Tough medicine to swallow

[CRA]

3 minutes ago, arbnranger said:

Agree with your point about ownership meddling in personnel affairs.

 

NFL teams are basically mom and pop shops.  They aren't run like fortune 500 companies.  So really all ownership meddles to some degree. 

[Panther'sBigD]

24 minutes ago, frankw said:

 

 

Ikr. Who do these people think they are talking about sports? What a couple of cool freethinking bros you two are.

LOL. You're not talking sports, you're imagining front office scenarios as it if were some sort of fan fiction. 

Calm down E.L. James. 

[kungfoodude]

6 minutes ago, Luciu5 said:

What do you mean? You don't want someone taking up a roster spot that is never going to play again.  You have two options, cut or IR. IR leaves a door available for an offseason trade to recoup assets and cap - if possible. No reason to cut Darnold right now.

And before anyone says anything about not getting anything for Sam, you might be right, but never forget Greg Little.

Well you could also just bench him.

[rayzor]

22 minutes ago, 4Corners said:

Aiding and abetting = rat grandson was driving Banchero’s car 

 

9 minutes ago, Darknight said:

It could also mean that Banchero was sober and was a passenger and let the rat grandson drive anyway knowing he was drunk

take it outside, kids.

[Luciu5]

39 minutes ago, frankw said:

 

 

Ikr. Who do these people think they are talking about sports? What a couple of cool freethinking bros you two are.

Fantasy narratives being stated as FACTS is not healthy. Maybe Tepper dropped the hammer. Maybe Rhule sucked it up and said let's get the best QB available. Nobody here knows. It's not normal to be speaking with certainty and conviction on things that people know nothing about. It's just weird to me, it's impossible to fact check, and it's impossible to prove. It's just odd how people's headcanon is taken so easily as fact here.

[t96]

30 minutes ago, arbnranger said:

Agree with your point about ownership meddling in personnel affairs.

Also , I believe it’s plausible that Rhule came to the idea about Cam on his own without having the management pushing him to . 

Yeah I agree it could be Rhule, it could also be Fitterer who wasn't even here when we let Cam go initially. We really have no idea. I hope it was Rhule or Fitt

[ickmule]

We are jumping the gun to think this move saves anyone….

[Luciu5]

6 minutes ago, ickmule said:

We are jumping the gun to think this move saves anyone….

We are jumping the gun to think anyone's job is in jeopardy right now....

[Fox007]

30 minutes ago, kungfoodude said:

Well you could also just bench him.

Roster spot is more useful than just benching since this league wants to talk about player safety while adding extra games but giving not increasing roster size or additional by weeks.

[kungfoodude]

8 minutes ago, Fox007 said:

Roster spot is more useful than just benching since this league wants to talk about player safety while adding extra games but giving not increasing roster size or additional by weeks.

Yeah, that makes sense. Not so much the narrative that we are intentionally hiding him to save face.

[panthers55]

I am not convinced there was much to eat crow about. In 2019 Cam had been injured for years and there was no reason to think he had much left. So we moved on. Cam showed folks he isnt done and played decently for NE. He only became the solution here when Darnold got hurt. Otherwise we wouldnt have looked that direction.  Both Rhule and Fitterer have said they will do anything they can to make the team better.  At this point he was the best option out there so the Panthers inquired and he was available. So they signed him. It wasnt hard to do and was really a no brainer. If he does well then everyone is happy and Rhule and Fitterer look great. If he sucks then they are no worse off but all the people bitching about how Cam left are now mollified that he got his chance.  So really it didn't take much at all for Rhule to bring him in. The bigger issue will be what to do with Cam if he doesnt play great but doesnt suck. If we move on are folks going to be butt hurt again or will they be okay moving on. I personally hope he plays great and we dont have to keep shopping for a QB. But I dont agree it was hard to bring him in at all. In fact he killed several birds with one stone..

[PantherGuy]

2 hours ago, Khyber53 said:

I think Rhule has always been worried that it would be Cam's team, not his, from the get go.

And there's the thing about good coaching, errrr great coaching, in the NFL. The Patriots had always been Brady's team. The Steelers had always been Big Ben's team. The Seahawks are Wilson's team, the Chiefs are undoubtedly Mahome's guys. All of those teams have master level coaches and are always contenders. There's a subtle thing there about leadership and command, that in the best of situations the two can be different entities. All of those coaches empower their QBs to be the leader of the team. 

And when there's a question of "Who runs Bartertown" so to say, you can end up with a situation that we've seen twice in Green Bay, once when the organization let McCarthy go for Rodgers and this spring/summer when Rodgers laid down the law for them again. Both of those situations were tenuous and it's a marvel that they didn't explode in the franchise's faces.

Or look at Houston and really see how bad it can get.

I'm convinced this is it 100%. Initially I thought Tepper was the one who wasn't sold on Cam due to his tenuous health at the beginning of Tepper's ownership, and he didn't want to pay Cam for that reason. That may have been part of it. But seeing Tepper's spending habits since then I don't think that has as much to do with Cam's release anymore. I think it was mostly Rhule wanting to be the big swinging d!ck in the room because he was used to that in college, but he knew he would have a very hard time accomplishing that with Cam in the room. But he has now learned that in pro sports the coaches are rarely, if ever, the BSD on a team. It's almost always the most important players. Your job as a coach in pro sports is to empower your players and put them in position to succeed, not to dictator your way to wins doing it your way or the highway. 

[Khyber53]

22 minutes ago, PantherGuy said:

I'm convinced this is it 100%. Initially I thought Tepper was the one who wasn't sold on Cam due to his tenuous health at the beginning of Tepper's ownership, and he didn't want to pay Cam for that reason. That may have been part of it. But seeing Tepper's spending habits since then I don't think that has as much to do with Cam's release anymore. I think it was mostly Rhule wanting to be the big swinging d!ck in the room because he was used to that in college, but he knew he would have a very hard time accomplishing that with Cam in the room. But he has now learned that in pro sports the coaches are rarely, if ever, the BSD on a team. It's almost always the most important players. Your job as a coach in pro sports is to empower your players and put them in position to succeed, not to dictator your way to wins doing it your way or the highway. 

Yep, but that team leader has to be the not just the right person but the right position. On offense it has got to, got to, got to be the QB. If not, there's trouble. We ran into that this season --  Darnold wasn't that guy, it just wasn't in his makeup. CMC isn't that guy by nature, either. Then you get Robby Anderson throwing a fit on the sidelines and there's no one to step up and put him back in place.

On defense, it's a bit more open, but generally your best position for it is at LB, bridging both the line and the DBs. Shaq has really stepped into that role fully now and it shows.

[RumHam]

3 hours ago, Khyber53 said:

Rhule and Co. swallowed a lot of pride last week and brought Cam back. This was not their plan going into the season and probably wasn't even close to their radar screens before it was apparent that Darnold could NOT be sent out there again, because of injury.

Let that sink in a bit.

If Sam hadn't been hurt again and been obviously unable to play, we'd have trotted him out again against the Cardinals. On Monday evening after Sam's MRI, there must have been the start of a very difficult conversation that carried over into Tuesday and probably early Wednesday morning. On Thursday the decision was implemented, the appropriate calls had been made (including the most important one between Rhule and Cam) and a deal was very quickly signed.

Whoever pushed for Rhule to accept the change and go after Cam did not just the right thing, but offered Rhule a second chance right then and there as well as a huge learning moment. Rhule was apparently wise enough to take it. 

Let's make no bones about it, had we kept going the direction the team was, Rhule's days were numbered here. Brady would probably be pushed onto his own sword first and then Rhule would follow... contract be damned. His desire to hold onto the idea of Darnold and Walker as QBs was not playing out and was killing the team and the fanbase. In the off season, Darnold had been a cute, smart gamble but when it quit paying out it put a lot of blood in the water. Any other advances made by the team were completely swallowed up by how bad the QB situation was.

Gosh, even I wanted it to work out for Sam, but there was just no doubt in even the most ardent supporters minds that the kid was nowhere near starting QB capable -- those ghosts were real and they were running all through his house. He couldn't read the defense, he couldn't work with the line (which was atrocious) and he didn't have the leadership skills to make his linemen or receivers accountable for their mistakes. It was a train wreck, week after week. 

And through all this, Rhule may have learned one of the most important things that makes the NFL and college football different -- star power at the right position can elevate the entire team. On the defense we've seen Shaq Thompson's star rise along with the leadership he provides there (there's no doubt after seeing them play when he was out) -- he elevates that unit. On offense, there were some excellent players but there wasn't that person in charge who could bring the power levels up by force of personality and actions. Cam, whether he has a noodle arm or not, has three truckloads of charisma and a massive amount of experience putting that to use. 

So, now Matt Rhule may understand that mojo makes the difference in the right hands. And Rhule had to eat some crow to learn that. If he's the guy  we thought he was, then Rhule will grow from this and become a better coach. Tough medicine to swallow, but it might just cure what ails us.

Lord, I sure hope so.

Rhule wasnt even in the meeting