Bear Hands

Hey, who knows. Maybe he falls into a good decision at some point lol.

I'd imagine it could be to see what Evero is capable of. There's no point in keeping him around. The playcalling is atrocious. Might as well see what else you have without the Reich umbrella.

When does it happen? Tomorrow?

No joke, it's like they don't want to score. It's just awful, awful football.

Something's gotta give this week.

I could see us taking Michael Pratt in the 4th if we want to try for a backup w/potential route. Maybe Cameron Ward. Honestly, we are somehow in the spot to take any position, anywhere, at any point. I don't remember us ever being in that position before. Given contracts, safety may be the only one out of the cards but legit every position could use an upgrade otherwise. WRs, RBs, QBs, OL, an EDGE opposite Burns (with him uncertain), better suited DLs alongside Brown, An upgrade next to Luvu at ILB, CBs

We tried the dinosaur version who could implement a dated, 00s' San Diego Chargers offense.

Reich can go, getting rid of him after a year won't deter people, Texans had two one and dones in a row and found their way to a near ideal situation. Its not the ever growing impatience, it's the involvement. But there will be a guy who doesn't mind it and I imagine it could be another type that wants a lot of control and $$. Who that is, we may not like or may not be ideal, but it's the corner we're in. Doubt we're getting Ben Johnson or any of the young promising coordinators. Juast hope we clean house GM, scouting dept, and coaching staff and redo this from the ground up. We're stuck with Tepper so we'll just have to roll with his next overly involved gamble.

Chark is one and done and TMJ is likely gone. We basically have Thielen and Mingo and that's about it. From my vantage point, we need quickness and a guy who doesn't need to be coached up with route running.

Rhule goes down in an offensive juggernaut battle 13-10

With Ekwonu trending down and Horn not finding the field, it’s beyond bad. In addition, don’t forget two of those guys in 2022 were via trades so we gave up additional draft capital for 2 guys not even on the team anymore. It would be nice if just 1 or 2 of the 4th to late rounders was a pleasant surprise but they have all been pretty much nada.

Hi there, I'm seeing retweets and narratives being driven, and it's kind of a funny thing. So just wanna throw this out there: Every single team in the league, EVERY TEAM, runs zone concepts on at least a third of their running plays. Even ones considered power, and yes, even us last year post-Rhule under Wilks. It's all a matter of coach and their scheme/philosophy/style/background. If you really broke it down, there are 32 schemes in this league, and this black and white, power v. zone dichotomy does not exist. Examples in CAR: Rivera's running game was zone-read, inside & outside zone blend. Jet sweep and gap were deployed as well, but not as prominent. Rhule's offense was a 50/50 zone/gap split under Brady. Held mostly throughout Rhule's tenure Wilks' was a gap heavy, pin & pull, power concepts focus with less zone (~35%). Notably had some pretty diverse concepts that works for us in that monster Lions game last year. Reich historically is about 55% zone (primarily inside--he loves his split runs), with gap used in that 35% range. Elsewhere... Kyle's West Coast offshoot is zone-based, primarily outside. Passing game is built off PA and motion -- the trick is to have consistent formations that deploy very different outcomes/create options all over the place to help spread the field. Offensive disguises. McVay is an interesting blend of zone but has more gap and trap involved these days. And as many know, plenty of misdirect. And bigger picture.. Offensively, Sean Payton was one of the guys to really blend a WCO and EP effectively. He uses a mixed-concept run game approach. Zone, gap, the full bag. The passing game, as we all endured when he was in NO, is a high volume of quick short passes to kill teams slowly and then inserts mismatches to get the bigger plays. So what am I getting at? Yes, we have a new coach and a new scheme and it appears to work terribly. But this idea that we completely changed our offensive language from an offensive lineman's perspective is incorrect. It's a new scheme, a different playbook, but from a blocking assignment standpoint, we've changed the ratio of deployment. This is not a black and white league. There is not simply zone v. gap. There is not simply Spread v. WCO v. EP v. AC. Everything is its own unique composition pulling from all parts of football life. Let's slow the roll with this whole pining for what Wilks ran. It is not like you can go from A to B. And then back from B to A. What they can start doing is starting to tick up the gap calls. It doesn't require a wholesale scheme change, especially when everything we have is already implemented. You're not just flipping the script, it's all about the usage rates. Bigger picture offensive notes: We are currently deploying the second highest rate of 11 personnel in the league (Behind the Rams) to help create mismatches because our personnel sucks, and we still can't do anything. Reich's aging scheme is trying to leverage itself between the OLs we have and our QB...and none of it fits well together. It's a bag of misfit toys playing with an outdated playbook. So the "why do we suck" falls into many categories in this regard. Sure, the scheme isn't working that they've developed, situational playcalling sucks, positional-coaching itself seems bad, the players are underperforming, and we don't have certain personnel that virtually every team in the league tends to have these days (pass-catching RB, a shifty-speedster at WR). But again, this is not a magic fix that we can just rewind to Wilks' Scheme. Okay, thanks.

100000% It really seems like the Teppers hired a guy that doesn't do what they want. They hired a pizza chef to make sushi. But because they don't have the football background to know what that meant, they hired based off platitudes, resume, and visionary pitches. From everything I hear Tepper blabber about, he clearly wanted a modern spread, outside-zone in the spirit of a Shanahan/McVay-tree system. He wanted his team to be in the influencer offensive crowd, creating/leading the trends. He said as much a few times. Yet, they get a more inside-zone, bland old school WCO-influenced guy, who loves tall QBs, and tell him to just gather all the coaches he can find with their checkbook. Frank makes zero sense here at this time. If they had someone here in a executive capacity that knew what to listen for during the interview process, it should have been super clear pre-hire who/what they needed. Heck, the list of candidates interviewed would have probably been a bit different as well. And once hired, Frank established the intent and vision in Jan/Feb. There should have been an abundance of planning between him and Scott about the guys needed and what to target through FA and the draft. So even if we wanted to scrape by with Frank, the planning was god awful. Didn't try to target a Mims, Downs, Dell, Reed, Wilson, Achane, Palmer, Douglas, Spears, Tucker...no speed at WR, no pass-catching RBs. Honestly, a waste of pick 39 and a waste of 2 more in a stupid trade up to 80.

Oh they aren't-- I think Tepper wants to, and it's why they brought in a guy like Thomas Brown. But Frank's offense is not really blendable with the McVay/Shanahan stuff. That's kind of the problem for me. It's a clash of philosophies and they don't have anyone, really anyone at all that can stretch the field vertically while the horizontal stretching is rendered useless without the presnap motions and misdirects. Mishmash disaster. And what I think gets lost is that Frank verbalizes they want to do all this stuff, but in reality, his own architecture doesn't allow for it to happen. He's inside zone, triangle, trap, mesh all day. And he's living a contradiction as a coach right now and knows it. He's trapped because the roster also doesn't allow for it to happen. And meanwhile, we have a QB who should ideally fit in the modern spread/stretch zone. Annnnd Meanwhile, the fans are looking at last year thinking "Why can't we just do that!" It's a mess of wants, needs, all of the above.

Tyjae Spears breakout game.

Yes he is.

Maybe they just lock the OL in a room and play Alex Gibbs videos for them on repeat.

Apparently they don't and just don't want to change what they've set up.

Frank & Carl chatting back and forth got me thinking of these two:

They don't want him to run a power scheme. Simple as that. Accept it.

You should write them a letter. They're not changing it.

Reich also mentioned what they needed for Bryce offensively, being spread, so maybe they just don't feel comfortable running a power scheme with Bryce under center more of the time. So it's not the line, they don't want it for Bryce. Could be as simple as that. They're keeping Bryce comfortable scheme wise and felt good ENOUGH with the uglies to run it. And it's not working out. They're committed to emulating the higher-powered offenses right now and not do what works with the personnel.

I highly suspect Ewers & Sanders are going to return to school. They're gonna be the talk IF Bryce is not looking the part in 2024.

I feel like pre-trade, many wanted AZ's spot at #3. That seemed to be one of the bigger consensus wishes for either Stroud or AR (Oh and the 2-3 that wanted Levis) Once the trade happened, then many just got on the Bryce train because of the resounding praise he got from the NFL community and the narrative that "He's just got it, the ultimate distributor and field technician" thing. The Stroud love was still there, but everyone just decided to accept we traded up for Bryce and got hyped.

That 2021 draft bugs the crap out of me. It left a bad taste in my mouth then, still does. We had so many picks too (11) and it's only amounted to Horn, Brady C, Chubba and Tremble. And those guys are still big IFs still/likely won't be around much longer. Horn likely won't get a 5th yr picked up, Brady is an average swing-lineman, Tremble is a TE2 (I like him though), and Chubba is an uninspiring RB. Expendable. Not to mention, already half of the 2022 draft class is gone (Corral, Smith, Barnes) So, twe've got, at MOST, marginal impact from 7 of 17 drafted players in 2021-2022. That is dogsh*t. Reality will be maybe half of those guys stick as contributors another year or so, so it's really going to have been a 4 for 17 hit rate. Nice work Panthers.