This is going to be a long ass post. it’s pretty much the reason I made an account and stopped lurking for 20 - I think - years.
I don’t know squat about the Xs and Os, but I’m in the people business and know people.
Wilks completely screwed up their plan. He won.
Let’s completely remove the ‘was he the coach of the future argument, and just look at it from a locker room perspective:
He came in and in a period of a couple weeks turned a group of abject lifeless losers… in to winners… who played for each other… setting team rushing records… and COMPLETELY burned the narrative to the ground that the team was devoid of Tallent.
He had a cast off RB no one had ever heard of, who was 1 season away from quitting and becoming a truck driver, playing out of his mind, and like a guy we SHOULD have resigned… for what ended up being a bag of chips and cream soda.
I mean my God, the coaching had SAM-EFFING-DARNOLD actually looking like a good QB.
Oh, and he 1000% restored the pre-Tepper, ‘you better not f with us,’ never quit, team culture that we lived for decades. Decades. The stadium started rocking again. PANTHER FANS WERE COMING BACK.
We were an MIA JC Horn and a ‘we shouldn’t have punted’ decision away from the F’in playoffs. In hindsight though, the punt wouldn’t have mattered. Who on our team had a snowballs chance in hell besides JC against a motivated Evans and the GOAT.
so to recap from a player’s perspective:
You fired, and never even had any intention to giving a prove it type deal to who was UNARGUABLY their guy, in every sense. An alpha black man (BIG problem). Yes, race matters. A lot. Long time member of the pre-Tepper panthers (problem there too). Having both offense and defense playing smash mouth football and showing that it worked (yeah, that’s a no go). Home town guy. Loyal to players, and may have been loved by the players ever more than Rivera? Possibly. But he was one of them, and they played like it. The whole team gelled even faster than the 2003 team did. The momentum was real. The team had no quit in it.
But it wasn’t winning the way he wanted to win. Mr unlimited $$ just assumed the current (black) coach would be unable to surround himself with fresh offense minds.
He never even gave their guy a shot, but in the process and essentially promised a playoff caliber team. You make that promise, you BETTER deliver.
These dudes are playing for contract #2. If you start losing, you’re really messing with their $$. Contract #2 will be what most of these guys will live off of for the rest of their life. They NEED this.
And now you’re the laughing stock of the league, no first round pick and you’re team leader is the most huggable beta personality (but he’s from a good 2 parent household) QB I’ve ever seen since I started paying attention in 2002. The whole team plays like they shared each others Seroquel (I write tons of that poo, I know what it looks like) before kickoff. F man, prime Randy Moss would be lucky to catch 10 TDs on this team. Every player besides Luvu and a handful looks like they hate it out there.
You fired OUR dude, blew up what was working and told us it wouldn’t keep working, sent Darnold (who was playing well) and Foreman packing. You moved up in the draft, sent our only real WR out the door along with this year’s pick to take a guy Teddy Ruxbin could sack. Give worthless ass Sanders the $ that Foreman should have gotten. And so much more poo that I’m too pissed to remember right now. all to try and win a big man’s game with a flag football philosophy. You really think anyone in that locker room truly takes orders from the anti-Stroud.
Beta personalities don’t win squat in the NFL. Tepper allows no alphas. Compare any pre-Tepper team to our current flag football squad. I bet they scrimmage with the IBM and Redhat teams regularly.
Tepper fired a winning, black, most loved head coach the team has ever seen for a retread loser white dude who has a team of deservedly so zombies at 1-8, who no one wants to come play for or work at.
Even if we lost, we were beating the piss out of the other team. I bet Parsons already has a tee time for Monday morning.
The problem is talent, yes, but it goes WAY deeper than that. The players are insulted (you know, the ones raised in single parent households), hopeless, pissed, probably think the owner is a racist, and know that they’re going to take a $$ hit in their next contract because this self created loser ass team has fugged them.
All he had to do was give Wilks a 2 year prove it deal and let him try to evolve, and if not let him go. But he never had any intention of doing so, and they all knew it.
thanks tepper. You’ll probably get your wish to move the team in the next 5 years, just like you wanted.
Bought this last night as a last ditch effort to sparking some good juju. Hope it works.
