rayzor

not yet.

i'm going to give it a half a season. good or bad, i think we'll have a real clue. for starters, it could take half a season to get everyone on the same page. it's one thing to get it worked out in TC and other practices. to get it worked out in games against live bullets is another entirely. bucs led by baker looked like any team led by baker for the first half a season, but then things started to click. maybe it takes that long? also, if they do look better initially, you have to question whether or not it's sustainable or if it's something that defenses had trouble figuring out for a few weeks but then someone figures it out for everyone else. remember we looked good with rhule for a few weeks a couple years but then completely fell apart. either way, i'm not going to buy anything until i see what's happening at the half way point.

or just get rid of chark. was he on a one year deal? upgrade him in the draft. we should be walking out of that draft with at least 2 good pass catchers that will be a huge upgrade from what we had to deal with last year. bar not set particularly high, but still...time for a WR upgrade. guys that can get open and actually catch the ball.

we're at ground zero with bryce. he's got tools that made him successful in the same areas that all others drafted before him were. he didn't do things the same way, but he found ways to make it work. the hope is that canales, idzik, and harriger (the QB coach) can work with bryce well enough to get us in a productive offense. he is what he is and we've got him for a while. if anyone can help him make that year two trend upward, i think it's canales.

i kind of don't think he needs to be a offensive guru. he just needs to find something that will work with who we've got. we all know that even with bryce not playing like we think he should have, he was in a poo situation with 2 coaches from 2 different schemes trying to create an offense that was dissimilar to anything they had run before and for most of the year having that patchwork offense with no cohesion called by a dinosaur who repeated half of the things he said thinking it made more of an impact. plus, who was coaching bryce? how many voices and ideas did he have thrown at him? plus, whatever "scheme" we ran wasn't something that made the OLs job easier. i think a lot of what happened with the downturn in the OL last year was due to a badly designed offense (and a poo ton of injuries). also the WRs were crap aside from thielen. i know that this looks like a laundry list of excuses, but it's a serious clusterf*ck of a situation for any QB, especially a rookie. it would mess with anyone. if we can get those other issues addressed and then have just one voice coaching up bryce (and ever young QB needs coaching up, regardless of where they were drafted), i think we could have something there. i don't expect a quick and dramatic turnaround that gets us in the playoffs, but i would expect bryce to play much better than he did last year with just the external things getting corrected.

i'm hoping that this is the kind of stuff they are going to pick out in the "self-scouting" phase and Canales' detailed and specific plan for BY. i REALLY hope that canales is what he was hyped up to be.

i feel ya. i'm just starting to get tired of dealing with what should have been. all that does is piss me off. now it's just on what we can do with what we've got. i'm hoping that the morgan/canales team can make chicken salad out of chicken poo.

Who are you talking about?

I don't blame you. Like I said, I'm tired of feeling like crap about the team so I'm going to choose to be ok with allowing a little hope to shine in. Tepper has made poo decisions for sure, but one thing that you can't deny is that he's willing to throw everything at the wall hoping to find success. Hopefully he threw the right poo at the wall and it sticks. So far what I hear from Canales and his plan so far and also the focus Morgan is showing...I don't know. If you're looking for something to hope in, I think you've got it right there. Might I be setting myself up for disappointment again? Probably. But I'm used to that roller coaster. I'm stuck on it and there's nothing I can do to change what the team is doing so my choice, as I see it, is to choose to be a bit hopeful or let myself feel like poo about the team. It's all just my way of dealing with being a panthers fan. It's probably not for everyone. Or most people. Just me.

Could be. I hope it's not. I do think I'm going to decide to not feel like crap about the team. Canales gives me a reason to feel hopeful.

He didn't really talk about that. If anything he's downplaying that talk. It's just an interview with a guy who seems to have a much better idea about what he's doing than the past 3 HCs we've had coming in.

I kind of remember that being the case as well. If it is, then I think he probably has a good idea of who BY is and what he's capable of more than me.

I was encouraged. I like his mentality. Make the football team better so the QB doesn't have to carry it. Hopefully he and Morgan can get this thing turned around.

We're pretty much stuck with him for a couple years. If you're tired of being a bottom feeder, you better hope Palmer is on to something. Btw...I guess there's something wrong with the face forward camera. I don't like what I saw in Bryce (aside from a few bright spots), but I really hope that Palmer is right and that better days are ahead. Would make it much easier if Bryce can become who he was drafted to be. Better than waiting another 2-3 years.

If we aren't filling those holes overnight, then why send $30mil/year on a WR? Just makes no sense.

one problem and giant ? for another. nah.

oh, we probably can afford to pick up one elite player. but then what? how much will we have left to fill holes elsewhere? do we just depend on the draft to fill out this team? you know we've only got 5 picks and no first rounder. we will have (after the increase) about $40 mil. how wise is it to spend 75% of our available cap on one player when we have so many holes to fill?

then we pass. just not worth it.

and the team would still suck. but at least we'd have a shiny player to get excited about.

the team isn't bad because it lacks elite players. this team is bad because it lacks even good players. we have to spend to get good players in here. once we've got a good base, then we can start talking about elite players. this year isn't about making us a playoff team. this year is about getting the team built the right way and i really don't think throwing everything we've got at one player is going to fix us. even olson said/warned about this... we aren't one player away, so don't fall into this trap that if we just get this one player then we'll be ok. we won't be. i know you probably like shiny expensive objects and have no problem buying them. but when you are working from a deficit, you've got to be a lot smarter with your money and some times that means not buying the shiny nice things so you get get more of the necessities you need to get by.

true, but if the others see that this works at all they are probably going to jump on this. we could see more than wendy's doing it.

when there is a limited supply of money and a lot of needs, you need to act like there is a limited amount of money and a lot of needs.

it's because we know the reality of the situation. we aren't one or two players away from being really competitive. if we blow our load on one elite player, that's going to hurt our chances of getting more good players to fill in the ranks. you go all in for one and it makes you really top heavy. top heavy things fall/fail easier.

could be, but i really do think that if someone makes him the highest paid WR will find that they will be stuck with having the highest paid WR for a while. i don't see top WRs getting more expensive after this year for a while. the quantity of quality WRs coming into the league this year is going to make really good WRs that much less rare which will drop the average and top prices down. supply is going up. prices are going to be going down.

the thing is, with this class of WRs this year, it's going to cause the $$ to come down for WRs. we might have hit a cap ceiling for WRs for a little while.