Mr. Scot

Ask me in January.

Has Bryce? Again though, prior career results don't mean much when we're talking about right now. This season, Bryce can legitimately be called a clutch performer, a leader, a smooth operator, etc. Don't know that anyone would apply those descriptions to Murray at the moment...or even before for that matter. I'm not counting on Bryce to continue this run, but I can't really blame anyone else much if they do.

This is where the old "past results are no guarantee of future performance" disclaimer comes in. If Bryce does indeed manage to become a consistent good quarterback, nobody's gonna give a sh-t about his first two seasons. If he doesn't, nobody's gonna care about his stretch of good performances this season. I know what I'm expecting, but truth is both those options are equally possible.

Honestly just sounds like cautious optimism to me... (something which I'll happily embrace over the feelings we had late in some of our prior seasons )

I'd like to think this season's improvement could help us out some when free agency rolls around.

Would you rather compliment Sean Payton?

Boy, there's an epitaph...

Maybe so, but stats don't...oh wait

How many people outside this board do you think would pick Chubba and banged up Rico ovwr Alvan Kamara? At this stage of the season, and operating in the real world rather than off of a spreadsheet, they outperformed us in direct competition and just beat the team leading the division. Is our OL banged up? Sure. So is theirs. Is anybody gonna make any allowances for that? Maybe say "You know what? You guys take some time to heal and we'll play when you're at full strength" Kinda doubt it. Where we rank over a season's worth of stats doesn'tnmean sh-t when the teams take the field.

As an aside, I think there's a pretty good argument to be made that "late career Cam" was a better on field version of him (minus the injury aspect). Perhaps the most accurate way to put it is that Norv Turner coached Cam was a better quarterback than Mike Shula coached Cam.

Outside noise is basically why there weren't 20 plus teams going after Deshaun Watson. Sanders "outside noise" isn't as serious, but it's also less likely to go away because he's related to it

"Overachieved" might be a bit of a stretch... You can name a lot of guys who've had great moments but mediocre at best careers, and that's what I believe will ultimately happen with Shedeur. Right now, he's achieved a success level roughly equal to that of Dameyune Craig.

I can't speak for anybody other than me on that. For the record, I absolutely want someone to compete with Bryce. As far as the statistical argument, even accepting that as authoritative (I don't, but you know that) you're still making two mistakes here: 1) A player's career stats aren't a good metric to judge how good they are right now. 2) Too small a sample size can very easily be misleading. Lastly, why are people "so fired up about it"? Again, I can't speak for others, but for me it's simple... I don't think he's anything special. And others may indeed feel the same without necessary having any nefarious ulterior motives.

Yeah and Phil Snow has the second best defense in the league I'm reminded of 2015 where we used to build up huge leads in the first half just to wind up winning by less than a single score because our second half performance stunk. We built up some pretty good rushing stats over an early stretch in the year. Didn't really help us against the Saints though, or in some of our other losses. Hell, go back and look at past Super Bowl winners. Is it always the team that's ranked first in one category or another? After all, stat rankings always tell you who the best team is, right?

I wouldn't argue he's handled things well in Cleveland since his draft tumble. I give him credit for that. Draft eval really only matters if they got it right. And with Shedeur, I think time will beat out that they did. Like others, he'll leave behind some cool highligh reels, but something less than a great career.

I don't put Bryce any higher than that, but I don't put Murray up there either. And we've touched on the reason: an unfortunate tendency to choke. You can have all the best stats in any game you play in, but if you choke at a crucial point and lose the game, guess how much those stats count for? And I will at least admit this when it comes to Bryce: his game performances of late definitely don't reflect choking. Just the opposite, in fact.

Well in this context, there's actually three "guys on the internet with an opinion" If you want more though, a quick search will tell you that Murray isn't necessarily as well thought of as you'd suggest.

Does that really help his case, though? It's generally believed that he dropped as far as he did over the attitude issues. If, however, it wasn't so much the attitude as it was the evaluation of his abilities, that's arguably worse.

As a player yeah, though it would seem he actually has bigger problems now

I'm not putting any bets on Bryce being able to reach that ceiling. (yes, I meant to do that)

Our RBs sure didn't look better last time. And given that you cite our OL injuries as if they weren't considered, I'm curious what you think the metaphor "MASH unit of an OL" meant exactly

Well, if you want to discount "guy on the Internet with an opinion" then I have some bad news for you He's not exactly alone in what he's said though

Possibly, but I'm not honestly even worried about whether he can have a better performance. I want consistency. And as I've said many times, I'll take "consistently good" over "occasionally great" ten times out of ten.

I wouldn't say "called out" given that you focused on an accusation but haven't even attempted to answer the substance of my statements about how unreliable stats can be. I can focus it a little closer if you like... Should and interception that happens because a receiver made a poor attempt at a catch and deflected it to a defended reflect negatively on the quarterback who threw a perfectly good pass?

Pretty much my take... Mind you, I'm iffy on Bryce proving to be a consistent starter as well.