Bear Hands

-5

Looks like we should be around -3 passing yards after the first quarter. Nice.

Starting this up separate from the preview one.

This is true. I'm a CU alum and don't care about their program lol.

I thought we'd be talking Arch haha. 9/12 223 yards 4 Passing TDs, 3 carries, 53 rushing, 1 TD I guess Hunter in 2025 would allow us to still be terrible at least one more season (without a QB) and then land Arch Manning in 2026. Let's go.

Long form isn’t for everybody

That Horn draft screwed the pooch. Think it was pick 9 though. Heck, I would’ve been thrilled with Slater or Devonta that draft (those were my faves at the time) or possibly Parsons. It yeah if Field, we could’ve already realized to move on from him by now and landed a guy in this past draft.

After this week, our schedule has some teams that are underperforming/with big question marks. Raiders, Bengals, Bears, Falcons & Commanders. If we lose through that and he's 2-21 on his career, and we're 0-7, it could very well be the lowest this franchise has ever been.

Mater Dei was so strategic on his family's behalf, he commuted there from Pasadena every day. That was so brutal they probably took the 210 east to the 57 south to get there. When I lived out there, I had a few construction sites I managed at Caltech and also down near Costa Mesa. I hated that drive so much...flames...on the side of my face...

There are 4 clear cut potential 1sts as far as I'm concerned: Beck, Allar, Ward, & Ewers Beck and Ward seem to be on the smoothest tracks. Allar and Ewers have all the tools but need to keep it up. They've been known to get a bit erratic/development this year is key. For others...McCord is on my watch list. I won't include Dart because I can't take another Ole Miss QB after Corral. Don't really feel Sanders either. They're all 2nd Rd or lower for me. Gut tells me there's 3-4 1st rounders in this draft.

I've always thought it looks too much like a sticker on the helmet. Really need to sear it in. Like a Springfield cat.

Can't wait for our first drive.

I have been following Ward since his first year at WSU and really think he's NFL caliber. The Oregon game in 2022 was the one that really sold me on him early. They ended up losing but he showed so much ability to will his team downfield, at will, at all costs in that game. He was young and got too aggressive at the end, but it was the first game that really teased a lot from his game. He's only grown since and I've been super impressed. He passes all the physical traits, if anything he tries to play too much hero ball at times and can be a tad inaccurate, but he's developed so well IMO.

He was one of a kind at his position. Even looking around the league at the greats and duds right now, not one can even touch what Cam brought from a teammate/locker room/energy standpoint. Not a single one. Even historically, there aren't many. There's a few who are obviously close with teammates, have good report, like Burrow, Love, CJ, Lamar, Stafford, and then there's Mahomes who's skills are just beyond any character traits. Cam's energy was so rare at the QB position.

I’m sorry but I’m just looking at this a bit more plainly. This is not my family, this is a sports team with professionals trying to do an effective job in a multi-billion dollar industry. Just want to watch some entertaining football at this point. I’m not watching my kid play in his leagues. Although it sure looks like it haha.

I’m just amazed so many over the years have taken this assumption that it’s okay for him to have his “style” for lack of better term, along with this notion he was some godsend with anticipation throws and mental acuity. Hope next time we’re looking at QBs, the team just steps back and looks at the nuts and bolts to see if this is a dude built for the position, has the arm and can make every throw. Baseline. Then get into the mental makeup and romanticized intangibles.

Option two is not philosophical in nature. It is saying to cheer on a sports team you like even if they’re awful. It’s not that complicated. A fan can hate the product, call it out, and be entirely fine. It seems this whole essay depends on emotional investment. The trick is to simply be less emotionally invested and don’t blindly cheer the indefensible in life.

Option 2:

Hard to believe the Clausen year was like 14 years ago. What is time.

The thing is, those runs show what type of team you have built and how they can bring out some good stretches for even the most faulty QBs. We had an alright team around Kyle Allen. It's too bad we hired Matt Rhule for the "rebuild" after that year, Luke retired, & they realized Cam was shot. It was just so much at once. Not to mention TD & Olsen peacing and letting Bradberry walk. That was our entire core. I don't mind we went out and got Bridgewater (didn't draft a QB immediately), but that's when you can't miss on draft picks. The Matt Rhule hire, and then the 2021 draft/offseason (missing on 9 of 11 draft picks, including Horn at 9, the Darnold trade, and more) was the biggest wrong turn we made in this death spiral.

Yeah. If there are limitations, they're going to be there inside the pocket or out. So might as well work on what you can correct fundamentally in-structure prior to a play breaking down (although I think he's at a point where he's simply too small/not enough physical tools). What I feel happened here is they saw this kid act like a mini-Mahomes, and were just like, alright this is working, just let him cook. And now, we see what happens when a 5'9 1/2 185 guy with a JP Losman arm and no pocket-awareness tries to play mini-Mahomes ball lol

I've accepted the jumping thing, erratic footwork, strange parallel to LOS drop is not going to end. It's part of his "technique". And it's the most damaging component to his entire game, as much as his size. For some reason, no coach wants to correct it because there's this notion that you can work with the backyard style to an extent and dropbacks and throwing motion doesn't need to be perfect. But Mahomes and a few others are exceptions to the rule IMO. He's the most compelling case that tells me this: the further you are outside of prototypical modern QB parameters, the more you actually need to execute IN-structure and have fundamentals/technique as sound as possible. This is why the biggest mistake coaches have made with him since HS is not getting him sound fundamentally while he learned to be all loose-y goose-y outside the pocket. This is also why Kyler can look bad, but not all the time. Because he's got a cannon, because he still has some burners. It's also why Russ has fallen apart. When you're not only an outlier physically/tools wise, but your game (at least in college) was best out of structure, then how do you expect to execute at a fundamental level in the NFL? You can't. You need to operate at a high level, in the pocket, and be fundamentally sound to execute and he simply can't do it.

Seeing this again, all I think is how f*cking tiny he looks in the pocket.

Joey Bosa & Khalil Mack are both healthy, playing together (which didn't happen a ton recently)...they accounted for 2.5 sacks last week. Gonna be a tall task for Icky.