Rosenthal: Carolina surprise offenseRo

[TheCasillas]

21 hours ago, Wes21 said:

Yeah, a 7-9 season is so much more important than securing a franchise QB

I am just curious, which team do you think did the whole suck on purpose for a franchise QB well? Im a little foggy headed on this one, but I can't think of a team that has tanked on purpose and became perennial winners.

[shaqattaq]

21 hours ago, Wes21 said:

Yeah, a 7-9 season is so much more important than securing a franchise QB

maybe I'm old school, or just sentimental  but I want to win every fuging game we play, period. IMO. 7-9 is 6 games better than 1-15. Let next season happen next season.

[MasterAwesome]

11 hours ago, kungfoodude said:

Well we probably built a roster that makes it a lot easier to be bad without having to try. That usually helps in tanking.

I agree that you aren't going to get a team to willingly do that, though. 

Again, sounds much simpler on paper than how it would play out in reality. That kind of half-assed offseason where an FO decides to willfully neglect the blatant holes in the roster are pretty transparent and I can’t imagine that plays well in a locker room...especially for a rookie head coach who has not yet earned the unquestioned loyalty and benefit of the doubt from his players. Seems like the recipe for an incredibly toxic start to the Rhule era.

I guess you could argue that the Dolphins kinda did it last year without ruining their locker room but even with them doing something similar to what you’re advocating (building a roster that makes it easier to be bad), they STILL ended up with the same record as us lol. That just proves that you can put your team in a position to fail with your offseason moves and STILL not get the tank job/draft pick that you’re banking for...precisely BECAUSE you can’t control for the motivation and effort of your players. You might have a trash roster and still squeak out enough wins to fall out of a top 5 draft position cause you got these hungry competitive players out there playing for their careers.

[top dawg]

4 hours ago, Wes21 said:

We will get to 7-9 BECAUSE of Teddy.  That's not a discount, that's an improvement.  Without him we probably don't win that many games.  But you can flip that to 9-7 if it makes you feel better.  But what's the point?  I'm not a "hey let's just tank the entire season" kind of a guy.  Losing sucks.  But I also don't understand the logic in signing someone like Teddy for $20M a year.  There is nothing wrong with Teddy, other than he's not the kind of kid that's going to put a team on his back and go out and win a bunch of games on his own.  But if you put a team around him, he's more than capable of stacking wins.  The 2017 Jaguars would probably have been Super Bowl champs if they had a healthy Teddy Bridgewater.  I'm just not seeing the kind of roster that Teddy can win double digit games with and stack up playoff wins.  We need a little time.  Bring in a vet, that's fine.  But why tie up so many resources for someone like Teddy? 

We'll see how it turns out.  If this roster improves quickly, it will be a great move to get Teddy on board.  Otherwise it was just a wasted opportunity, when the better model has been shown to be going out and getting a QB on his rookie contract and stack the deck around him before you have to pay him.

I actually agree with most of what you're saying. I will say that at the end of the day, we did invest more than I expected in Teddy (but maybe that was his market). But, the OC really knows him (and the HC knows him to a lesser extent). They know what they're getting in terms of his proficiency on the field. He's a high character guy off the field! Moreover, from what I've read, his contract only guarantees 33 mil for two years, with the bulk of that being year one! If we had to, we could sit him down in year two and not get hurt that badly (though 10 mil is still something). From my perspective, I see it as a modest gamble---a kind of higher than normal prove-it deal with an escape hatch, but also gives us the opportunity to extend him if he turns out to be the real deal (basically, the winner that he has been)!

As for football theory, I can't say with surety that "the better model has been shown to be going out and getting a QB on his rookie contract and stack the deck around him before you have to pay him." That might be true last year, but how many Mahomes are there? Of course I'd like to luck up on the next legit thing, but you just don't know who that is. You think it's this guy, and it turns out to be that guy! I mean, Foles did a damned good job rallying the Eagles and finishing! Otherwise it's been basically homegrown Brady, Flacco, Rogers, Brees, Wilson, Roethlisberger and the Mannings running the gambit. I mean, I think that exploiting talent while on that rookie contract is a way to lead you where you want to go, if you're lucky enough to get that guy and put it all together, but I don't know that it's a definitively superior model. Like most things football, I think the best coaches and managers look at the pieces they have, come up with a game plan, and adapt to the situation, constantly aware of the pulse of each unit on a seasonal basis. This is not to say that they don't have overarching theories or philosophies that they want to adhere to, but that they can and will adapt when warranted.

[Davidson Deac II]

10 hours ago, kungfoodude said:

We are also substantially less deep at almost every position on the defense than last year. Our quality depth is pretty bad. That was my biggest concern with our current defensive roster, not the quality of the the starters(although there are some questions) but the quality of the depth. Right now, we have a lot of guys that are PS quality that are currently going to be in our two deep. That doesn't bode well for us on that side of the ball.

We kind of have to expect that with the massive amount of dead cap and the free spending in free agency that we did. It's going to take time and money to build up that quality depth again. 

Our depth sucked last year to.   I mean our defense was the worst in Panther history, so its hard to say any aspect of the defense was good or even decent.  Maybe sacking the qb, but even there it appeared that we forgot everything else just to get to the qb.  I am not saying we will be good, just that we could be better than last year, and would be hard pressed to be worse.   

[Waldo]

39 minutes ago, Davidson Deac II said:

Our depth sucked last year to.   I mean our defense was the worst in Panther history, so its hard to say any aspect of the defense was good or even decent.  Maybe sacking the qb, but even there it appeared that we forgot everything else just to get to the qb.  I am not saying we will be good, just that we could be better than last year, and would be hard pressed to be worse.   

This D could actually be worse. Think last year minus sacks, Luke and Bradbury...it's possible.

I hope one of the PS quality guys becomes a Norwell type find. That's the positive of playing hungry long shots.

[TheSpecialJuan]

Number one rule of Wall Street: Nobody - I don't care if you're Warren Buffett or Jimmy Buffett - Nobody knows if the stock's going to go up, down, sideways, or in fuging circles, least of all stockbrokers. It's all a Fugazzi. You know what a Fugazzi is?

[Davidson Deac II]

39 minutes ago, Waldo said:

This D could actually be worse. Think last year minus sacks, Luke and Bradbury...it's possible.

I hope one of the PS quality guys becomes a Norwell type find. That's the positive of playing hungry long shots.

Highly unlikely.  They were just that bad last year (in large part due to age).  The defense was very old last year.  I think an influx of youth will help, at least a little.

[Chief Keek]

Laughing at the Alex Smith comparison, that's rich.

[Waldo]

3 hours ago, Davidson Deac II said:

Highly unlikely.  They were just that bad last year (in large part due to age).  The defense was very old last year.  I think an influx of youth will help, at least a little.

I disagree. Age wasn't our issue last year. It was the players we put together and the system the coaches ran, which was poorly conceived and implemented. This year we have young guys who need time to develop, like years not games. The other guys are fringe pieces that hopefully contribute. I don't trust the blueprints at this point. It might take a year or two to get the right prices in the right place and coached up. One injury, like KK, would change things for thr worse quickly.

[Davidson Deac II]

16 hours ago, Waldo said:

I disagree. Age wasn't our issue last year. It was the players we put together and the system the coaches ran, which was poorly conceived and implemented. This year we have young guys who need time to develop, like years not games. The other guys are fringe pieces that hopefully contribute. I don't trust the blueprints at this point. It might take a year or two to get the right prices in the right place and coached up. One injury, like KK, would change things for thr worse quickly.

I don't think age was the only issue, but I do believe it was a key issue.  Irvin, Mccoy, and Addison, and I believe Love, were all over 30.  You need a couple of veterans on a defensive line, but if the majority of starters are over 30, thats an issue.  For some reason, when we decided to switch to the 3/4, we went out and signed the over the hill gang to run it.  As far as the system, the attempted switch to the 3/4 had an impact, but even when we ran the 4/3, we looked horrible. And the defense still looked bad when Short played.  Gurley had his best game of the year against us, and Malcolm Brown had one of his 2 or 3 best.  And that was with Short in the lineup.  

[Raskle]

23 hours ago, TheCasillas said:

I am just curious, which team do you think did the whole suck on purpose for a franchise QB well? I'm a little foggy headed on this one, but I can't think of a team that has tanked on purpose and became perennial winners.

There's an argument that the 2011 Colts did exactly that, in order to land Luck. 

2007: 13-3

2008: 12-4

2009: 14-2

2010: 10-6

2011: 2-14

(drafted Luck)

2012: 11-5

2013: 11-5

2014: 11-5

[Wyank]

I would have to say that didn't work out for the colts then. 

[MasterAwesome]

2 hours ago, Raskle said:

There's an argument that the 2011 Colts did exactly that, in order to land Luck. 

2007: 13-3

2008: 12-4

2009: 14-2

2010: 10-6

2011: 2-14

(drafted Luck)

2012: 11-5

2013: 11-5

2014: 11-5

So the absolute BEST historical precedent we can invoke, involves an already perennial winner tanking to get a franchise QB just to go back to being a slightly less effective perennial winner.