Mr. Scot

Keeping Marty in place was absolutely Tepper's fault. He has to own that, and from things he's said since the firing I think he knows it. What happens from here forward is what's most important now, though. And one of the biggest criteria to me is his willingness to butt out and let the football people he hired do their jobs. Based on Person's story about the Darnold process, it sounds like he's doing that.

He also never had his own people in charge till this season. I've said elsewhere that I don't count the Jerry Richardson era as having ended until the day Marty Hurney was fired.

Pretty much everything you're citing though came under the prior ownership and braintrust. Tepper is still an incomplete to me.

For Darnold or the O-Line?

The thing that gets me about Darnold is his inexperience. The guy really hasn't been playing quarterback all that long. He was only a part-time starter in high school. It's one of the reasons I say to treat him like a rookie, but there's an advantage there. A big part of most rookie transitions is learning the speed of the game. Darnold doesn't have to do that. If he can be properly coached up, there's real potential there .

Yikes!

Per the draft order, the Falcons are currently worse than us.

I'd agree with the caveat that he needs the right system. You don't want Bridgewater running a Coryell.

My answer is that I know of at least one team that took longer to get there than we've been in existence. Are there others? Don't think so but I'd have to look it up.

Which, if I correctly understand the things that we have to account for, means we basically don't have anything left.

That still stings

The Falcons didn't from 1966 to 2009. That's more years than we've been in existence.

I'm not going there

Well, by the time the season rolls around, we might.

That's what I thought this thread would be about.

There are trolls.

My first thought as well...

I wouldn't say I'm feeling cocky, and Lord knows I'm as historical as anyone. But it's valid to note that history can really only tell you so much when you have a coach in just his second year and a GM in his first.

Phone's been double posting a lot lately.

Appreciated, but thank Joe Person and Connor Hughes. This was their story. I'm just relaying it.

I should add that I think the one narrative this story completely destroys is the idea that David Tepper was at any point standing behind Rhule and Fitterer cracking a whip and telling them to trade the farm, the kitchen sink and everything else for one player. Truthfully, outside of his getting regular reports on how things were going, it doesn't sound like Tepper was involved all that much in this process at all.

That thought has crossed my mind. LG is correct. If they were looking at trading up for the #3 pick, the plan would have been to draft a rookie. Even the article says part of the reason they didn't do it was because they hadn't finished evaluating the prospects. In addition, seeing that Fitterer "balked" at what Miami wanted for that third pick, it raises the distinct possibility that even if we did want to push for Watson, some of the outlandish trade packages fans and some analysts speculated we were willing to give up might have been way way waaay off the mark. (at the very least, I think you'd probably have to believe that the whole "any price" story was bullsh-t) Throw in Fitterer's comment about leaving misinformation out there if it works to our advantage, and who knows?

I remember something Fitterer said in one of his press conferences (don't remember which). He was talking about correcting misinformation that was out there, but then added with a smile that the team might encourage misinformation if it was to their advantage to do so. I don't know what kind of GM Fitterer is ultimately going to be, but I do remember hearing that answer and thinking "this guy gets it".

That very easily could have been us. We talked to Miami before the 49ers did, saw their asking price and said "hell no".

You know something else that typically doesn't work? Drafting pass rushers from Florida State. Throw in the fact that just as many first round quarterbacks bust as succeed. The biggest mistake is in thinking there's only one way to do things.