Mr. Scot

In what capacity (if you don't mind my asking)?

It's how they built it, though. They emphasized speed and filled the ranks with mostly undersized players. Then once teams realized they could run on us, we had no answer.

The roster isn't what scares me. I like (mostly) what we've done with it over the last two years. The coaching is what concerns me, specifically the head coaching. And I'll add while I get that Phil Snow is a popular guy, I don't think he's that good. His schemes pretty clearly got figured out last year and he wasn't able to adjust.

This is kind of a key factor to me. I feel like Fitterer Year One almost has to be judged differently than Fitterer Year Two, with the reason being the full offseason presence of Dan Morgan. Nearly all of Fitterer's personnel experience has been in college scouting. He's talked about "dabbling" in the pro side, but I don't think it's his forté. Morgan on the other hand has plenty of pro scouting experience. And I'm hoping it shows in our acquisitions this offseason. As I've said many times, I believe Fitterer and Morgan's complementary skill sets could make a great combo for us. If Morgan gets a GM job elsewhere though, I'm hoping the next Assistant GM has a similarly strong pro personnel background so we can keep that balance intact.

Same. I have a lot of positive feelings about what I've seen so far but at this point we're still judging off of a single offseason. And yeah, the fact that he doesn't have final say on the roster makes it harder to judge. Basically I feel like he's going to be a good GM, and I think he and Morgan will make a great combo as long as they stay together. But...it is still early.

Rhule is much better suited to coach at the college level. His personality, coaching techniques and "king of everything" persona work much better at that level. Some guys are just better suited to work with college age kids than professionals.

You're nowhere near as important as you like to think you are, dude

I have never given a flying damn about stats, and that's not changed. Stats are frequently misleading and can be twisted to mean something they don't. What I care about are wins. But hey, if you like stats, here's one. The defense you say was "improving" gave up nearly 300 points (283, to be exact) over the last eleven games of the season. That includes 25 to the awful Giants, 33 to the mediocre Dolphins, 29 to the lowly Falcons and 73 to the Buccaneers over two games. Does that kind of performance really inspire confidence? Our defense last season feasted on some bad teams early but absolutely got figured out and fell apart as the year went on. Bottom Line: That statistical ranking doesn't mean sh-t if it doesn't translate to points prevented and games won.

Did you look it up? And seriously, what does it matter if you hold teams to fewer yards if they still outscore you? Which of those would you want our defense to have: Fewer yards gained or fewer points scored against them? They don't determine who wins the game by who gave up fewer yards.

That's based on yards, and you have lower yard totals on defense when your offense turns the ball over. Check their rank when it comes to scoring defense.

Tell me what signs of improvement from 2020 to 2021 you think I'm missing. CRA's above post is correct. We actually did look worse in Rhule's second year. So if there are signs of improvement that you think I'm missing or glossing over, by all means tell me what they are.

Haven't seen any evidence of that. Two seasons, both with just five wins, both starting out decent and finishing badly, and the most recent one with some embarrassing performances and blowouts. If he doesn't improve the team significantly this season, there's absolutely no reason to keep him.

It's the NFL. Getting a team to a winning season isn't enough, and Rhule hasn't even done that yet.

Rhule never should have been given the kind of power Tepper gave him. He was a mid-tier college coach who never even got close to any kind of championship but had a bunch of media hype. Tepper and Hurney fell for it. As is, he's barely qualified for an NFL assistant job, much less a head coaching role. Yet Tepper gave him the keys to the whole damn thing. That's a big reason why I'm unhappy with our situation.

He's the guy who decides whose wheelhouse it is, though. So far those choices haven't been great.

Is incompetence that much better than arrogance though?

That's more Rhule and Fitterer than Tepper though. To be fair though, I don't think the problem is Tepper not giving a sh-t. Just like Richardson, he wants to win. But also like Richardson, he doesn't have a clue how to do it and he puts his faith in the wrong people.

Who's the author? (I'm guessing Fowler)

One thing I was able to gather from Tepper's recent press conference is that he's well aware of how the fans view him, and that it ain't good. Some of the things he said mixed with nervous laughter made that pretty clear.

That's the thing about practice. For somebody to look good, somebody else has gotta look bad

I've never understood the notion that people should just sit down, shut up and accept bad football. And make no mistake, the football product that's been put on the field under David Tepper has been pretty bad.

Paywall hit...

You should know me well enough to know two things: 1) I don't follow the crowd 2) The quality of football is what matters most Under Tepper, the football started off bad, then got worse. Can he get better? I sure hope so, but right now it would be delusional to suggest that there isn't a need to get better. It's bad. It needs to improve.

Hadn't seen anything anywhere other than that she had a baby. Definitely hope there's not any problems.

Not a big deal but I don't know why you'd call it a "family situation". Why not just say "his wife had a baby"?