instead of just being a heat seeking missile out there attracted to the football. We will likely have too much cap space available this offseason to get comp picks in return if guys like Chinn walk as we're going to end up bringing in a couple decently paid FA's. So if that's the case and we're not going to try to actually use him, might as well try to get something for him now instead of having him on the sideline for 70% of the plays this year and watch him walk away for free in the offseason. At least Burns is out there on the field trying to help us right now, makes it at least easier to understand wanting to keep him around.