MasterAwesome

I get the excuses for Stroud, they’re valid. What I don’t get, is how Corral went through the exact same thing last preseason, if not a worse situation (running for his life behind an awful o-line, worst coaching staff in the league, very few offseason reps) and yet a sizable contingent on these boards were pretty unforgiving and wrote him off as clearly not belonging in the league.

They were technically missing probably their best defender (Sauce Gardner), but with the way our team is built, I don't know how much of a difference he would have made. We don't really have a true #1 WR and our offense seems to be built around spreading the ball around. Bryce is the kind of cerebral QB to go through his progressions and find the open guy, instead of keying in on any particular receiver and forcing the pass.

I wasn't arguing about his promise, just against the notion that you can't be a 24-year-old raw prospect. But if we are talking about promise: call me a homer, but I'm trusting the evaluation of a respected defensive mind like Evero over whoever this Tosh Lupoi dude is lol (Oregon Ducks DC). As someone who was repeatedly on record as thinking very little of Justin Herbert as a prospect based on how his coaching staff used him (incidentally also from the Oregon Ducks, albeit different coaches), I am surprised you're so trusting of another college coaching staff haha. You also rail against UNC's coaching staff (particularly on defense) pretty often if I'm not mistaken. Seems like there are quite a lot of idiots out there coaching college football, no? Maybe they did have it right with DJ...I'm not stating otherwise, simply that I'm keeping an open mind.

I think you harp too much simply on age, when I'd say rawness has much more to do with experience and proper coaching. Sometimes those all go hand in hand, but not necessarily. Like in the case of DJ who played exclusively TE his junior year and then had to juggle DE/TE duties his senior year. It'd be easy to see how his development as a DE could be stunted when his coaches didn't commit him to that role in college. At 24 years old, DJ is still in the early stages of his prime. It's not like he's a raw 35 year old who is going to be physically limited in his attempt to develop in a new position compared to his peers. I really don't see a meaningful difference between a raw 22 year old prospect playing out his rookie contract through age 26, vs. a raw 24 year old prospect playing out his rookie contract through age 28.

Hearing these relatively unknown players flashing consistently during camp is what adds much needed excitement to the preseason games. I'm definitely going to be keying in on guys like these two, and Grugier-Hill which is another name we've been hearing a lot of.

Do the Falcons practice behind a nursing home?

I do think Cousins gets singled out and treated a bit more disproportionately critically, for example when compared to a QB like Derek Carr...who by almost every single conceivable metric is worse than Cousins, yet is being paid more and I've never heard him referred to as an overpaid loser. I hear more claims of him being "underrated", if anything.

On a bit of an aside...what awful awareness from those non-Hubbard Bengals players on that return lol that stuff always annoys me. Three of them almost let one dude sneak up from behind because they're just nonchalantly running alongside Hubbard. Could've easily been called for a "block in the back" penalty too since they waited til the last second to do something about the guy in pursuit.

Yeah I went through the exact same investigative thought process lol. Cause I guess some will argue that "concern" is more of a precursor to "worry", where "concern" really just means you're paying consideration towards something, but that's a pretty fringe way to define it whereas in 99.9% of cases they're used interchangeably.

Consider me confused...

You're really talking about two completely separate demographics here. The crowd who is hyping up Bryce and having unrealistically high expectations is the crowd who buys into the hope and optimism year after year ("sunshine pumpers" as they are often called pejoratively on these boards). Those people ain't gonna be blasting Bryce Young if he has an objectively solid season but doesn't take us deep into the playoffs/Super Bowl. The people who will blast Bryce Young on the heels of a solid season are either his haters who didn't want him in the first place, or the contingent of Huddlers who love to poo on the team any chance they get (not arguing that it isn't justified). This is usually the crowd who finds the overly optimistic crowd incredibly annoying and infuriating and will spite-post if/when things go awry: "LOLOLOL YOU IDIOTS SAID BRYCE YOUNG WAS GONNA LEAD US TO THE PLAYOFFS". It happens every season. Who did the vast majority of the blasting of Sam Darnold, Baker Mayfield, Kyle Allen, Teddy Bridgewater, Matt Rhule, etc. during/after the season? The people who bought into the hype? Or the people who already were against the signings and knew they were going to be awful? You can find the answer for yourself in the Matt Rhule Meatball thread on the front page if you're not sure.

You = Hurst is a bust. hubby = Hurst is not a bust. Me = this is a meaningless argument about a 6th year player signing with his 4th team. Not sure how you're conflating my argument with his. But if you're struggling to understand even this basic distinction then I can already tell this will only become yet another very unproductive discussion and I think this thread has already hit its quota on those. So I'll just leave it at "you're welcome, I'm happy to help".

How did Hurst "bust" for the Bengals? They signed him to a 1-year $3.5 million contract which would make him the 29th highest paid TE if we're looking at current contracts. He produced 414 yards which put him at 23rd most for a TE last season. Seems like decent value in line with what they paid him...not incredible, not a "bust" by any means. That's also what doesn't make sense about your argument. You point out that Hurst is 29 years old and on his 4th team and yet you're still throwing out his 1st round draft status as if it's in any way relevant to present-day considerations about Hurst's value. It isn't relevant for any team outside of the Ravens to be talking about where he was drafted, when he's going into his 6th season. This is such a silly and meaningless back-and-forth for 10 pages about whether or not to assign Hurst the "bust" label (from both sides). That being said, it does feel like we overpaid him relative to his production last year. I just don't know why we can't talk about that instead of where he was drafted 5 years ago.

Yeah most everyone on these boards. I wish we could stick to merit-based evaluations rather than "Rhule's nepo-baby"..."Rhule's wife's favorite player"..."New York Jets reject" (Luvu)...etc. It must suck to have your reputation be stained by something that you had no control over.

The news flash down at the bottom about us putting Christian McCaffrey on IR is pretty poetic lol. Definitely a much brighter outlook this year.

I agree with your position: I wasn't speaking on my personal philosophy, I was saying it's too early to say that the league is devaluing running backs. Value is tied not only to contract extensions, but to draft investments and teams taking running backs at 8th and 12th overall just a month ago is quite the costly investment. On the money side, three teams may very well be getting ready to sign their running backs to big deals at the end of their rookie contracts: Giants (Barkley), Pollard (Cowboys), and Jacobs (Raiders). Oftentimes the franchise tag is a prerequisite to a contract extension, but we'll have to see how it plays out in these cases.

I don't know if we can quite say that, considering one just got drafted 8th overall. Plus 3 vets being franchise tagged instead of let go (Barkley, Jacobs, and Pollard), which ain't cheap.

It's understandable when it comes to Pro Bowl voting. But the AP All-Pro voting is supposed to be above all that bad team/small market noise.

Bryce legit seems like he eats, sleeps, and breathes football...like everything he does is in pursuit of being the best. I get the size concerns, but there was legit an entire goofy thread about someone saying "Bryce Young doesn't have that dog in him" or w/e which just sounds silly considering how hard he works.

Not a single vote is inexcusable. The Pro Bowl is supposed to be the "popularity contest" compared to the All-Pro selections which are supposed to be more reputable and merit-based and exempt from factors like market size. So this is pretty disappointing...but hey the silver lining is that pragmatically speaking, these things can theoretically help keep his price tag lower for an extension lol.

I generally see a lot of players in a "prove it" position as a positive. These are gonna be guys with a chip on their shoulder who have extra motivation to produce as their future prospects are dwindling. That's why you see a fair amount of players who overachieve during contract years.

You realize that in the scenario you’re alluding to where Dalton is playing this year, he’ll be playing with the starters…right? Whether we’re talking about him being the Week 1 starter, or coming in if Bryce gets injured, he would be playing with the starting receivers in the regular season. So your point that he needs to be prepared and build chemistry with the new FA receivers, you’re talking about the 1st team offense…in which case you’re advocating for him to take snaps away from Bryce, not from Corral who is playing with the 2nd and 3rd team offenses. And I could’ve sworn just a second ago you were against taking snaps away from Bryce. “Every snap that goes to Corral is a snap of preparation Young will not have”. Just because you’re giving them to Dalton instead of Corral, you’re still taking “snaps of preparation” away from Young in preparing Dalton. Even all that aside: if you want to argue there’s like a 5% chance that Corral will amount to anything on this team…I’ll argue that there’s a 3% chance we look back regrettably at the conclusion of the season like “Dammit, if only we gave Andy Dalton more snaps in training camp!!!”. Also last thing: if you don’t want us wasting any snaps on Corral in training camp, then I’m guessing you’re in favor of outright cutting him right (otherwise why waste a roster spot on him)? And you want us to carry exactly two QBs on this 90 man roster? Is there a single other team in the league doing that? You want Bryce and Dalton to split the entire preseason between the two of them? You’re acting like you are the one with the common sense position here and the rest of us are crazy for wanting to give our 3rd string QB snaps in training camp, when your position is the one that defies all league norms.

I don't even think it's a subtle, indirect thing that Bryce just instinctually emulated. My guess is that his dad explicitly coaches him on these things: "hey son, up at the podium you should do X, Y, and Z to project confidence and professionalism". As has been mentioned, his dad is a councilor and a consultant...it is literally his job to instruct others on how to carry themselves. There's no reason to believe he wouldn't apply that expertise to his own son as well. Bryce and his family dynamic strike me as a well-oiled machine of a unit who has meticulously crafted and refined him into what he is today...going back years and years. Him taking the S2 since high school is one example of that. It unfortunately may come across to some as him being somewhat robotic, and can muzzle his personality in the spotlight, but it seems like everything he does and says is very deliberate to a tee.

No QB plays 100% of the snaps in the offseason. That's why there's a 1st team offense, 2nd team offense, 3rd team offense, etc. It's not like we're going to be putting Bryce back there running plays with the 3rd string o-line/receivers who probably aren't even making the roster at the end of the day. Once Bryce officially pulls away from Dalton in the QB1 "competition" and starts taking the dominant share of snaps with the 1st team offense, then it'd be more a case of taking snaps from Dalton and giving a significant portion of those to Corral. Dalton is a 12-year vet, he doesn't need all those back-up snaps.