Mr. Scot

So when Lady Cowboy Fan heard Al Michaels say "Herford", she thought he was saying "pervert" and proceeded to ask me if Deshaun Watson was at the game

Holy sh-t... POINTS!!!

Al Michaels sounds like he's ready to kick a baby seal... And in the middle of it all they choose to replay a highlight of the Panthers losing This Thursday night football on Amazon Prime thing is just friggin' great!

Okay, so is anybody brave enough to watch Commanders - Bears tonight, or are you still suffering PTSD from last week's Thursday night game?

Which is funny when you remember that he was hired because of his skills as a "program builder".

Speaking of Robbie... That remind anyone else of the kind of things players typically say right before they get traded?

I've probably said it a dozen times, but my biggest issue with Tepper is his tendency to trust the wrong people.

That's probably fair. I think it was our resident shogun who suggested more wins might have just gotten us more Rhule, and hence more suffering, before leading to the same eventual result.

It's always hard to judge by players. They're way more prone to take the blame themselves than they are to throw anyone under the bus. That said, Robbie looked like he'd been shot with a tranquilizer dart.

There is that theory...

Well, you can't discount the teams they were part of either. Brady landed in what was probably the best situation he could have between Charlie Weis and later Josh McDaniels. Brees got the same when he joined up with Payton. Some of the current guys aren't in situations as beneficial as those. Imagine, for example, Joe Burrow or Justin Herbert being coached by Andy Reid.

Yeah, sure dude. Whatever makes you feel smarter Christensen's handling makes perfect sense if you say so. I'm sure the quarterback competition wasn't really that bad an idea either. Hell, it brought the locker room together, right?

Agreed. More topcoat and fedora, less tinfoil hat.

Intangible wise? I'd argue Rodgers and Mahomes are equal on a mental level, superior on the physical. I'd probably also have thrown Russell Wilson into that mix before this season. Herbert might be but I don't know that we've seen enough of him to say that yet. Ditto Joe Burrow. Some of the other guys I'd most closely compare to Brady have retired in the past few years. Brees was arguably the closest, though others would likely put one or both Manning brothers above him (or even above Brady for that matter). Andrew Luck arguably could have gotten to that level but probably didn't play long enough. Wentz had potential too but God only knows what happened there. Hell, Matt Ryan is the same style of quarterback, though definitely nowhere near as close to Brady's talent level as the other guys. Bottom Line: There are plenty of quarterbacks out there with more to offer than just athleticism. Brady isn't the only guy with superior brains.

What would have happened had he not cut Newton is probably as interesting a question as what would have happened had he successfully acquired Stafford. Newton wasn't gonna be a long term answer either mind you, but you have to wonder what would have been different.

I doubt you'll see another guy who will do it for as long as he has. What things like accuracy, field vision, quick processing, intelligence and the like aren't that rare. It would be fair to say though that, at the college level right now, they are devalued over pure athleticism.

Fair, although the teams who drafted quarterbacks in the first round of the 2018 draft might raise some objections

I think you have to count Cam against Rhule because he could have had him but chose not to. As to who the next guy is inheriting, well we can't really know that yet because the season isn't ending today. The final roster for the 2022 season is a long way from being set and there's likely to be a lot of churn between now and then.

It was actually Gantt who suggested they could find a Russell Wilson type, but I don't think he met it in the strict sense of finding that guy in a later round, just someone of that talent level.

See there again though, you have to define what a top prospect is. Our buddy John Ellis prefers the guys who are superior athletes because "you can't coach tall / strong" and things of that sort. I want the guys who are known for passing accuracy, intelligence, field vision and things of that sort first and if they also happen to be good physical specimens, that's gravy. The argument is that you can coach the intangible stuff into the athletic guys. And that sounds great in theory, but the reality is that if they don't already have those other traits, it's pretty rare to be able to coach it into them. People go "oh but Josh Allen" to which I'd say there are a lot more instances of coaches who tried to make a Josh Allen and failed than there are ones who succeeded.

Specifically, the start of 2020. Take Luke Kuechly. You can't say Rhule ever had Luke Kuechly because he really didn't. Luke might have technically been on the roster at the end of 2019 but he decided to retire before it got to the 2020 period. On the flipside, it's valid to use Newton as a point of comparison because Rhule had the option to keep Newton but he chose not to. Where it becomes semantically complicated is when you look at guys who, for example, were set to hit free agency with the 2020 offseason. Do you count them because they were options or do you say they really weren't because they were not under contract?

He wanted to frame it as pre-Rhule versus post-Rhule, but it's a fair point that the roster we had when he first got here in 2020 might be the better comparison option.

Fair enough

What I'm never going to get over when it comes to that trade is that the idea started with the defensive coordinator.

Not exactly... It is true that he initially volunteered to sell the team himself after the NFL made it clear that they weren't going to let him cover up the scandal using his "internal investigation" idea. But down the road, when he was walking around muttering about how he didn't have to sell the team if he didn't want to, the NFL basically said "no take backs". They weren't about to allow him to back out of that process once the ball got rolling.