tukafan21

Wow, I don't even want to try and compute this one in my head, it's only going to make me sadder. The whole point of hiring this staff was because of their QB guru statuses, if him being wrong on Wentz is what caused him to not fight against drafting a HS sized QB, then it just makes me even sadder over this whole thing. I like Bryce, he's a good kid, but he's just not an NFL QB and I think he and his people always knew it, and it's why they didn't let him throw at the combine. Letting him throw back-to-back with the rest of the prospects would have exposed the hell out of him, when QB's projected to go undrafted looked better throwing the same passes.

If this was a Manning or Lawrence type of rookie year, tons of losses and turnovers, but showing serious flashes of elite potential multiple times in every game of the season, then yes, you're correct. But he has literally, maybe 2 or 3 plays this entire season where you would say, "okay, that was an above average play" and I honestly don't think he's had one play where I said, "that was an elite QB play" While at the same time he's had numerous examples every single week, hell, every half or even every quarter, where you look at the play and say, "how did that guy even get to the NFL, let alone be the #1 pick" He has no arm, he has to have an absolutely picture perfect clean pocket and set base to step into the throw to even have even moderately adequate arm strength, he can't throw anything near an NFL necessary throw if he's off balance, and that's a serious problem in today's NFL. The people still trying to defend him and say it's the system, coaches, or WRs, are the ones who are stuck to their preconceived notions that he can be a good QB in this league. Yes, those things don't help and he'd look better if they improved, but he's not an elite franchise QB and he never will be, that much is clear after watching him for 12 weeks.

Right now, we have almost zero chance of hiring a HC that we actually will want. We want a young up and coming offensive coach, those guys worked their whole lives to get a shot at being a HC and most only get the 1 chance, they're not wasting it on Bryce, they'll take other jobs or wait another season. The majority of the fan base will not be happy with whoever our new HC is, I'm quite confident in saying that because I honestly don't think anyone the majority would want is going to be willing to take the job and be tied to Bryce. We're most likely going to end up with someone like Bienemy who nobody has ever wanted to hire because players don't like him, or a re-tread like Flores, who also nobody actually wants for the same reason, players don't like him. Those type of coaches are best as coordinators, because they are smart football people who work for well liked HC's who are able to get the players to play hard for them. Again, Patrick Mahomes HATED Bienemy, if you can't get along with the current player who has the best chance at catching Brady's GOAT status, then you're the problem. Our best chance at having an HC during the 2025 season that we actually would want, is to hire one going into that season. We also can't fire a coach in 3 straight seasons, not with how much of a mess this franchise is currently. Thus, the only way I see us having a HC in 2025 that we actually want, is to fire Reich next season and align the new HC hire with having a Top 3 pick. Firing Reich is playing the short game, keeping him for one more year is playing the long game. We've been playing the short game since Tepper bought the team and it's only caused us to keep moving further backwards, we needed to play the long game for once and do things the right way. Neither Tepper nor the fans want to do that, everyone wants to be good ASAP again, but that's not how good NFL teams are built, you have to do it from the ground up the right way. I very much think firing Reich right now is 1 step forward but 3 steps back and we're going to end up with a bum of a HC for at least 2, if not the next 3 seasons because Tepper can't fire another HC that quickly. Honestly, if that happens (which is probably a better than 50/50 chance at happening), will you look back on firing Reich as the smart move? And yes, I get your point about Bryce, but that ship has sailed, his absolute max potential is a serviceable game manager who is around the 20th best QB in the league (and frankly, I don't even think he'll be that, I personally think his best outcome is a career backup somewhere, but out of the league within 5 years is more likely). That's not a franchise QB in today's game, that's someone you use as a bridge to your next hopeful franchise QB, I really don't care about trying to develop him next year, he isn't the guy and we can't make decisions based on Bryce, we need to make it about what our actual future will be, and he will be gone by 2026 before his rookie deal is even up.

I think we all know Reich wanted Stroud while Tepper wanted Bryce. What I want to know and what matters to me, is how much did he and the other staff members try to fight for Stroud vs how much they just let Tepper make the decision. If they REALLY fought for Stroud but Tepper literally and 100% forced the decision of Bryce, then yes, Tepper is who I fault. If they were just like, "Well we prefer Stroud, but we're okay with Bryce too" and that then made the pick Bryce, then I blame Reich and the rest of the staff. There are VERY few owners in the league who completely stay out of football operations and don't voice their opinions, especially when it comes to taking a QB at #1 overall, even more so after the trade we made. So people getting upset at Tepper being in the room and voicing his opinion are missing the point, 90% of the other owners in the league would be doing the same thing. It really comes down to how voiceful Reich and the staff pushed back on it, and that I'm not sure we'll ever know.

What do you expect him to say? Half the people in the building never wanted Bryce and think he's a bust, the other half were okay with taking him but maybe split on Bryce vs Stroud preference? You can't get upset for him saying things people don't believe, Bryce is a Panther, he's not going to say even a single person in the building isn't behind him.

No, because I think it was a shortsighted mistake to fire him. I still contend that we won't get anyone we actually want, as any good up and coming HC candidate isn't going to risk their HC future on Bryce. Our best bet was to keep Reich into next season and then fire him a month into the season. Then when we end up with a Top 3 pick in the 2025 draft, you can attract a new coach at that point by telling them they can draft a QB to replace Bryce with the pick and leave the decision 100% up to them. THAT's how you get someone like a Ben Johnson. We'll either end up with a sub-par new HC who Tepper will be too afraid to fire after one season because of how bad it will look to do it 3 years in a row or he'll actually fire them and then even the good candidates aren't going to come work for a guy that just forced the Bryce decision and fired 3 HC's in 3 years. That only worked out for the Texans because one of the hottest names in the HC cycle was one of the Texans best players in franchise history and wanted to be there, we don't have that option. Tepper cut off his nose to spite his face here, for once we needed to just embrace the suck and play for the 2025 #1 pick and use that to attract a high quality HC candidate. Firing Rhule was the smart decision and it re-set the franchise, but they then didn't go about a proper re-set, they tried to game the system and only made it worse. But the trade and subsequent drafting of Bryce set the franchise back 3-4 years. Firing Freich now just set us back an additional 2 more years, rather than staying with the 3-4 window it would still be if we stuck with Reich and did a full re-set after 2024.

Very hard no on both Flores and Bienemy (and don't @ me with crap about them both being black, has absolutely NOTHING to do with it) This team is broken, we need a unifier as our next HC, someone who can rally the troops and get them to run through a brick wall to get the job done. Both Flores and Bienemy are well known for causing problems in their own building, their players hate playing for them, and are successful OC's because they're good football minds, but it's their HC's that the players want to play hard for, not the OC's that they can't stand. Sometimes those coaches work out, but it's not the right fit for this situation right now. I also don't think we can get a Ben Johnson type right now, a young, up and coming offensive minded coach isn't risking their HC future on Bryce. But what we need is to replicate what Detroit has done though, find a HC like Campbell, someone who may not be the most innovative coaching mind out there, but someone who is a leader of men, someone who players will rally behind. Then find a young innovative mind to be his OC, which I think is much more reasonable for someone to be willing to take on than our HC opening.

Tua is 6'1" and 227 lbs, he had more of a frame to add bulk and muscle, and he's still has a bottom half of the league QB in terms of arm strength himself. Bryce is just flat out small, he's only going to get so strong. He could fix a lot of his problems and become an average QB in this league (I don't think he will, but it's not impossible). But he will never have even league average arm strength, I honestly don't think it's even one that's up for debate with Bryce's future, it's just a fact at this point. The league is filled with strong armed QBs, they may not be great QB's, but they have the arm for it. Of the usual starters in the league right now (so not backups starting at the moment), who is even close to Bryce's arm strength in regards to weakness right now? Maybe Pickett? Purdy? Love? And even they have stronger arms, how much do you think he can improve there when the league is filled with guys who can toss it 60 yards with a flick of the wrist when that's a full body max heave for Bryce? Bryce has no fastball and you need to be able to zip it into tight windows more than 5 yards down the field to be a wining QB in the NFL today. Obviously he'd do better if he had guys like Tyreek and Waddle, but fact remains that Bryce has a noodle for an arm, it's clear as day on his throws, he doesn't have remotely close to the zip needed at this level. He could turn his career around and be an average starter, but he'll be doing it with below average arm strength.

I actually wouldn't have been against seeing him as the interim, he has a great football mind and he's great at knowing what is about to happen. So sure, if he had agreed to do that, I'd have been curious to see how the team would respond to him and what he'd do with Bryce. But not a fan of hiring him in the offseason unless we really can't get any quality candidates interested for the job, rather see someone else fail than Olsen

What?!?! That's absolutely what you can do, especially given the situation we were in with those seasons. Same reason people are saying the Vikings maybe shouldn't bring Jefferson back this year, same reason Rodgers won't come back to the Jets if they don't have a real playoff shot, even if ready. We needed a long term solution at QB, we were already out of playoff contention and looking at a Top 10 pick. Playing CMC only increases our chances of winning meaningless games in the final month of the season while also putting him at further risk. Sitting him was actually the competitive move, because you were playing for the better draft pick for a shot at a franchise QB.

On a CMC note, is he a HOF lock by the end of next season already? Was just looking at it, he has 76 career TD's already, seems pretty safe to say he'll get to 90 by the end of next season, likely passing it by a fair amount (assuming health of course). There's only 5 players with 90 or more career TDs and aren't either in the HOF already, or just aren't eligible but are for sure shoe-in's when the time comes. Shaun Alexander, Ricky Watters, Priest Holmes, Marshawn Lynch, and Lynch probably has a fair shot at getting in. CMC is better than any of those players, so I have to think there is a chance he already has his HOF jacket wrapped up by the end of next season, hell, he could get to 100 by then with the way he's racking up scores in SF at more than a 1 per game rate.

None of the 3 big moves in the last 2 years are hindsight is 20/20 The CMC trade, the #1 pick trade, the Bryce selection were all things that 90% of the casual fans could look at and immediately say it was a horrible decision. It's baffling that we did all 3 of those things in a year and a half span to completely tank this franchise's future.

He was never perpetually banged up, 2 years in a row of getting hurt for a few weeks and then being shelved because you're a star player on a team already eliminated from the playoffs doesn't equate to being "perpetually banged up" Again, the first year injury was a player falling on his ankle while trying to tackle him as he dragged the guy into the end zone and he got a high ankle from it. I don't remember the injury the second year off the top of my head, but even if it was a non contact muscle pull, that would make it one time in his career, not an ongoing thing like it is with Horn or other actually injury prone players. He's played in every game of the season in 5 of his 7 seasons in the league, but sure, he's perpetually banged up

Exactly, I was always against trading CMC because his injuries were just bad luck things (like when the guy rolled up on his ankle as he was going into the end zone and gave him the high ankle sprain) and not a bunch of non contact injuries that pile up year after year (like Horn). Plus, he 100% could have and would have played at the end of both seasons if we were in even the slightest contention, so he missed more games than necessary because there was no point in throwing him back out there to risk injury or hurting draft position in a lost season. But even if we were to trade him, we get a TERRIBLE package in return. I understand how the chart works and how all the picks added up to a first round value, but that's basically like saying you're good taking 100 $1 items and hoping you can sell every single one for the dollar and make the same $100 that you could have gotten in return from 1 item. Trading CMC for anything less than a first, let alone a late 2nd rounder being the best pick in the trade, was beyond atrocious

Even as bad as everything else is around him, he just can't make simple NFL level throws. And I don't even mean the wow plays that elite QB's make, I just mean simple throws such as from one hash to the far sideline on a rope to get there before the defender can break it up. I don't care how much you improve the rest, when the kid just doesn't have the arm to make throws that 95% of back-ups in the league have the arm to make, he's never going to succeed at a high level, no matter how much is fixed around him. Also what made him successful in college as his ability to feel the rush and step around it to make plays on the move. The problem is he's not quick or fast enough to avoid NFL level pass rushers, and all they have to do is get one hand on him and he's then not strong enough to break free. Everyone kept talking about how he was able to do it in the SEC, so he could do it in the NFL. But I remember making a thread a while back about that, even in the SEC, outside of a couple teams, most teams have at most 1 or 2 NFL level defenders, so he never regularly had to avoid NFL quality pass rushers.

Fair, but even in a functionally created offense, Bryce on this year's Bears minus Moore would still be awful. Even if they were to get a different WR in a hypothetical trade of Fields, they're still 3-8 with Fields and that other guy they started, both WAY better than Bryce, they'd be getting the #1 pick all on their own if they had Bryce this year. Getting drafted by a team who traded away the draft pick they would have used to replace him, extended his career as a starter to a second season instead of him being a 1 and done as a starter.

Bryce is so lucky the Bears decided to make that trade instead of trading Fields instead. If they traded Fields and took Bryce, him combined with how bad they are would have ended up with the Bears likely getting the #1 pick next year anyways. If that happened, they'd Josh Rosen him and draft his replacement, while he gets shipped out for a 4th round pick to only bounce around a few team's practice squads before being out of the league entirely.

The point is though, that it would never get to the point of them quitting and throwing Bryce under the bus. If they went to Tepper with a message that strongly, that Bryce so much isn't the guy that they'd quit over it because they knew Bryce would ruin their careers, that Tepper would have backed off and let them draft Stroud instead. Which is why in the end, I think the blame lies with Reich, I think him and the staff had enough QB knowledge to get Tepper to let them take Stroud, but they didn't fight for him like they could and should have. Hell... Tepper is a hedge fund guy, he knows that sometimes you have to make a bold call and go all in behind it. I think he'd have respected the staff if they did that, that they'd put their jobs immediately on the line to take the guy they believed in.

I don't feel bad for him in the slightest, if anything, I think he knew this was coming and his time in the NFL wouldn't be for long and I applaud him for playing the game correctly. He wasn't the guaranteed #1 pick going into the combine, him not throwing was because he knew throwing back to back with the other prospects would expose his significant throwing limitations, in particular, the lack of velocity on his throws. He gamed the system into being the #1 pick even though he never should have been even in contention for it. If anything, he's lucky that he got put into such a bad situation because the team has no other option than keep playing him and it gives him a chance to try and figure something out and make a career for himself. Had he been judged for his physical abilities instead of his mythical super brain, he'd have fallen in the draft, likely got taken by a better team, then failed and quickly benched because they would have a chance at actually winning games with another QB in the game. He'd have been in a Trey Lance situation, someone who's career may never end up taking off the ground, instead he's at least going to get a chance to play his way out of it and into at least a career backup role after we cut bait in a year or two.

McCown and Deuce aren’t owed millions, pretty sure they’d have no issue putting Tepper on blast if they wanted to. And frankly, McCown might have to do that to help sell himself for any future coaching jobs anyways

The problem is you can only coach up a QB so much, if you don't have the talent, you're not going to succeed. I think the footwork is more on Bryce just not being able to play at the speed of the NFL game, if you can't keep up with the speed at this level as a QB, your footwork is going to be terrible because you're always a step or two behind where you should be anyways. I'm not absolving McCown, I just think it's hard to judge his coaching job based on how far below average Bryce is in every single physical trait needed for the position.

The bolded part is EXACTLY why I think, in the end, it's Reich's fault, even if the pick was Tepper's. If Reich and the rest of the QB gurus on the staff went to Tepper and said, "look, you put us in this position by forcing the trade, you now need to listen to us and take the better QB, and if you don't and force us to take someone who isn't an NFL QB, we're going to quit because it's not what we agreed to come here for" They do that, and the pick is Stroud, 100% of the time. It would be the equivalent to holding a gun to Tepper's head and forcing him to take Stroud. If the brand new HC was willing to quit over taking Bryce over Stroud and the pick only happened because the owner wanted it, he wouldn't be able to sell Bryce to the fans or any future coach to replace Reich. You think things are bad from a PR standpoint right now, imagine hiring Reich and that all star staff, making the trade for #1, then the staff all quit days after the draft and publicly say it's because the owner forced them to take Bryce over the guy they wanted. It would have been unprecedented and no way for Tepper to come back from it, we'd be the red headed step child of the NFL that nobody wanted to coach or play for. I think Tepper said he wanted Bryce and Reich just went along with it instead of pushing back like he could and should have done. Threatening to quit over taking Bryce would have made enough of a statement to Tepper that he REALLY wasn't the guy, and Tepper would have relented, I have no doubt in my mind.

Dream is Ben Johnson, but he's going to be the #1 candidate on every team's board this offseason, he's literally going to have his pick of jobs that he wants. No way he decides to hitch his wagon to Bryce and this roster for a few extra million a year from Tepper, not when he's looking at a potential 30 year HC career in which he'll make WAY more money than he will by being overpaid by Tepper to be here for a few years, get fired, and ruin his HC future. Reality is it's likely to end up being Eric Bienemy, who is pretty much the last person I'd be okay with. He's interviewed for dozens of openings, never gets an offer because everyone knows his players hate him and nobody likes playing for him. That's fine when you're an OC with a strong HC that the players will run through a brick wall for, it doesn't work when you're the HC (unless you have decades of history like Belichek), he'd just be the new Josh McDaniels and get fired because the team doesn't play hard for him. We're not getting an up and comer, they're not risking their HC chances on this roster, which is why it will be someone like Bienemy, someone who's badly wanted to be a HC for years but can't actually get an offer to be one, he has to take what he can get, and this is it. But for the love of god, please don't let it happen. We set this franchise back 3-5 years by making the trade for Bryce. Firing Reich at this point just set us back another 1-2 years further (would have been better off firing him a month into next season). Hiring Bienemy will only add another year or two onto that total. We can't start to move forward until we stop moving backwards.

I still contend that even if Tepper "made the pick" that it is still likely Reich's fault. Reich and his staff were supposed to be QB gurus, if they went to Tepper and just said, "we can't take Bryce, he flat out doesn't have what it takes, Stroud is that much better of a prospect" and they really pushed the issue, Tepper would have been okay with it. If all these QB gurus went to him and strongly enough said that it had to be Stroud, I don't see how he could or would have forced Bryce on them since he'd know they were saying it because their own jobs depended on drafting the right guy. It also wouldn't have been hard for Reich to leak to the media that Tepper was trying to force Bryce on the staff when nobody wanted him, which if that happened, it likely would have forced Tepper's hand to let the staff make the pick anyways so he didn't look like an owner who made final personnel decisions.

My guess is Deuce was fired for one of 2 reasons... 1. Tepper did because he felt he had to in order to name anyone else the interim since Deuce was the Asst HC. 2. Deuce threw a fit about not being named interim since he was brought in as the Asst HC and then Tepper fired him over that (and I wouldn't blame Deuce for doing if that was the case). McCown is the interesting one considering how well regarded he was around the league as a potential fast track OC candidate. Best guess is he never wanted Bryce and was never quiet about it inside the building, so this was just a natural parting point with him. My only issue with getting rid of Bryce's QB coach is that it's only going to further hinder his development, which I don't put on the coaches so far, but on his lack of any even above average physical traits.