LinvilleGorge

I don't know how I do this, but every time I do deck work it's guaranteed to be hotter than the devil's taint. When I rebuilt my front porch and built the patio in CO it was the hottest stretch of weather I endured in my 14 years out there. Mid-90s at 8000 feet elevation. Now here my ass is again out here slaving away on the low-90s but absolute swamp ass humidity. Not as involved this time, mostly just power washing and re-staining. Replacing a few decking boards and rebuilt the front steps. Sweating buckets. Had to take a break. Ignore my awful mess. The back deck doesn't have steps so I'm just working around everything instead of hauling it all through the house. As Matt Rhule would say, it's a process. I promise it'll look good when I finish. I'll pile everything over to one side to stain half, then pile it all on the other side to stain the other half then put it all back together. One board on the steps in the pic below is stained for the wife's approval. The front porch is just 10 year old raw wood that's never had anything out on it.

Looks about the same to me. I wonder if the "QB competition" down there was real or if it was a Rivera QB competition where everyone already knows the outcome but he feels the need to play lip service to it.

This. I want to see if the escapability and arm translate. I'm not saying it won't, we just haven't had much of an opportunity to see it so far. This OL has to play better, period.

I've been encouraged watching him get up from some pretty good hits but discouraged with the frequency of those hits. Size be damned, if any QB is getting hit with the frequency he has been in limited preseason snaps it's gonna be tough to make it through 17 games.

Yeah. All of that dude's screws are loose.

Can y'all knock it off with the personal bickering?

I'm not concerned about the scheme. I don't think we've seen much of it. What I'm concerned with is simple assignment football. Our gap discipline in the run game has been largely terrible and we've seen blown coverages by the starters in both games.

I wouldn't say very good but probably better than you'd expect. They're gonna lean very hard on Bijan and run the style of offense that John Fox has erotic dreams about at night.

We'll see how he develops there. Even if he remains just a gadget guy he'll be worth what we gave up for him. Having a guy like that out there that the defense always has to account for is a nice chess piece.

That's largely a scheming thing and something I would expect us not to show in preseason.

Evidence of competency. Downplay it all you want but what we've seen this preseason is concerning. Our OL hasn't slowed anyone down yet and our D is missing a lot of gap assignments. That's not a scheming thing. That's a lack of competency.

Our old buddy Alex Armah just got stood up on the goal line by a 5th round rookie DB on a two point conversion late in the 4th for the tie.

And yet we've largely just squandered it. UNC can have elite defenses and elite offenses but it seems to be a law of the universe that when it happens that elite unit has to be paired with an absolute bottom of the barrel unit on the other side of the ball.

It's is just the state of sports media well, you could probably drop the "sports" qualifier to be fair) these days.

McLaurin has a "toe injury". I used to scoff at toe injuries until I suffered a turf toe injury. It's very not funny when it happens to you and you realize just how debilitating it is for your big toe not to be able to bear weight. I never truly recovered. That toe hurt for literally years and it turned into a bunion but it doesn't hurt anymore so fug it.

Full year of NFL practice. Only one actual game. It's not nothing, but Sam is basically the equivalent of a redshirt freshman in college.

It was good. But you don't draw it up for your QB to break two tackles in the pocket, roll out with a DE hot on his heels and drop a dime down the field. That's the QB.

Ryan Clark on Howell at half: "Imagine we were talking about a Bryce Young or Anthony Richardson and he was playing like this how excited we would be."

Y'all... Sam Howell is a fuging stud.

I was onboard with Icky because I thought he was the safest OL in the draft. Worst case scenario I thought he'd be a road grading OG of he didn't work out at LT but yeah, that's not exactly what you're looking for with a top 10 pick. I hope this team and staff are just not taking preseason seriously at all my I don't know why they would be but if they are and this is what we have to work with then oh wee mayne.

I honestly think the guy was just trying to do his job.

Not gonna lie, I'm concerned about Ekwonu. Guys are just blowing right by him untouched.

They almost always are. That guy has been banned probably a dozen times.

I'm sure they'll magically improve once the regular season gets here. Or so I've been told.