Vagrant

plus, as a rookie what you believe you do well doesn't matter so much to a coach. once you get to be a veteran like cam, you pretty much tell the coaching staff what you're comfortable running and they scheme it. rookies have to know more about the entire playbook because experience hasn't yet shown them their best throws or their most productive plays and their coach is going to be trying more things. cam is older than our OC isn't he? that's kind of funny. mostly, you're going to let the former league mvp have some input on what he's going to be doing out there. systems are a bit overrated in terms of difficulty to pick up in modern times. there's not a lot of innovation or deviation from what everyone else is doing.

learning systems for the most part, unless you're from an NCAA school that didn't run pro formations, is being familiar enough with the verbiage and learning where everyone is going to be than it is learning entirely new plays and concepts. a veteran for as many years as cam has been in the league knows all the plays he's going to be asked to run. what he doesn't know is the verbiage, the cadence, the blocking schemes, how to direct his blockers pre snap, how to audible pre snap, what to call certain blitzes he spots, how to send particular players on hot routes, etc. it's like someone saying he doesn't know how to play madden and then assign him random controls. he won't be comfortable with it, but once he figures out what moves what and which button does which desired thing he wants, it's still madden. it's still football. there's obviously a lot more nuance than that, but the premise is the same. they're not reteaching him how to play football.

just an observation, but i didnt know this was a thing. when an opposing player is down, it seems like part of the captain's duties includes staying on field until they're up and moving. i didn't realize it until i saw donte and burns go over to do this on this injury. must be a sportsmanship thing.

what you're seeing is our OC making a statement by refusing to put the football in darnold's hands. he's telling the whole world he doesn't believe in him anymore if he ever did. it's embarrassing. someone is keeping darnold as the starter without looking outside the organization and Brady is putting his job on the table.

nobody will want to admit this but you're right. the safety experiment needs to pick up some momentum quickly. he's stretched out on athleticism at his size. it's such a repeat of the thomas davis situation. he hits so hard you want him to have some runway to make hits like he made today but not at the expense of being able to cover deep.

the numbers always come back to reasonable no matter what. you can't average 45 rushing against for the whole season while tearing opposing quarterbacks apart on a weekly basis. some games you're going to get stood up by one side of the ball. and to be really honest, we had our most momentum of the game on that Chinn forced fumble that would have given us the ball on short field with the lead that turned into an absolute gutshot of a touchdown. the thing about the defense is that we've seen them mostly fresh this season because they've been that good at getting off the field. even if it didn't manifest into overwhelming point totals, we took a lot of body blows against their rush in the first half and it slowed the pass rush down. plus, for the first time we saw Darnold seeing ghosts. he was really getting pinned back there and he looked like Jets Darnold in the 3rd quarter. he straightened it out at the end to make it competitive and to save his line, but he had some tough tough turnovers there when our defense needed a blow. you can put part of that on the playcalling for forgetting hubbard existed during that stretch.

that was not a turnover worthy throw, that was an absolute dart and it hit moore in the hands. it looked worse from the sideline than it would from the all 22. entirely arguable he shouldn't throw that ball, but there was no mistake.

it's a tougher call than I think you're giving it credit. you have a rookie kicker about to take his first league kick from 50+. missing there might set him up for a really bad day. it's a strange concept to think about, but punting there is giving your best unit (the defense) an opportunity to have this rookie quarterback who looks rattled throwing out of his own endzone. if charlton does his job and puts that ball down inside the 10, if not the 5, imagine how greedy that defense would come out. they earned a crack at the short field to try to make a splash play. it could have been way more meaningful than the 3 points.

the field position game starts early. with the way our defense was flying around, had we gotten that punt down inside the 10 (which is on the punter) we could have tilted the field against them with the noise at field level and them already struggling to keep Wilson upright. everybody has to do their job or everybody looks stupid. we wanted that rookie QB to show he could go all the way down. the last thing you want to do in that situation is turn the ball over to him with any reason to be optimistic. plus, the dude was making his NFL regular season debut. you might want to give him a chip shot or two before you trot him out there to miss a 50+ yarder and ruin him for the day.

Stafford is an excellent QB and will be very good for 3-4 more seasons, but if we can make Sam work he could be the answer here for the next decade. Failing that, we will draft our QB of the future once we have resolution on Sam, but don't count him out. Sam looks like he needed a quieter place to develop due to coming out of the draft so young and the Jets were a crash landing because they needed a savior and a savior he is not. The thing that keeps sticking with me is the optimism for Joe Burrow and the dismissal of Sam Darnold and the relative age difference. People will cringe, but this move reminds me more of when we picked up David Carr, but we were about 2-3 seasons too late. We're due a good bounce.

I actually have a different take. if melo responds to him, then it's all good. we don't need a coach that is liked, we just need one that is respected. there are hardly any screamers left in the league because legit it doesn't make sense to be screaming at someone in a professional capacity that makes 10x what you make. you need a coach who can sit you down and teach you about basketball and how the players they've seen become great did it and you get to decide how much you want that. but there's no doubt in the x's and o's department, JB can get you there. it's just being humble enough to recognize you haven't yet mastered the craft. lamelo can't forget to stay learning. he's a big personality despite what you'd believe watching his media availability. he'll learn in time as well that you don't get endorsements by sitting quietly behind a gatorade bottle and mumbling some nonsense, but that's just immaturity. it warmed my heart to see JB have the balls to pull melo an assist short of a triple double the first time he was going for it. you could practically hear melo counting them down. the play he got pulled on, if he hadn't gotten pulled you would have lost that room entirely. bismack after that game was heated and brought the veteran leadership to him. you let a lot of that poo handle itself because the veteran players are the best culture builders anyways. that was too much. there were some on those board worked up calling for JB to get fired because of that and hell that's probably half of what earned him this extension. he's going to need to be handled carefully and JB has such a good relationship with his guys. you can see it. they don't show him up, they don't curse in his face, they don't do to him what he doesn't do to them. but when he says enough, it's enough. his veterans know to enforce that. i really love the fit here.

i was glad to see he's being realistic. his upside in the league is being a catch and shoot specialist pressure release valve for the guys that are driving the interior. he's going to get an opportunity to make some big shots without having to create his own offense, and that's the best fit for him. he'll get his 17-20 minutes of burn with the 2nd unit and shoot as much as possible. this team is already adapting to how lamelo wants to play. they want to run the floor and bringing in Ish will allow them to do that with the 2nd unit as well or if lamelo just needs a blow.

i still firmly believe that he has literal poor vision in addition to poor judgment

I keep watching tape of Tommy Tremble blocking and for the life of me can't figure out how he wasn't in the conversation for at least the late 1st or early 2nd. even if you consider his absolute upside to be your 1B blocking TE to a 1A pass catching guy, he's just full effort all over the field and one of the best athletes at the position this year. he's likely to line up behind the line of scrimmage at times to lead block for CMC and get to the spot first to set the edge. This guy doesn't just block, he's nasty. Not dirty, but really really nasty. Saw this interesting stat about ND TE's that start being drafted 10 or 11 straight seasons. The complexity of what they ask of their guys in the running game is a big part of it. He's going to be a special teams impact right away. He's going to be a run game impact right away. He accelerates into anticipated contact and finishes plays. He has some potential for offensive production as well, but it probably won't be eye popping. If he can get 350-400 yards from being forgotten as a target because of the expectation he's in as a blocker, it's going to help blow things wide open and give us a lot more of a chance to disguise what we're going to do. He also has the speed and strength and arms to neutralize edge rushers and keep them from going wide by directing them back into the tackle if he's being used at the end of the line. There will be at least 1 occurrence a game where the opposing safety hasn't done their homework and gets clean trucked by him in run blocking. This is a football player.

people are acting like just because they played together in NY that either of them liked each other or brought out the best of each other. Anderson can't catch the fastball. It's why he worked with Bridgewater. Look at his catch percentages for every other year besides last year and you'll see why there's a VERY reasonable expectation that he's going to take a step back.

that's a bummer for mac jones. there might have been some teams prior to the Patriots that had interest but thought he'd never be there. he ended up in a decent spot, presumably, but it has to suck a little to hear you were a pawn in a misdirection scheme.

my thoughts are that they don't want anyone coming behind him and winning games if this thing blows up with him under center. they keep will and pj to walk sam through the playbook. especially will considering he's apparently a likeable kid that several coaches wanted to keep around at various times. we need a good practice player. but if darnold is injured or plays poorly, we need to suck and we need to suck bad so these are our guys.

not sure what to make of this information. i think a stat regarding time from snap until throw and the number of progressions prior to the pass would be far more valuable. if you've got one of these dudes patting the ball for fifteen seconds before finding that next read because his line is NFL caliber, it's not quite as impressive to me as guys who identify the scripted route is no good right away and get their eyes down the field. not picking on fields, but dude had an eternity to make decisions. that line he played behind was rock solid. especially his sophomore season. but again, with the exception of BYU and NDSU, you're talking about powerhouse teams.

sub 60% quarterbacks create more problems than they solve. if we make this trade, we're basically committing to losing enough to draft our actual QB of the future in '22. go look up what NFL executives have to say about his throwing mechanics and how fixable they are. it's not pretty. even in his pre-draft workups almost every scout prefaced their opinion by mentioning how slow the ball is out of his hands and how early he tips his throws. he has a strong arm and can still make some "wow" throws, but he can go from hero to zero in the middle of games. the people here that got frustrated with Cam's inconsistency with his good throw to bad throw ratio would be driven to drink by Darnold.

darnold has a fatal flaw in my opinion and it's in his throwing mechanics. he had the arm strength to negate the weakness somewhat in his NCAA days, but he's like an MLB pitcher that tips his pitches and defensive backs are able to get early jumps based on how long it takes him from decision to throw to getting the ball out. if you're not perfect with your ball placement, it's a lot easier to get picked off. it hurts him a lot in the redzone also because of how quick windows close on short field. i think if he washes out at his next shot at starting, he needs to take a backup role somewhere and adopt a more traditional throwing motion. it's going to be hard to break his muscle memory, but he's just so far behind with it. he drops the ball below his waist in his load up and it's just a dead giveaway the ball is coming out.

people saying that these women need to fire their lawyer might be missing the point. the thing to think about is that if most or all of these women had sex with watson, which seems likely, that every single thing that was said in the aftermath electronically or otherwise would come out in the discovery phase. i mentioned a while back that watson has lawyers also and that at least half of these accusations would be put on ice by text message history alone. if they discussed it with friends as a consensual encounter or used it as a flex, that's grounds for immediate dismissal. in this day and time, can you imagine anyone not doing that? what do you think happens to the case against watson if those receipts are presented to the DA? however, if watson and his representation don't yet know these text messages confirming consent exist, they may feel more compromised than they actually are. the first thing that watson and his lawyers would do and likely have done is attempt to discredit the claims one by one with anything that runs contrary to the stories as they were presented. any and all electronic communication to watson or other parties would be fair game. if the lawyer for these women started losing accusers by the handful when an actual criminal investigation started, not only would he look like a fool but his clients wouldn't get a dime. by not going to the police with the claims, this is an indication that they've probably got nothing. no smoking gun or major bombshell in any of the 20 claims that makes it a slam dunk for criminal charges. without that, taking this to the DA is only compromising your standing in the civil case that could be knocked over by a swift breeze when the DA laughs you out of court once watson's representation starts rolling out all the evidence they have. and make no mistake, these are savages. watson can afford far better representation than this vendetta wielding small-time local. he knows he's outgunned and he knows that his cases can't withstand the scrutiny of an actual criminal investigation, so the only thing left to do is fully commit to the idea of settlements. the way he came out all hot and heavy at the start of this case compared to what we're seeing now is the result of his own investigators tracking down every single one of these allegations and not liking what they've found. that's the reason for the 180. it wasn't as salacious as expected and now he's just trying to convict watson in the court of public opinion by saying that a settlement is an acknowledgement of wrongdoing when the truth is that a settlement is just the path of least resistance for someone who wants to be done with this situation. the pivot was made because it had to be made. he's just reading the writing on the wall.

my contention has been that if these actions didn't meet the threshold of criminality, the NFL will probably conduct their own simultaneous investigation to determine the level of wrongdoing and suspend him accordingly for conduct. 8 games? that will likely be the extent the NFL involves themselves in a matter in which there are 20 accusers and not a single indictable offense according to their own lawyer. this is huge for watson and his team, because it's now and presumably forever a civil matter and civil matters require no admission of guilt to be made to go away. just cold, hard cash of which watson has more than enough. this unsavory footnote will be remembered for what it was, which was careless and stupid behavior by watson that cost him a lot of money, but not his freedom, from a lawyer who wanted to extract his pound of flesh for a scorned city that has been cheering him on. the friend of bob mcnair that decided if watson was going to play elsewhere, the city of houston was going to have their say for his carelessness that would have remained forever silenced, watson will be a panther before the draft, but we'll probably have to roll with Teddy B for the duration of any league discipline. we rolled the dice with having only 1 plan, but we waited out a lot of teams that weren't willing to risk this was resolved without criminal charges. with a few teams dropping out of the race and the Texans position of having to trade him now, the price probably got a lot more reasonable. tepper on the day of the trade, "we did our due diligence on the accusations. we took them very seriously. at the end of the day, we believe in this young man's character and have discussed the importance that the alleged behavior not be repeated. deshaun is remorseful for the carelessness of his actions and he's going to try to restore his name by being a leader in our community and in our room. that is about all we can say on the matter and we will accept the league's discipline without appeal." then we have our starter by week 9. end scene.

the panthers have to at least try to get in some articles about interest in other quarterbacks to balance their position on being all in on watson. i'm not sure why some folks believe that this off the field stuff is going to impact where his rights are sent. the whole of houston has emerged en masse to crucify him publicly and a reported friend of the team is leading the prosecution. he'll never play another snap in that town unless he's on the visiting team. if anything, this has only intensified the situation between watson and the texans. david tepper is the richest owner in the league and he's also probably one of the more socially progressive owners in the league. i find it extremely unlikely his interest persists without getting the absolute low down on what happened, what the allegations are, and the chances of criminal charges being raised which is likely the biggest concern when you're dealing with at least 11 counts. but deshaun watson has lawyers, too. it's unclear how many of these accusers will survive (in a legal sense) the intense dive into their online presences and text message history, etc. that might contradict their accounts. at the end of the day, it sounds like deshaun was browsing instagram for massage therapists and having what he deemed to be consensual sex with as many of them as possible with some questionable ass approaches. it will probably amount to a lot of he said/she said that the DA might consider too long shot to pursue or prove. if it turns out watson is toast in court with any of these accusers, there will be a civil settlement which is what was pursued initially. charges will be reduced, watson will enter some kind of sensitivity training, the NFL will give him 8 weeks like they gave antonio brown, and he will be starting for his new team by week 9. that's if this is all fast tracked. the case with antonio brown still hasn't been resolved and will go well into 2022. if these accusations against watson have any merit, the legal process will likely drag on forever in what will basically be trying to establish the level of wrongdoing for purposes of a settlement and not for criminal charges. the NFL doesn't seem to wait for the legal process to play out if they have grounds to suspend a player under their vague conduct detrimental policies in which they will say that watson exhibited "poor judgment" and probably not go too far into detail about what they know. the cases will be settled financially, the records sealed, and watson will likely never have to plead guilty to anything substantial. he can then claim he paid out because he wanted this nightmare to be over and a settlement was to expedite that. he will deny any wrongdoing and the world will continue to turn. if the panthers trade for him, they'll probably hope to play out any suspension scenarios with teddy under center and try to tread water. doesn't a lot of this just seem old hat with as many times as we've seen similar things play out?

i don't think people fully understand how much of a problem it would be to coach your linebackers to cover both CMC and a guy like this. It would be comical to see it attempted. when people talk about quarterback and its importance, that's valid. but at what position can we most improve our WAR, for lack of a better football stat, should be the focus. make our team so good that we set up whoever our next quarterback is for success before he even arrives. we had less than ideal QB play last season, but there are available arms that could probably give us neutral 20-25th in the league type performance with as many weapons as we'd have. it could potentially even be teddy, as much as that idea sucks. they may have tipped their hand a little by not making a more concerted effort after kyle rudolph if we're looking at stop gap guys to transition that can still provide value. i think he's an absolute consideration when you look around the league at the guys who are matchup nightmares at that position and what they are able to do for you. gronk took a year off and the league still didn't have an answer for it. if you think this kid is george kittle, you better take him. i try to look at it like what addition would the league be most disappointed by for us, and a viable tight end would do SO MUCH in terms of having a large catch radius target with all our smaller WR options. we don't have that 3rd and short guy who can box out and fall forward and it hurt our drives last season especially in the red zone. we fix that we add some real value and simultaneously make this QB opening a sincere landing spot the way the Bucs were built to prepare for Brady inadvertently before he even got there. the build it and he will come strategy.

there can be two wrong parties in a single event. it's too early to call what exactly deshaun's issue is/was, but it's not with the lawyer representing these women on a case he would have NEVER pursued if not for trying to gain favor from the McNair family and further cement his alleged friendship. he's the same idiot that posted all those billboards about drafting johnny manziel around houston. someone that invested and with that many conflicting interests should recuse themselves instead of collecting allegations via instagram. he's a hack. if there's any heat to this at all he needs to be excused from the case by the judges. the timing is entirely slanderous and the way it was timed almost seems like it was done in concert with the Texans who probably whistled for him before these dogs got released and he didn't change his position. if all this amounts to is a bunch of women being solicited for sex and showing up voluntarily and having consensual sex they later decided was coerced, it's going to be a damn shame. but if you lay with dogs, you tend to get fleas. if you go digging around instagram for broke but beautiful women as someone worth $100 million in this day and time, your judgment needs to be brought into question. if that was how he wanted to get down he should have been smart enough to print out a stack of non-disclosure agreements and sex contracts to protect him against this exact thing. if the stories are authentic as told then he obviously needs to be punished to the extent of the crime, but what a grimy ass way to play it,.