LinvilleGorge

Yeah, I said at the time that Stroud was the safest pick and probably the pick you had to make given the risk we were taking on with the trade. Swinging for the fences is one thing. But mortgaging the franchise to swing for the fences is an entirely different matter. Then we mortgaged the franchise to draft the lowest ceiling guy. LOL

I liked AR too. I had AR and Stroud as my 1A and 1B and said my pick would ultimately come down to the interview process. There's only so much you can glean from college game play. The interview process is largely where you determine if a guy can handle running an NFL offense.

That dude hid like a criminal on the run throughout the pre-draft process.

It's why I've always thought that having arbitrary minimum standards is dumb. That's how you miss out on a player like Smitty. Bryce wasn't a terrible pick just because of his height. It was the whole picture. He was short. He was slight built. He had a subpar NFL arm. It was hard to find plays in his college tape that translated to the NFL. There's no way you trade up to #1 overall to draft a player with so many glaring red flags in his game.

You HAVE to give Canales more time. You can't keep burning through coaches. It's already the least desirable job in the league.

Just think of how different our outlook would be right now if Andy Dalton was ten years younger. Yeah, we'd still suck but we'd be thing about how close we were to being ready to compete offensively and we just need to focus on building the D. Instead, Dalton is 37 so it's doom and gloom because even though the offense shows some semblance of promise there's no future there to build on at the key position.

It's a QB driven league. It is what it is. Yeah, if you have a GREAT overall roster you can get by with a good QB. But as soon as you have to pay that good QB you're no longer going to be able to afford that great overall roster. The only way to compete year in and year out long-term is by having an elite QB. Everyone else is just trying to catch lightning in a bottle.

If you need to recruit help to drunkenly heckle David Tepper I'm here for you.

It was to save us from the embarrassment of having the offers leaked.

Dang. https://www.facebook.com/reel/518418814491961?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v

I'd rather he fall into success through pure dumb luck, but knowing all this failing is making him miserable and embarrassed is the only silver lining in it that I can find.

Did you miss the Bryce games? The only explosive plays we've had in the past 23 games are the ones with Andy Dalton playing QB.

Yeah they do. You don't bench your #1 overall pick two games into his second season unless you've already made up your mind.

Oh, we know.

Oh yeah, our defense REALLY gonna get cooked this week. LOL

Losing games is one thing. Having your players mentally quit on the staff and organization is an entirely different ordeal. This is their livelihoods. They're playing to put film on tape. For pending free agents playing with trash Bryce for a good chunk of the season could literally cost them millions of dollars.

The risk is that you lose the locker room. All of your offensive skills position players are going to get very frustrated.

The point is there were no truckloads of armed militias like was being "reported". There was one dipshit and he was arrested. Done.

I don't think there's any DC that could pull this unit out of the bottom 10 either. But right now we're dead last in points allowed by a wide margin. If you're telling me the current approach is your best idea and you have nothing else up your sleeve you gotta go.

So what's the game plan? Just keep doing what obviously isn't working? Change up the blitzes. Play better blitzers. You can't just lay back and keep getting punched in the mouth. You gotta try to change up something. If I'm Canales and I'm sitting on a meeting with Evero and he's telling me that this current philosophy that is producing the worst defense in the league is the best idea he can come up with then I'm probably walking out of that meeting and going to Tepper's office and saying, "Listen, you already let me bench that scrub of a QB now I'm telling you that this holdover DC has to go to."

We're seeing the results of laying back and trying to slow them down. We're on pace to be one of the most futile defenses in NFL history. So try something else. A lot of elite defenses are actually pretty vanilla in scheme because they have the talent to be. Just put your guys in a situation to read and react and use their talent to make plays. We don't have that. We have to do something schematically to try to create opportunities.

I'm trying to win, not playing not to lose.

I'd rather get burned while trying to force the action than just get nickeled and dimed up and down the field all day long. At some point you have to try to do something to disrupt the opposing offense.

I mean, they're already all in on this Rodgers thing. Might as well pull no punches. They know a full rebuild is right around the corner no matter what so fug it.

It'll be interesting but personally I'm not overly concerned about it. Honestly, if you're on the bubble of the top 12 teams you probably don't have a realistic shot anyway. The 12 team field is gonna capture all the teams with a realistic chance barring some significant factor like losing a game or two because your star QB was hurt or something along those lines.