LinvilleGorge

Having good to great LBs has gotten us a losing overall record. We've way over-invested at the position historically and that has created talent deficits at other more vital positions.

Well, that report was clearly wrong. There's lots of "reports" leading up to the draft. A lot of them prove to be wrong. I wanted Fields too. The Panthers' didn't. It is what it is. I just hope we made the right call. Time will tell.

Investing way too many resources into off ball LBs has led to the Panthers having a great history at LB, bit a poor overall W-L record. Not gonna lie, I didn't want to draft Horn. But positional value of CB >>>> non-pass rushing LBs. Parsons was one guy I specifically didn't want at #8 and it had everything to do with positional value. I was screaming for us to let Shaq walk and re-sign Bradberry instead.

Seems obvious, but sometimes not blatantly so. I've always been fairly prone to developing boils, cysts, etc. They almost always go away on their own and whatever. I've only had to have one ever addressed medically. Anyway, last week my thigh started getting sore. Weirdly sore. It started getting red and puffy. Then a small sore broke out. Okay, this is odd. Then I woke up yesterday morning and it hurt. Like HURT hurt. There were some red streaks radiating out and the soreness was extending up my thigh toward my groin. My FIL is a retired pediatrician so I gave him a call and describe it to him. He says to get it checked out. I say, cool I'll call and get an appointment. He says, no, no, no. I mean get it checked out TODAY. You don't wanna play with this. You almost certainly have a staph or MRSA infection that's starting to spread. You don't want this to turn into sepsis. This needs to be seen TODAY. Sure enough, I go to be seen and hey put me on oral clindamycin but told me had I waited until next week I'd probably be in the hospital on an IV drip antibiotic and to keep an eye on it over the weekend because if it gets any worse or isn't responding to the oral antibiotics by Monday that still may need to happen. It was sore as hell and looking worse today and I felt like poo, but this evening I'm feeling a lot better and a lot of the peripheral soreness is fading. Still, it's pretty eye opening how something I knew was different but wasn't all that concerned about turned out to be something that could've gotten really ugly without prompt medical attention.

This is our best training camp top to bottom WR roster in a long time. Maybe ever.

The Saints didn't trade anything. Bridgewater was a free agent. And we committed more resources to signing Bridgewater than we did trading for Darnold. LOL @ you if you think I ever advocated for Teddy Bridgewater.

He believed Teddy could do it too.

It's all good. People can disagree. It'd be a boring circle jerk I'd everyone agreed about everything.

The concept is simplistic. The reality that from the outside looking in you have one preconceived notion, then you get there and experience it first hand and learn differently. What I'm encouraged by is that Rhule learned from it. Despite the contract, they cut bait and moved on from Teddy when they saw he wasn't the answer. Every coach is going to make mistakes. The good ones learn from them and don't repeat the same ones. We went dumpster diving at QB again, but at least we targeted a guy who actually has the physical talent to potentially succeed. That's a smarter dumpster dive IMO.

He was an assistant OL coach for one year almost a decade ago. IMO, he and Brady thought they could make Teddy work in their system. They thought they could coach around his talent shortcomings. It didn't work. In the NFL, there comes a point where the prerequisite talent just isn't there. Teddy doesn't have it. He's a mediocre physical talent and he has a very conservative playing mentality. Good backup. Not a starter. Rhule and Brady had to learn it the hard way. That's all.

In the NFL. That's the part you're leaving out. Yes, I think it's quite realistic that Rhule didn't grasp just how vital high level talent at QB is in the NFL until he got to the NFL and experienced it first hand. That's not a difficult concept to grasp. We all talked about how Rhule would likely have a learning curve adapting to the NFL. None of this is shocking or unexpected in the least.

Go back and watch his games in New Orleans. They won in spite of him, not because of him. He had one good game and that was against the worst pass D in the NFL at the time

No, I'm not. My point is we spent significant money on a QB who lacks the physical talent to be a high level NFL starter. My guess on why? Rhule and Brady (college coaches) thought they could "coach him up".

Giving all that money to Teddy was about the worst possible move we could've made there.

Yes. Dumping that money into Teddy was an idiotic move. Not just Lawrence, but Zach Wilson too. All we did was spend money against the cap we'll never get back on a guy everyone should've known wasn't good enough.

We'll be looking at camp cuts I'm sure.

Yes. That exactly what I said we should done if we were moving on from Cam. Signing Teddy Bridgewater to a significant contract is a lack of understanding of the value of the QB position.

Why? He signed off on the signing of Teddy Bridgewater. A guy who had never shown the talent to be a high level NFL QB. At least Darnold has the talent. Whether he can put it all together or not remains to be seen. I wouldn't be surprised if Rhule didn't have some eye opening moments with Teddy last year. It's not hard for me to envision a scenario where they're sitting there breaking down film with Teddy and pointing out an open receiver and asking Teddy how he missed this guy and hearing in reply, "Coach, I saw him I just can't make that throw."

BIG difference between college and NFL in this regard. The much more even talent parity in the NFL compared to college puts a bigger influence on the QB position and play calling compared to college. The Alabamas, Clemsons, Ohio States, Oklahomas, etc. of college are head and shoulders more talented than their competition in college week in and week out. That just doesn't happen in the NFL. Rhule made a living in college beating unranked teams. He had an abysmal rating vs. top 25 teams. I'm hopeful about Rhule, but I'm not even close to pretending that he's a slam dunk to succeed in the NFL.

Rhule might be starting to get it. It's a QB driven league, period. You either have a QB who allows you to compete or you don't have a chance at winning championships. There is no gray area. Gray area is purgatory. Hopefully Sam works out but I'd he doesn't, we're gonna swing BIG on our next QB.

Over? Jackson got smoked so bad I didn't even notice him on the first viewing. It was only upon the second viewing that I saw him five yards behind hilariously mistiming his jump.

The final straw for Teddy in Carolina was him throwing the staff under the bus for "getting the play call in late" on that play where he airmailed it over DJ wide open in the endzone. There was a noted change in the tone toward Teddy from the organization from that point on. Once he showed that type of lack of accountability and willingness to blame others for his blatant error... yeah, it was over. He actually said he would've checked to a running play. He admitted he would've checked out of a play that led to a wide open receiver in the endzone for what should've been an easy TD. LOL!

I hope.

For the first time in a long time we might be forced to actually release an NFL caliber receiver.