WhoKnows

We haven’t had a “good” draft since 2017, but Rhule didn’t completely fug up a draft and put us multiple years behind with a single trade and incorrect QB. Anyway, I was making that point because that guy was basically trying to act like 2023 was going to be a great draft because we were making moves without Rhule. Oops!

Gotta love that guy trying to make fun of Matt Rhule as if we made good moves without him. Oh, what I would have paid to have Marty or Rhule run our 2023 draft instead of Fitterer having full say.

Yeah, hindsight seems so ridiculously obvious. Trying not to beat a dead horse because we of course fell for it, but you truly can’t get how we missed all the red flags. His deep ball stats. His size, not just height but eye level and body. His lack of running ability. His arm strength. His footwork. It’s insane that we truly felt he had such a super processor that it would overcome the litany of physical question marks. For the amount we traded away, truly mind boggling. Then again Fitterer was unbelievably bad and incorrect in almost every decision.

True, we’ve been very successful the past few years picking through the scraps of OL cuts.

That said, I’m glad he’s doing stuff like this because it’s a great experience for the kids, period.

Still looks bigger with the Chargers. Again, I don’t want a huge QB that can’t throw the ball at all but he looks like he hasn’t gotten stronger at all since last year.

Man, that one throwing angle where everyone got excited that he got beefed up seems like it was just a weird angle. Right at the start his right arm is very visible to the left of the kid and he does not look bulked up at all. He has often gotten compared to Brees and while QBs aren’t bulked up like other positions, Brees looks way bigger in the picture below than Young above. Damn miracle that our OL didn’t get him killed last year.

Agreed. I want to see improvements everywhere so we can identify what we actually need. Can Sanders be our go forward TE? Can Iky be salvaged? Is Brooks a long term answer? Is Leggette legit? What do we need on D? I still see Young as holding us back but hopefully we get visibility to plan for future drafts.

The last time we won the division was 2015. The only time we were close was in 2017 when we still had a good Cam, Olsen, TD, CMC, Luke and others and in 2022 when the division winner was under .500. Other than the past long ago we haven’t really been close.

That’s what we said and the defenders club didn’t get it. It’s very simple and not hard to understand. It’s kind of like the “why can’t you just be happy” comments now as if we aren’t 25-66 since the implosion in the second half of 2018 on our 4th coach and 3rd GM in 6 years.

You can’t even give him that. Yes, it helps to have a G who’s good so that the QB doesn’t run straight into the edge rusher and make Iky’s job easier but Iky was terrible just blocking the guy he was supposed to block. We saw that early in preseason. He couldn’t even block (heck even touch sometimes) the one edge guy who was his assignment and that was in preseason game 1. While the preseason doesn’t matter folks were laying out the excuses, it was obvious in preseason that Iky was going to have a bad season and our OL was not good.

Yep. It was an obvious red flag that a lot of people ignored. The results/scores in preseason don’t matter, but individual performance very much does and individually, we looked like the least talented team in the league and it carried over.

Sorry, but in 2015, we didn’t look like poo to the extent of 2023. People who said it’s just preseason were completely wrong. Simple as that. 2015 was a veteran lead team. It was Cam’s 5th year and Luke’s 4th. Even our OL was 80% the same (added Oher) as the great run to finish 2014 with a playoff win. That year can be labeled as preseason doesn’t matter because I’m sure we rested vets and well, Ron/Mike weren’t putting in special plays, etc. I absolutely don’t recall a bunch of us saying that Turner was getting killed on one on ones or that Luke was completely out of position or that Norman was hurt again but probably fine. The only thing that was right about the 2023 preseason is that the minority of us who saw it, were correct that we A) should have been making Young and others play 100% of the reps as there was nothing to hide and B) the preseason means nothing was a bunch of BS trying to stay optimistic when it was obvious that we had way less good talent than the rest of the NFL.

They also have 3 SB wins and more HOFers. Peppers is our first full HOFer versus guys who spend a few years with us. Elway by himself overshadows our history. Winning SB 50 would have been huge for our history, definitely putting that team into the greatest of all time discussions.

They are but TBH, I think I’d trade our QB for either of theirs, although Nix is clearly my least favorite. All the pre-Nix QBs as well and heck I think I’d rather have Levis just for his arm and thinking it’ll be easier to fix his turnovers than build an entire offense around unfixable physical issues. Going to be a long couple years. Really hope the draft this year and the next two are amazing because we need that to get out of this 6 year old dumpster.

I actually think he’ll get 2 more seasons as well. I think either we’ll get some luck and be just out of reach of the 1/2 viable QBs in the 2025 draft or there won’t be any viable QBs like 2022 and we’ll draft a non QB first. I think by default he’ll get this year and next and then 2026 we’ll go all in on a QB.

If this was fantasy land, I would have picked top 16 offense (real ranking not yards on D like our 5th ranked D that was 29th in scoring) or Young producing like Stroud. It’s not so I went with 1000 yard RB since that looked to be the best alternative to showing an improved OL and RB. Honestly, I want to see our rookies and FA acquisitions look really good even if Young is holding us back. I’d like to see the entire team looking better so when we replace Young we actually can feel like we are one QB away from really competing. I just have no faith that Young is the guy for the future. I don’t want a Teddy ceiling which is a middling record with maybe 1 playoff game in good years.

While that’s true, there are still years with better prospects. No player is guaranteed and you get Lance/Purdy stuff occasionally, but everyone said the 2022 QBs were lackluster and they were and that 2023 was better and it was even with AR’s injury and Bryce’s bomb. Same with 2024, no clue if Williams will be successful or not, but it was a way better QB class than 2022. 2024 vs 2023 was closer and both look to be better than 2025 so far. We don’t know who may step up but there are clear better prospect classes and clear worse prospect classes.

You should because before the preseason fiasco and the start of the season fiasco, all the reports, including Frank’s responses, were that Fitterer and Reich were in lock step. Remember the press conference where Fitterer talked about both he and Frank saying who they wanted before and after the draft process and that they both picked Young and it was glorious? People got hung up on Tepper saying the point guard analogy in April when Brown was interviewed by a Panthers reporter describing how a QB needs to be a point guard in huge detail. That was in February. I think Tepper was just parroting Brown to make himself look like he knew what he was doing. Mrs. Tepper hugging Bryce always overshadowed CJ saying how he called her Mama Tepp. We fuged up as a team, probably more so because Fitterer always said he had Young as his #1 the year before, probably because we looked at all the QBs that year as well. Reich’s love for CJ started when he got on the hot seats for frankly doing a horrific job. He's been in the league a long time and has a lot of media friends and that was a face saving CYA which we know well with many years of Hurney. Still amazing to think how much better the team was under Rhule/Hurney before Fitterer got any control when Rhule was on the hot seat.

Fitterer traded away the #1 overall pick because Young was supposed to be ready immediately and we’d never pick low again. Then it went from him sucking up the playbook like a sponge early on to having to limit the offense in preseason.

You gotta remember that the odds are much tighter. Almost everyone is in the 7-10 range of wins and only the top, top teams will be above 10. Too many unknowns/regressions to the mean. We were horrific last year but even then we still win 2 games. The next worst was 4 wins.

Honestly, the usual suspects were in another atmosphere with there you don’t know football, preseason doesn’t matter at all BS. Those of us realists, mainly the ones who couldn’t believe we kept Fitterer around, could see how awful we looked and that it wasn’t because we didn’t want to show Atlanta and NO our real awesome offense.

I don’t know what video people are watching because I saw more incompletions and what looked like less pressure for Young. There is no way you can watch those and think Young is in the same ballpark as CJ. Several throws that Young just cannot make with his arm, period. CJ’s pocket wasn’t as clean but he was throwing it deeper on average. It’s done and there are no take backs but those videos don’t encourage me much. Young has a ways to go to be in the solid QB club and might not ever get there.

This is a play that shows his arm strength being a huge issue. The ball floats so badly because he can’t just zip it to a wide open WR. Mingo should have stopped his route instead of the fish flop he did but man, that ball took forever to get there.

4 YPA, ugh, so bad. I’m not a Young fan. It feels like 2nd half 2018 with him when teams figured out that Cam absolutely had zero arm strength with his shoulder. His YPA all year was damning and yes I know the talent around him was bad but his arm strength was so bad.