Mr. Scot

Congratulations on your purchase of the Washington franchise, Mr. Snyder.

I wasn't a fan of trading for Darnold, but now that we've got him I want us to do everything possible to help him succeed. Again, here's hoping...

Having to try and develop two guys who are basically rookies into NFL quarterbacks at the same time is a terrible problem to have.

The owner's best influence is hiring the football guys. His second best influence is, if they don't perform, firing them. The important part in this is being able to recognize what a good football guy is. Jerry Richardson's definition of a good football guy was someone he liked and who was loyal to him, regardless of whether he was actually qualified to be a personnel guy or not. Jeffrey Lurie seems to share the same philosophy. David Tepper's idea was a guy who had done analytics work rather than actual scouting (again, not something that gives me a lot of confidence in Tepper's football smarts). Matt Rhule wanted an experienced personnel guy that could help him build the roster. I'm thankful Matt Rhule won that debate. I recognize that we don't know whether Scott Fitterer will be a good GM or not, but at least we went with something that's known to work rather than trying to be the smartest guy in the room and do something different just because. Here's hoping...

I don't know whether Darnold is going to be good. I don't know whether Fields is going to be good. You seem to be pretty certain on both topics. Is there absolutely no allowance in your mind that maybe, just maybe, you could be wrong?

Well, maybe this will help. There were guys Tepper wanted for the GM job, including guys that nobody else was interviewing (seriously, Brandt Tillis?) and there were guys that Matt Rhule wanted for the GM job. None of Tepper's guys even made it to the second round. Rhule won that debate. I'd call that a reason for hope.

And if it turns out that Tepper believes in Sam Darnold, will you still be on board with this?

And within two years, the guy who was primarily responsible is fired in favor of the owners b-tch and the team is one of the worst in the league. If you're fine with that formula, you should be hoping Jerry Richardson somehow gets the team back because that's exactly how he ran things. One fluke season followed by several years of sh-t isn't my thing.

There's a huge difference between seeing "the quarterback position is important" and saying "this quarterback is the guy". If you say the second, you're being an evaluator.

Marty's gone, man. That's the best thing I can tell you.

You know as well as I do that not every NFL owner is "hands on", just as you know that the smartest ones tend not to be. Tepper himself has mentioned that the best way to operate is to get people who know what they're doing and let them do their jobs. He's also spoken about how sometimes the smartest thing he can do is realize how much he doesn't know. I'm hoping he's consistent with those words, and that's not going to change based on whether or not he agrees with me.

I know it's a sore spot for you. Trust me, it is for me too.

That we've been a stupid team in the past is true. I'm really hoping the "stupid" left with Marty.

I always love the "he's rich so he must know what he's doing" suggestion. As mentioned elsewhere, that idea works really well in places like Washington and Dallas. What's sad to me is that you've previously been heavily against owner interference, but now with the idea that he might want your favorite guy, you're suddenly okay with it?

Yeah, that dynamic has been working really well for Washington, Dallas, Cincinnati and San Diego.

But why? We had Greg Little

That feeling is called "being a Panther fan".

The idea that fans not knowing who a team's left tackle is means the position isn't that important has to be one of the stupidest arguments I've ever seen. Ask any quarterback if his left tackle is important.

At Fitterer's introductory press conference, Tepper stated that he's not an evaluator and he's not going to try to be one. I'm absolutely hoping he sticks to that statement.

He doesn't have to be. Rhule has final say.

The last input he gave was suggesting that Rivera go to a 3-4. Didn't go so well. I'm perfectly fine with him giving his input as long as he doesn't demand that his decision makers agree to it.

Tepper has every right to play with his "toy", just like Dan Snyder, Jerry Jones, Mike Brown and the Spanos family do. Everybody understands that. The problem with the "running your business" scenario is what if you're lousy at it? You can keep stubbornly running it yourself if you want to, but if you have any brains you'll step back and let somebody who knows what they're doing run it for you.

Depends on who else is there. It wouldn't so much be people upset with taking Sewell as it would be people upset with who we didn't take.

We're not talking about the decision. Tell me who's making the decision. If it's Fitterer and Rhule, I'm on board. If it's Tepper, not so much.

Which is a big reason why some of their drafts have gone to sh-t. Eagle scouts have complained that they'd have a whole draft board set up, be ready to pick the next guy on it and then Howie Roseman would just go completely off script. Some believe he was covering for Lurie. That's not much different than Jay Gruden complaining that the personnel guys would do all the research, have their plan in place and then watch Dan Snyder come in and tell them who to take instead. I'd like to hope Tepper is smarter than to pull sh-t like that, but we don't know.