Mr. Scot

See, and here's a perfect illustration of why you fail. It's inevitable in any discussion with you that you'll interject bragging about yourself, your supposed intelligence, your "record" (which doesn't exist anywhere except in your own head, by the way) and other such silliness. Again... boring.

Disastrous starts happen. What matters is how you recover from them.

Regarding the strategy for the coming season... Few pass-catching groups around the league are more different than last year’s Jets and this year’s Panthers. Robby Anderson, the Jets’ best weapon during Darnold’s time with the franchise, is just one of several capable options on Carolina’s offense. The recently extended Anderson and former first-round pick D.J. Moore both tallied more than 1,000 receiving yards last year, and the Panthers spent even more resources at the position by drafting LSU standout Terrace Marshall with the 59th overall pick. The Panthers also happen to feature one of the league’s most dangerous pass-catching backs in Christian McCaffrey. In terms of pure receiving talent, Darnold has made one of the biggest upgrades imaginable. “Let Christian, let those guys carry the brunt of it,” Rhule said of their message to Darnold. “And you just go out there and do your thing. When you watch the great quarterbacks, they do that. They trust their players to make plays.” The Panthers are banking heavily on their excellent group of receivers to make things easier for Darnold, but much like the situation in Indianapolis, their trade for a distressed-asset quarterback is a vote of confidence in their play caller. Carolina’s brass has extreme faith in offensive coordinator Joe Brady’s ability to articulate the team’s system to Darnold and clearly lay out what the Panthers are trying to accomplish on a given play. By distilling the vision to Darnold, the hope is that he can play faster and alleviate some of the hero-ball issues that plagued him with the Jets. Carolina’s offensive line is still very much a work in progress without an established left tackle and unproven talent in other spots along the line, but the idea is that Brady’s preference for giving his five eligible receivers will allow Darnold to protect himself in the same way that Joe Burrow could at LSU. Last season, about 76 percent of Teddy Bridgewater’s attempts came with just 5 blockers – one of the highest rates in the NFL. “I think the biggest thing is just playing within the system, don’t try to do too much, don’t try to win the game yourself,” Rhule said. “Just go out there and just play, play by play, just do what we ask you to do, and things will eventually take care of themselves.”

Looks like you'll have to reset your password.

Riiiiight See, a big part of your MO is repeatedly talking about how smart you are. The fact that you have to do that tells me that you're not. And as usual when talking with you, it's off topic and I'm bored now, so...

Same as it would be to any other week one loss. Learn from it, move on and get ready for the next game.

That happens in pretty much every thread you enter. I'm pretty comfortable with the results

Funny thing is Newton himself is arguing within the video that he was going to be released regardless of whether this incident happened or not. Now with that said, I think pretty much all of us have a hard time buying the notion that his vax status and the resulting incident had nothing to do with his release.

I get the feeling this guy probably only lasts however long it takes Shi Smith to get healthy.

Here: Can Carson Wentz and Sam Darnold be fixed? The article includes an inside look at the process leading up to the Darnold trade. It jibes pretty well with what Albert Breer reported previously but also offers some new details. One specific item is that the initiative to pursue Darnold started with Matt Rhule. Excerpts below: The Panthers’ idea to pursue Sam Darnold happened in an unconventional way. In the lead up to free agency, Rhule and his defensive staff were studying a defensive player who’d played against the Jets last season. As they tried to focus on the defender in question, Rhule’s assistants kept getting sidetracked by the splash plays that Darnold repeatedly made. “‘[They] just kept on remarking, ‘Man, he makes a ton of wild plays,’” Rhule said. “And so, we went back and I studied a bunch of games. You just saw he made plays when there was an opportunity for them to be made.” It was no secret that Carolina wanted a new quarterback this spring. The Panthers reportedly offered a package to the Lions for Mathew Stafford that included the eighth overall pick. After Detroit shipped Stafford to the Rams for a pair of first-round picks and a deal for Texans’ quarterback Deshaun Watson never materialized, Carolina was running out of options. Like Wentz, Darnold’s 2020 tape was often hard to watch. He threw 11 interceptions and just nine touchdowns in 12 starts. Darnold completed 59.6 percent of his passes, bringing his career average to a lowly 59.8 percent. During his three years as the Jets’ starter, the only quarterbacks with at least 500 dropbacks who produced a lower EPA/dropback other than Darnold were Blake Bortles, Dwayne Haskins, and Josh Rosen. Turning around a quarterback with that level of production over such an extended period would essentially be unprecedented in the modern NFL, but the Panthers’ staff believed that Darnold — who was only 23 years old during the 2020 season — still had room to grow. As Rhule points out, Peyton Manning was only 22 and had started 45 college games when he was drafted first overall in 1998. “Now, guys are coming out at the age of 20 and 21,” Rhule said. “And so, I just think you look at a guy at 23 years old and say to yourself, ‘Hey, has he had an opportunity yet to master his craft? Or is he just learning?’” After Rhule approached general manager Scott Fitterer about chasing Darnold, the front office and coaching staff dove headfirst into their evaluation, studying Darnold as though he was a rookie QB prospect rather than a multi-year starter. They prioritized traits over polish, flash over the finished product. In their estimation, the physical tools that had made Darnold a top-3 pick in 2018 were still apparent. “Guys got a cannon, a quick release, all those things,” Rhule said. “It was just a matter of, ‘Hey, can we discipline his process and discipline his decision-making?’” With the skill set no longer in question, Rhule moved his attention to whether Darnold had the right makeup to potentially make good on his immense talent. The reviews that Rhule got from coaches who’d worked with Darnold were exemplary across the board, and he also had his own experience to draw from. In early 2019, Rhule interviewed to be the next head coach of the Jets. As part of the process, he met with Darnold and left impressed by a 21-year-old quarterback who’d just finished his rookie season. “His focus and his mindset was so team, team, team,” Rhule said. “That stuck out to me. I had that one interaction with him and it was just like, ‘Hey, this guy has got his head on straight.’” When the Panthers decided that it was worth inquiring about Darnold, they fortunately had a direct line to Jets’ general manager Joe Douglas. Carolina’s vice president of player personnel Pat Stewart had been a part of the Eagles’ front office with Douglas in 2018 and was able to get the ball rolling on the discussions. Fitterer got involved shortly after, and about a month before the draft, the deal was done. Owners of the eighth overall pick, Fitterer and the Panthers figured a quarterback might be available to them in the first round. But in their minds, dealing lesser picks for Darnold allowed Carolina to land a young quarterback and chase an elite cornerback prospect in the top 10. The Panthers eventually landed on South Carolina’s Jaycee Horn, whose aggressive approach to the position aligned with what Carolina wants out of its corners. Misguided or not, the Panthers saw the Darnold-Horn combo as a way to potentially have their cake and eat it too. Rhule says that after Darnold arrived in the building, the focus was less on tweaking his mechanics and more on rewiring his mindset for the position. In his time with the Jets, Darnold developed a nasty habit of trying to make the heroic play when the situation around him started to deteriorate. Carolina’s bet on Darnold is a bet on how the Panthers’ collection of receiving talent and Joe Brady’s offense can lessen the load on the quarterback’s shoulders.

Treat facts as stupid? No. Treat you as stupid? Well...

Yeah...there's a reason he was available.

Newton being back with the Panthers as a backup is probably untenable regardless of who the starter is.

The Jets are really gonna need to have a good pass rush because their secondary is...well

Irony at it's finest But that's the thing dude. Any debate with you devolves because you always wind up saying really stupid things. That's why it's boring. Mav is doing a much better job.

An increase of quarterback rushing is valid, but doesn't change the fact that QBS passing is still way more effective than QBs running.

Oy, what a stupid response. But why am I not surprised?

I don't right now, but I acknowledge that's just the opinion of me as a fan, not a professional.

The thing with a guy like Newton who's always won, always conquered, always come out on top, etc is that when the time comes that you can't do that anymore, it can be extremely hard to deal with.

And if they do, I'd buy it. But when I think of run threats, I think of guys like Lamar Jackson, not Murray.

Does he scare them enough to spy him though? That's my threshold. Let's say you've got a runningback who can pass (like Dave Meggett used to). Do you have to commit people to stop that?

I'm trying to argue the standard for somebody being a real run threat. There are plenty of guys that can be referred to as "capable runners" that don't particularly scare defensive coordinators. Again, my threshold for a guy being considered a true run threat is you having to commit somebody specifically to stopping him.

I've always appreciated the gentle manner with which you talk to people

It's not enough of one. Hell, Darnold can do that. Does that make him a run threat?

See above. If you don't have to commit defensive resources like a spy to stop them, I don't consider them a dual threat.