LinvilleGorge

If they can get Burrow's leg right I would expect them to hang onto Higgins and take their 3rd round comp pick when he leaves via FA. If it looks like Burrow is going to be limited all year or limited for long enough to put them out of playoff contention at some point they should bite the bullet and trade him for more than a late 3rd comp pick. I get it, it's loudly announcing that you're waving the white flag on the season but at some point you just have to make the smart move.

At the end of the day, fandom is basically all about hope. You have no actual ability to fundamentally impact anything, you just hope the team will be good. Without hope there is no fandom.

Under JR we never had consistent sustained success but we had enough sporadic success to maintain interest and hope. This feels boring and hopeless.

Something has to change. We have to have a competent vertical threat in the offense. We can't run the ball or get YAC in large part because the D is just crowding the field on us because they're not worried about getting burned deep.

When you can't threaten the defense vertically and force them to defend every blade of grass offense is difficult. That's why it gets so much tougher in the redzone. And when you're not throwing past 20 yards you're turning the entire field into redzone offense. The field is crowded. We gotta chuck a few deep just to make the opposing D account for the fact that we will.

We'll see. I said leading up to the draft that for Bryce to be elite he's going to have to be the smartest guy in the stadium every Sunday. That's a tall ask.

I definitely think Bryce is in his own head right now. We always knew that his success was ultimately going to come down to outsmarting the defense, not making chicken salad out of chicken poo with physical talent. Pre-snap reads, audibles, etc. But he's still an NFL Rookie and he might just be trying to do too much mentally right now. It's up to the staff to help him reel that in.

This. The cost was steep but I was on the same page. We played well enough down the stretch under Wilks last year to legitimately believe we were ready to shoot our shot on a QB and the opportunity was there. It's just looked like a colossal disaster so far. Just because it makes sense on paper doesn't mean it will work out.

Historically that was usually a big knock against QBs that came out of shotgun offenses in college translating to an NFL style offense. But now that everyone's offense is heavily shotgun it has become less of an issue overall. But yeah, Bryce has that college shotgun footwork. He gets square to the LOS way too much. His arm is already subpar and when you're trying to throw squared up you're going to struggle to throw with velocity no matter how great your arm is. The footwork definitely needs revamping.

Oh for sure. Everyone in this upcoming class was a year away and we chose to shoot our shot. Stroud and Richardson are the two guys Bryce is always going to be measured against as top 4 draft picks on the same class.

It's definitely gonna be an interesting QB class to watch. There are a lot of intriguing prospects.

His preferred destination is Miami and Tua is an early MVP candidate. This guy's ego might be an issue.

I still hope Young will prove to be great but I'm rapidly losing hope.

Oh trust me, I know he won't be. You're forgetting just how cocky a lot of Panthers fans were a month ago. Anyone questioning preseason performance was mocked for not understanding how the NFL works, yet Stroud threw an early preseason INT so he's clearly a bust. We had all kinds of red flags but many were just blind to them. Hell, a few still are.

Ifs and buts, candies and nuts

Cope. There's cope. We're seeing a LOT of it.

Every time is see a foot in mouth post from a guy with the username of "MasterAwesome" it's especially comical. It's hard to take a username like that seriously

We just need to start to see some signs that he has the physical tools. Because right now we're stuck trying to convince ourselves that very ordinary NFL throws are super specialty give ourselves something to cling to.

Cam Newton and Luke Kuechly saved us from being on a ridiculous run of ineptitude. This will be our sixth consecutive losing season.

Accurate. And ban me.

I regret to inform that we don't have the power to ban David Tepper. Actually, if he made an account id 100% ban the fug out of it.

There are very few truly permanent bans for long-term posters. Eventually one of us will usually relent and let them out of jail.

There was certainly no brake check on making wide sweeping assumptions about others' character via their motivations.

Oof.

Decent company. No one would care if Stroud is a stud as long as Bryce is too.