MasterAwesome

Respectfully, I wholeheartedly disagree. Based off everything I've seen from you over the last couple years, I think if we're looking at an alternate reality where we took Stroud #1 overall and he had the exact performance as Young on Saturday, I have little doubt that you'd be raising hell exclusively about the o-line. Similarly, if this was Fields' rookie preseason debut, I think you'd be up in arms about the terrible protection and how they're failing their brand new 1st round QB if that's the kind of o-line they're putting around him. It'd be like after Fields' 3-3 129 yards 2 TD performance, if I just chose to emphasize how his screen pass to DJ was ugly, he had like 3 total air yards on his passes, and hey maybe his coaches still don't trust his arm if they're basically only giving him screen/swing passes. Would you read that assessment of Fields' performance and be like "Well, none of that is technically wrong. That's a pretty fair and objective take" or would you think "hmmm this guy sounds like a bit of a hater"? And then I talked about how tons of people are saying his performance was Fool's Gold and unimpressive and linked a few articles/videos saying just that. Those are the kind of vibes you're giving off.

Yeah obviously there's truth in all of those evaluations. The double standards are with the framing of your posts and what you choose to highlight when talking about a player unprompted. There's a difference between not disputing that some of Fields' sacks were on him, vs. readily jumping at the opportunity to criticize him for not feeling the pressure on those sacks. You have never done the latter for Fields, despite him leading the league in Sack Rate in each of the last two seasons. You were quick to do so for Bryce's very first preseason game. That's pretty telling. Yes Bryce "not flashing" is up for dispute. Plenty of people would argue that poise in the pocket and showing the ability to quickly go through progressions are areas you can "flash" in for your NFL debut. Arguably those are the hardest traits for rookies to acquire in their transition to the NFL. You seem to be one of those "Box Score" analysts who extracts all of his talking points straight from the Box Score, which meshes with the other thread where you extracted your talking points straight from article headlines rather than diving into the substance of the articles. Your bar for objectivity seems to be that you don't egregiously lie about players. That's a pretty silly bar. You can be "not wrong" about your analyses but be heavily biased in your framing of certain players' performances. Highlighting the positives of players you like and dismissing/ignoring the negatives, while highlighting the negatives of players you dislike and ignoring/dismissing the positives. I don't even think you dislike Bryce, I think you're doing that petty thing that lots of people do where you spite-post because you're annoyed at how many people were/are hyping him up when you wanted someone else.

I mean the problem was I was giving you too much credit that you actually read the articles you're referencing. None of those articles attribute fault to Young, quite the opposite (as realmjl posted). You were clearly alluding to these "tons of articles" highlighting Young's disappointing debut as a knock against Young, so I was excluding articles like these that you linked to, which were complimentary of Young but referred to his debut as "disappointing" in the most surface-level sense. Obviously a 21-yard performance and under constant duress is "disappointing" from a production standpoint. The entire context around your post was about these rookie QBs looking "lost" and you throw Bryce in there amongst Richardson and Stroud despite even these articles you linked, talking about his poise and awareness and going through his progressions. Quite the opposite of looking lost.

You like to present yourself as this arbiter of objectivity who keeps it real. But let's take a look at how you treat your guys vs. someone like Young. Fields (all last year): poor guy played behind an awful o-line, can't hold it against him with that kind of supporting cast, etc. Stroud (preseason game 1): only threw four passes, people are overreacting to his awful interception Bryce (preseason game 1): meh, looked okay...didn't flash. Didn't feel the pressure at times. Tons of articles highlighting his disappointing debut (lol) So Bryce threw two more passes than Stroud and you're pretty comfortable evaluating (i.e. criticizing) his performance, whereas Stroud's sample size was just far too small to be critical. Also Bryce getting drilled multiple times behind awful protection was his fault that he didn't feel the pressure...but poor Fields who took a million sacks in college and also unsurprisingly a million sacks in the NFL is just a victim of his terrible o-line. Nothing attributing his sacks to his own awareness like you've done to Bryce. The double standards are pretty wild actually. You think you are objective? Far from it.

Can you link to a few of these "tons of articles"? I'm genuinely struggling to find even one.

Yeah and that Brian Burns guy who’s supposed to be our best player didn’t even make a SINGLE impact play!! Oh wait…

I for one can’t believe they’re just gonna bitch out like that.

I was gonna say Stephen Hill. I don't even know if he qualified as a "Preseason Warrior", I was just in awe of a 6'4 WR running a 4.3 40.

If CJ Stroud ends up struggling in the NFL with the processing, progressions, etc. and Bryce Young exhibits this elite level of awareness from your firsthand account, I think the S2 test will be getting an enormous boon to its credibility.

Came here for boobies and groin...leaving disappointed.

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.