WhoKnows

Same thing got discussed last year. Young barely saw action while the others got a lot more reps. We talked about it in here that we didn’t get why Young wasn’t getting more reps when it looked like he needed them. Suffice it to say that Young is an outlier when looking at the preseason time of the last two draft classes which contain 9 1st round QBs and Levis. Seems like that’s a substantial set of examples.

What did I say that was wrong? I’m not moving any goal posts. You were using veteran QBs who’ve played for the same coaches and then pointed to Herbert with a new coach and you didn’t realize he was hurt all preseason until Monday. Personally, I’ve never said that I think sitting vet QBs is a problem. I just gave you a list of Young’s closest peers and showed that Young was the only one not taking snaps and he has a brand new coach and a brand new OL. Sorry you couldn’t argue against valid points.

No. If injuries are something you are trying to avoid or lessen the impact (on the regular season), you don’t use only the last preseason game to get reps. First, when other teams play their starters, they do it in weeks 1 and 2 so better chance of real reps. Second, if someone rolls an ankle, when do you want that to happen? Preseason weeks 1 and 2 give you more recovery time than week 3. In days gone by, no starters ever played the last week of preseason. I’m all for reps when we have brand new OLs and coaches every single year, but the smart choice is to play starters early when they have a higher chance to play other starters and have more chance to heal if there’s any minor injuries.

I think the win total is less important than how the team plays. Last year, there was a lot of preseason talk and we saw exactly what we were worried about. The team looked unprepared and the QB we thought needed reps didn’t look like he was ready to be an NFL QB. If we start out 0-4 but are competitive, scoring points and look like a prepared team, no one will mention preseason. If we are 0-4 and barely scoring, getting lots of penalties and making bad decisions, preseason should be brought up because we should’ve gotten more reps in to starters. There is one caveat to this. If we look poorly prepared, it might not be the HC’s actual fault. Maybe our talent level is just that bad and until we get a better team and QB, we’ll look bad. Unfortunately, for an optimistic type coach, there’s no way to know.

Hence playing starters week 1/2, not the last week. Did Cam miss any real game time?

Honestly, that’s what it feels like or maybe realization that the team isn’t really ready for week 1. If you were worried about injuries, you wouldn’t start your starters this week. Back in 16 game/4 preseason, no starters played in that week 4 preseason game. Playing starters this week seems silly because even small injury could impact real games. If someone pulls a muscle in week 1 of preseason you can shut them down and make sure they are ready week 1 of the real games. If we were going to play starters for only 1 games, week 1 or 2 makes more sense than week 3.

I don’t see an issue with guys who are proven vets. Josh Allen was supposed to start and play but it was raining so they kept him on the bench. Do you want to know who has played in the preseason? Williams, Penix, Richardson, Stroud, Maye, Levis, Daniels, Nix and McCarthy. Basically every 1st round QB from last year and this year plus Levis has played in at least one of the preseason games. We have the only 1st round plus top of 2nd QB in the past two years that hasn’t played a down in the preseason.

You do realize that Herbert has been hurt, right? Not the best example of not playing in preseason when he literally returned to practice on Monday for the first time since 7/31. I don’t really care because I don’t think we are any part of contending this year anyway. I don’t get not starting guys who could use some game time snaps, especially like the OL where our starters haven’t had a single game snap and entire interior hasn’t ever played together before. It is what it is. We’ll know pretty quickly if it’s a repeat of last year or not and if we had a good draft or not.

Fine for a team not in rebuild mode, i.e. like saying no to the Rams deal for Burns. If you aren’t planning to keep these players longer than a year or even just a handful of games, why bother. I just used every trade where we have 0 from that trade to show just how much we pissed away for basically nothing. It’s truly astonishing how many draft picks we have wasted. I too have been wanting a rookie QB since I led the Tank for Trevor discussions and yes we ate complete poo. Not only did we pick the wrong guy, we took all the wrong steps. If you know you are planning to go after a rookie QB, you 1) need to figure out who you want around the QB, 2) figure out how to get the best pick for drafting the rookie and 3) decide who you don’t need that could help you in 2). We decided Burns was more important than CMC and Moore, which is stupid. We decided that we should finish 2022 with a vet coach that players could rally around instead of a guy who’s doing a great job to get you a top pick and went from 1-4 to 7-10 getting pick 9 instead of 2, 3 or 5 (Colts had a tie). Trading Burns for 2 1sts and a 2nd was a no brainer when you didn’t want to pay him $30M and you’d need draft picks to go get the QB or more weapons. As I’ve said before, we looked like a better team for 2023 than the Rams did so it’s very probably that we could have given away the Rams 2024 1st instead of ours. We could have take Williams or gotten a bounty to replace the picks we lost for Young.

Such is the state of the talent of our team right now. Guys who haven’t played in years, guys who were backups as seniors and guys who were never wanted by anyone else are fighting for roster spots. When you realize that Fitterer gave away 2 1sts, 2 2nds and Moore for Young, a 3rd for Henderson, 6th for Gilmore, 3rd and 4ths for both Corral and Johnson, 2nd, 4th and 6th for Darnold and a 5th for Mayfield, it’s not surprising that we are legitimately trying Jordan Matthews out. Fitterer was GM for 3 years and he traded away (and used in trade ups) 2 1sts (3 1sts counting Moore), 3 2nds, 3 3rds, 3 4ths and 2 6ths. He basically traded away more than 2 entire drafts worth of talent and all we have to show for it are Young and Johnson. Gee, wonder why are team is bottom tier in talent.

I know people in here say it’s over and to not think about it, but the opportunity to get Stroud or Williams (if we took the Burns deal we could have saved our 1st) will haunt us for some time until we have our Cam #2. I mean Cam #2 as our franchise QB not identical physically.

I think I’d rather have Darnold with JJ, Addison and Hockenson over Young and our weapons.

Still one of the worst picks of the draft. You’d think he’d be getting all the reps unless, of course, if he doesn’t look good and fans would be even more pissed seeing him play.

As long as we stay healthy on OL. We said that last year and we were picking from street FAs to find starters. Our depth is paper thin.

Wow, you know your OL depth is horrible when you pick up a guy who didn’t even start his senior year at Ole Miss. We need to say a prayer for health because we’ve got less than zero behind the starters again, especially with meh backups getting hurt.

Agreed. A dawg is not someone who throws a ball at the opposing defense when he has 1 career TD in 3 years of averaging 45% of snaps. A dawg is someone who’s showed up in real games. It’d be one thing if he was a hungry rookie, not a vet in year 4. Remember Vernon Butler? He might have been the only player giving effort and getting penalties for it when the Colts smoked us a few years ago en route to a 1-7 or 0-8 finish. No one called him a dawg for drawing a penalty.

This team is missing a lot of NFL talent at the starter level but our reserves are appalling. Outside of Brown, we don’t really have any elite players but we are paper thin. TMJ going against opponents best CB? Have fun with that. Anyone think he’ll beat Gardner?

Wow, when you really take a deep look at our offensive skill positions, you realize how bad our talent level is compared to the rest of the NFL.

Even though Dan did agree with not making the Rams trade, you are correct that he was in a bad spot in 2024. It wasn’t just no cheap year left. It was also the fact that Sweat and Chase Young were dealt for a 2nd and late 3rd (49ers) in the 2023 season. Those cemented the fact that we were crazy to turn down 2 1sts and a 2nd for Burns.

The Rams also made a play for CMC when the 49ers did and yes, I am correct in terms of the records. SF was 3-3 when they got CMC and lost the first week he was on the team to be 3-4. They never lost again until the NFC Championship once CMC started and a week later Purdy started. The Rams lost to CMC/SF the first week CMC started to be 3-4 as well. Stafford only started 9 games and was 3-6. While they were supposed to be better, they weren’t and after the Burns deal fell through they unraveled quickly as SF went on a 10 game regular season win streak. If it weren’t for a great draft, like Puca in the 5th and 2 8+ sack rookies, the Rams were an under .500 team in 2023 as well. I agree with the whole 1) make that damn game changing trade, 2) if you don’t make the trade then he should have an extension already signed but 3) you are devaluing the pick values we were going to receive. For 3), the Rams were on the cusp of falling apart (Stafford was hurt in preseason and only played half the year) and our trade of CMC to SF was a dagger in their back and after that fallout and losing even more picks to us for Burns, the 2024/2025 Rams picks would have had more value IMHO than ours. Doesn't matter anyway because we did everything wrong and became the worst team in the league in 2023 and maybe again the worst team in 2024, who knows.

You are a year ahead of yourself. The Rams were 3-4 when we turned down the deal and Stafford had been hurt all year. The Rams were doing a last hurrah because the 49ers were also 3-4 and not looking good with Jimmy. The Rams finished 5-12. After that year, those 2 first were looking even better than ours. McVay was contemplating retiring and Donald ended up playing one more year. Stafford didn’t finish the season. Heck, if the Rams did make the deal, McVay might have retired and Donald as well. The Rams had a fantastic 2023 draft, in part because we didn’t take the deal. You might be thinking of the 2023 Rams as a playoff team. Their 2023 pick we would have gotten was pick 36. Before the 2023 draft, the Rams 2024 1st and 2025 1st were likely rated higher than ours, since we finished 7-10 and they were 5-12 with a hurt and old Stafford and some potential big changes. I think we could have packaged the Rams pick to move from 9 to 1. It could have been a double whammy if we then picked Stroud. We wouldn’t have had pick 1 in this draft but probably could have gotten a solid WR like Odunze to pair with Moore and CMC. Damn, it really hurts to remember the details.

The one piece away was the problem. Fitterer said he thought the 2023 team (after trading CMC and Moore) was better than 2022 except at a couple spots. He was a legit moron at his job. He just kept flopping around and had no clue on talent evaluation. He thought his shitty WR picks were good enough to get rid of CMC and Moore just flubbed Burns. He waited long enough for the Bosa deal so that his contract demands were more than we’d pay and long enough for the Sweat and Young trades to devalue Burns’ worth. I really hope Morgan’s picks do well and then we can build on that but I’m worried we are picking the same way and we won’t get much from this draft class.

It will, because that in combination with the Young trade up lost us so much talent it’s not even funny. Had we made the Burns trade with the intention of using those picks to do a QB trade up or to get weapons for a QB (if we didn’t win 7 and get pick 9), the Young pick wouldn’t sting so much. I think we’d be OK even with the Young mistake if we traded Burns to the Rams. By taking Young and losing two 1sts for 1 more year of Burns, we doubled down on screwing up both game changing level trades.

Comparing Reich as a HC to Peterson is a terrible comparison based on their success. Based on what we saw, it will be hard for Canales to be worse offensively, so we got that going for us. I think this is a great topic though because it does set more realistic expectations.

It’s sad how incompetent we are at drafting and how much talent we passed up for projects that honestly aren’t NFL talents.