rayzor

then we're stuck. tbh, at this point i would settle for just making it interesting. forget winning a superbowl for now. just get a team that can win games consistently and hope that it's enough to get to the big dance. we want superman. we aren't getting superman. we had him and we blew our chance with him. find a way make it work and hope that we can with this little guy and quit wishing our lives away for the second coming of superman. it just ain't happening.

the problem is if we're waiting for Cam v2, we're going to be waiting decades longer. our best hope is that bryce is better than we all think he is and that canales is able to work some serious magic with him and the scheme to help him live up anywhere close to the potential we thought he had. he's a smart kid. we just have to be able to have a situation that allows him to use his smarts. the truth with cam was that een he had to have a system tailored for his skillset coming into the league. the difference between him and luck (which was the debate in '09 when we thought luck was an option) was that with luck, he could be placed in any offense and it would work...hence the higher floor he had than cam. cam, though, needed an offense that was built around him to reach his potential. he could have done alright in a more pro-style offense, but to reach his ceiling (which was seen by a lot of people as being higher than luck). i don't think having to have an offense tailored around what you can and can't do well is a problem for people who can develop around them...after they've truly identified what those can and can't items are. we didn't have that last year. i think we have that this year. we want a guy who can carry a team on his back, but those kind of guys are very rare. we don't need to spend our time trying find that guy, because even when you have them there's no guarantee that they will be enough. championships are won, quite often, by teams who learn to compensate for less than the greatest QB play. you have a great defense and can protect the ball while wearing out the other defense and you've got a chance. we don't need Bryce to be superman (despite where we drafted him and what we paid to get him). we just need him to be able to run (manage) a good offense.

feeling uneasy or just plain bad about the upcoming season is entirely justifiable after that ride last year. i feel hopeful, but i feel like i have the forces of the universe rising up against me in that. i'm hoping that we've run though our batch of bad coaching for a long time. things have to get better sometime, right?

hopefully OL upgrade and scheme change will limit the number of times he's thrown around like a ragdoll.

i tried that but i probably fugged it up when i did it somehow. either way, another musk fail.

didn't work

Scheme fits the LT better than last year and he's coming in not as lazy/entitled as his year 2. Lack of depth on an OL that is still vastly improved. OL will be better, especially for the run game. We have two proven WRs that are good route runners. Jackson and Theilen. As a #1, Theilen isnt who you want, but as a #2, he's what you could hope for. I think we've also got two young receiving stars in the making with Leggette and Sanders. And Brooks will be a ton of fun to watch, but I think we'll see good things from Chuba and Miles thanks to the OL and scheme. We've got a lot to look forward to. Go ahead and brace yourself for some pain if you want or protect yourself from being disappointed, but if you put some effort into it you could actually enjoy being a panther fan for a little while. I just don't think life is very fun waiting for everything to fall apart. Find a way to enjoy what you can.

i think the guy's going to be a mad dawg.

i don't blame anyone for being frustrated. plenty of reason to. i think that's the easiest path, tbh. what is tough is trying to look for reasons this could work and choosing to feel that maybe this could work out. that mindset definitely doesn't come naturally. anyone can pick out solid and legit reasons why this won't or probably won't work with bryce and the panthers as a whole. it takes some creativity to see it working. we shouldn't have to be creative trying to see it working out, but that's where we're at. it's kind of like bryce trying to see his receivers....you have to find holes to peep through.

we'll roll with Young and we'll be glad we did. he's going to have a much better year than last year.

#1 thing you need for any rookie QB (as far as personnel goes) is the OL. Second thing you need is a run game that takes the pressure off the rookie and allows him a chance to grow. run games are just easier to manage for someone still learning the ropes. third thing you need is reliable bail out option receivers who can 1) get open and/or 2) just catch the ball. last year we had none of that in place. this year i think we've gotten together everything that he should have had last year.

we got spoiled having superman and even then...he wasn't enough. superman was a fluke. there are incredibly unrealistic expectations for a first round QB, especially a first overall pick. people look at the short term, first year, rather than what you might get the next 10 and they also think that what you see the first year or two is what you get the rest of the time. it just doesn't work like that. these guys are all young and a work in progress. you draft on potential. what it takes to reach that potential is different for everyone and it all depends on the situation they fall into, the player pieces around them, the scheme they either put him in or develop around him (the latter is better), and the coaching they give him. then there's also the work the player has to put into it. the work they put into is is the only thing they can control. the rest is just luck.

there's a few that's really stuck in that ditch.

agreed. if things don't turn around on offense especially with Bryce, it won't be anyone else's fault but Bryce. He's got a good receiving corps, now (including Sanders in that). He's got a good OL. He'll have a good RB crew when we get Brooks rolling. We'll have all the parts necessary for a simple clock control efficient ball protecting offense. if that ball isn't getting moved, we won't be able to blame it on anything except the one getting the ball in his hands every play. i feel that he should be better, but there's always that chance that he's just a nice kid who wasn't cut out for the big time.

he was a new shiny toy. one of these offensive wunderkinds we drool over. he was smart, maybe even brilliant...it just wasn't until the 2nd year that we saw he wasn't interested in making Cam or the offense better. he was interested in building some awesome playbook and landing a HC job. i remember comments made after one game that he called a play that didn't fit the personnel he had on the field, like the ones who had practiced it all week were on the sidelines and he hadn't even thought to look who was was on the field at the time. in fact he didn't even care who was on the field or the situation...he just called plays on a whim.

same here. i was nervous...i mean really nervous with that first game. something just didn't sit well with me. typically i want to watch the games with other people, but that one i just wanted to watch it by myself because i didn't know what to expect. turns out i had good reason to be because we sucked and there was nothing to feel good about. usually with a new QB or new coaching staff you don't expect everything to go right, but you expect to see flashes of something positive. i saw nothing and 3 games in i knew we were fugged. i'm letting myself feel good about what we're doing, but i'm absolutely not confident that it's going to be great. i'm expecting a slow ugly start and i hope it just gets less and less ugly each week.

the way it should be. the way it has to be. when you get a rookie (no matter where he is drafted), you don't expect him to play like a vet or even get a grasp on NFL offenses like a vet. if you intend to have him running the offense, you build the offense around what they do and what clicks. not Young's fault, but he was sold as someone who would be a rookie but has the mind of a seasoned vet. guess what...he wasn't. reich and "his" crew had no idea how to work with a rookie QB or groom one. they thought they knew, but they didn't and it was obvious in the lack of plan they had for him. their plan was to treat him like he was a seasoned vet. even with that, i don't think they had any clear vision not just with Bryce, but with the offense. There was no cohesion between all the various coaches. nothing fit together and reich wasn't a strong enough leader to pull it all together. i like the approach of starting over with the fundamentals and i think it's good for any new coaching staff or new QB to a system. you don't know what to expect so you start from the beginning to make sure you're on the same page from the beginning. and as you get more used to each other, you learn what works, what could really work well, and what won't work and you form the playbook around that. contrast that with chud who had been working on a playbook for years and just wanted to use it regardless of whether the situation called for it or the personnel he had (on the team or even on the field) fit what he wanted to call. or last year when we had coaches from completely different backgrounds trying to put something together that was supposed to be a blend of what each brought to the table, but just ended up being a sloppy predictable mess that didn't fit anyone on the team, QB, WRs, and OL.

Yeah fix knew it too. He knew it all of 2009 and he coached like it. The last couple years he was here he just flat gave up. I remember wanting him gone in '07. We got lucky in '08 but the writing was on the wall in '07. We weren't getting better. Hell, just hiring Jeff Davidson was him saying "fug it who needs an offense?" And heading into abd during Rivera's 2nd year a lot of us were wanting him gone as well. We saw a HC who was timid offensively and just wasn't ready for a HC gig. Poor game and clock management. I can't remember if we actually hired someone with some experience to come in and help with clock management or if we just talked about it, but there just wasn't a lot of confidence in him leading the team. Most felt he was holding it, especially Cam, back.

rhule's last year was probably the worst for me. fox's last year with clausen was pretty rough to walk into as well. i was legit pissed about the clausen pick. i tried to be ok with it, but there was nothing good about it. fox had been done for a couple years. the year after the last superbowl run when gettleman gutted the team i felt pretty miserable about the team, just defeated, and rivera just wasn't doing much to instill confidence i feel pretty good about this one. pretty hopeful. having a new HC helps out a lot. teamed up with a new GM helps even more. i like the GM, i like the coaching staff. i like the direction of the team. bryce may or may not be it, but i think we'll be better than last year. if we have to on from bryce, i think we're set up nicely for a new QB. i think bryce will be fine, though.

i rarely ever drink carbonated drinks of any kind. last night went to a cookout and all they had to drink was carbonated drinks. didn't think ahead so i didn't bring anything. i tried a can of dr. pepper and a can of pepsi...dr. pepper was much better. pepsi just didn't have much taste.

Someone wasn't thinking when they wrote that title

i just think that the separation in talent between guys like jefferson and the rest of the good ones is going to be diminishing. the level of talent that is and will be coming out of college now is just that good.

dumb. a lot of good WRs are going to keep coming out of college resulting in a devaluing the position, or at least affecting the scarcity of good receivers. you pay that much when there isn't that much talent out there. i just don't think that's going to be the case anymore.

not voting. suffering from a case of choice overload.