Mr. Scot

That, plus they had a way more legitimate claim to being the number two defense in the league last year than we did.

Sadly, it could be argued that they're in a much better position to turn it around than we are

Also, for what it's worth...

Ah, but we don't know how things are going to turn out this season...remember? Will things be different? Sure. Does that mean winning? Unknown. Oh, and please don't act like cheering for a losing team is "sacking up" when it basically amounts to accepting whatever mediocrity is fed to you.

In a manner of speaking... Gotta wonder if Dan Morgan's connections to their front office might help us there.

Well then perhaps you should wait until there's something to cheer about as well And again, all the optimism about Rhule is based on some form of "well, it's possible". Cool. It's also possible that Sam Darnold becomes a great quarterback this season. I'm not exactly seeing a lot of signs pointing to it, though. Kudos for "I don't have to defend him or explain anything" though. That's a great dodge. Sounds way better than "I don't actually have anything to support my argument". Means pretty much the same thing, though...

But he's an adult

Not if you're a Cowboys fan

I wasn't expecting Corral to be a starter or play this year, but giving PJ Walker reps in both practice and preseason games ahead of him was just plain idiotic. It reflects the college mindset, treating Corral like a college freshman rather than an NFL rookie. And the "well, Ickey might have gotten injured" argument is kind of silly, especially given what you said above it about Corral. Calling the defensive unit last season "solid" is...generous (and I'm being kind). They were run over pretty much from game four forward and gave up loads of points against even poorly performing offenses. As far as the "benefit of a doubt", that goes to coaches that have proven something/ Rhule hasn't, and again the "knows more than me" argument is ridiculous. He doesn't have to know more than you, me or any other fan. He needs to know more than Sean McDermott, Bill Belichick and 29 other guys who are professional NFL coaches. As far as what's gonna happen this year, I don't know. Neither do you. That means the best criteria I can use to judge him by is what I do know, And it ain't good...

Starting with... Already shared this with Lady Cowboy Fan. Her response was pretty much what I expected They do have a guy ready to step up, but Smith isn't a guy whose shoes are easy to fill. Some here have suggested Tretter might be a good option to sign at center. That option is now off the table. Tretter has expressed a belief that his work as NFLPA president might have hurt his chances of getting signed. Joint practices...yeah And finally, this from Cleveland... I didn't even know Rosen was with the Browns. Wonder how he fits in with their policy of preferring "adults" at the quarterback spot

When the team is objectively and decidedly performing poorly, what would you expect fans to do? You want everybody to be sunshine and rainbows over five wins a season? Why should they be? And if, buy your own admissions, you can't defend his performance, why does it bother you so much that people are criticizing him? His performance is pretty much the most important factor in whether he stays on as coach or not. Do you think that's somehow unfair?

Not a fan at all of the way he ran training camp, especially not giving Ekwonu and Mayfield The lion's share of the starting reps. His "process' still reflects the thinking of a college coach rather than a professional one. And again, outside of "let's be optimistic", I haven't seen much in the way of real reasons to be optimistic. She's still relying on Phil Snow as his defensive coordinator. That's a pretty important position. As far as the claim that he's "improved in every area" I'm going to need specifics.

He was given complete control of the franchise. Not a single move that was made came without his approval. It's pretty difficult to excuse him for "the situation" when the reality is he had complete control of it...and proceeded to make it worse.

I don't support making fun of his appearance, and personally I've probably called things he's done dumbass more than I've called him dumbass, but unfortunately as a descriptive term, the name fits. If you really want to fight those things though, this would be my challenge: Defend his performance and his results. If you want to say the criticism is unfair, show me an objective reason why. And to be clear, "well he might get better", "this year could be improved" or any other such hypothetical thing does not count. Likewise, I can give you hiring better coaches as a positive, but even that doesn't mean much until we see results. Bottom Line: Nobody's going to improve their view of them until he gives them a reason to, and that's a perfectly rational outlook. Show me winning, show me improvement, show me real progress, and then we can talk.

Eeehhh, it makes for a nice story to frame it this way but I still don't buy that it was necessary.

All valid... And frankly, I dislike using the word "hate" in this context. I seriously doubt anybody here hates him personally. The majority here feel that he's not qualified for his job and should be replaced. That's a perfectly valid point of view, no hate required. Frankly, it's kind of lazy to just say that people hate him. It excuses you from having to debate any of the points they make about his deficiencies. Much easier to say "you just hate him" than to actually try to defend his record. Heck, I used to get told that I "just hated" Marty Hurney too. I'd love to ask any of the people who said that back then if they would want him back now.

Denial doesn't equal support. It's one thing to say "I want the Panthers to win". Quite another to say "Sam Darnold is a great quarterback who can lead us to the playoffs". One of those statements is valid. The other is delusional. Bottom Line: Matt Rhule just isn't qualified to be an NFL coach. You can tell people you don't want to hear that or argue against it all you want, but none of that is going to change the truth of it. I get wanting to be a fan, but dismissing reality doesn't make anything better.

Keep in mind that mindset would also make the "Matt Rhule typically starts winning in year three" argument meaningless.

The OL that he built with Erving and Elflein didn't happen in his rookie season. It happened in his second. And sorry dude, but if the primary point of your argument is that he's learned from his mistakes and is improving, year two should have been better than year one. Not only was the record in that year the same, but the team actually looked worse. I get wanting to be optimistic about the team, but I'm somebody that has to have a reason for that. When it comes to Matt Rhule and his coaching, I just don't have one.

Optimism is a great way to go through life. It's also the facilitator of a lot of bad decisions. Keeping a bad player like Sam Darnold or Cam Erving because they might get better next year would be a really bad idea. The same applies to bad coaches.

If even the "meh" coaches are having more success than Rhule though, where does that put him?

Coaches that "can just coach" generally show improvement from one season to the next. We saw regression.

What I expect the fourth quarter to look like...

They also had to coach him up. And seriously, how often do you see a guy picked in the top ten not start?

I'm not that worried about Buffalo resting their starters for this game. I would say though that if our starters look bad against Buffalo's backups, this board's servers are probably going bye-bye.