Mr. Scot

Same as any other first time GM. Would you rather defer to the wisdom of the guy who thought giving a big contract and full control to Matt Rhule was a great idea?

We had one...with an extensive background in soccer (another prime example of David Tepper's hiring prowess)

Or Szell in "Marathon Man". I kept expecting her to ask me if it was safe

I didn't have it last year but I remember hearing people say that getting All 22 was a pain in the ass.

Heh I changed dentists a while back when Lady Cowboy Fan and I moved. The hygienist I see with the current one is a riot. The previous one employed a hygienist who I referred to as Helga the Torturer

I've got a dental appointment this week

Well, if you take the latest power ranking seriously, we are the bottom.

Still a lot of research to be done, but if I had to pick one candidate right now it'd probably be Rich Bisaccia. I kind of like the idea of Brian Callahan provided he brings his dad with him.

So to be clear, you think you can judge how good the draft picks are (in their rookie seasons no less) independent of who's responsible for coaching them up? You also seem to think you can judge free agents when they're running schemes by guys like Phil Snow. Is that fair? As mentioned previously, this is where your line of reasoning puts us... And hell, even Hurney would have deserved the benefit of a doubt if the roster he put together had been touched by someone like Marty Mornhinweg.

For the curious, the teams that ESPN has ranked behind us are the Texans and the Falcons.

You don't necessarily have to wait that long. The Browns blew a lead this past Sunday and lost to the Jets (with Joe Flacco as their starter).

And again, I ask the same question others are asking: How do you judge with Matt Rhule being in charge of the on-field product? I've illustrated by applying it to the players. Is Jeremy Chinn a bad player or is he being put in a bad situation? Using the "fire everybody" approach you're advocating, they only conclusion you can come to is that he's a bad player and we should dump him. Are you prepared to say that?

Which basically means every Sunday is going to be like a three hour dental appointment...

You seriously think there are going to be people upset about Matt Rhule getting fired?

The hard part about predicting when he gets fired is that an awful lot of us can't figure out why he isn't fired already. The question becomes "what the hell does it take?"

Media hype...cool story...dumb people in charge of the Panthers... Put it all together and call it "The Perfect Sh-tstorm"

Ouch

And let Tepper rebuild it from scratch as he sees fit? How much confidence do you have in that actually happening?

I'm not entirely sure about Dorsey either... ...but I can see him getting the job.

Back to this tactic again...which I guess I can't blame you for since your argument was going nowhere. Bottom Line: All indications are that, barring a miracle, Rhule is likely to be fired. No such signs with Fitterer at this point, thus it's reasonable to expect he and Morgan will have input (likely significant input) on who the next head coach will be. Knowing that between them, Fitterer and Morgan have about thirty years of experience and good connections within the league, I'm comfortable with that.

Hell, I've been on that train forever. But given his "nah, me and Marty can handle this" attitude toward the last head coaching search, I'm not exactly optimistic.

And your argument is that it's fair to judge someone who's saddled with an albatross of a head coach. To which I say if it's fair to judge the GM that way, why not the players as well? Heck, since you insist that the GM has made only bad moves, why not just gut the roster too? By your own judgment, Jeremy Chinn is a bad player. Can't have anything to do with how the coaches are using him, after all. And to be clear, you haven't said Fitterer is "unproven". You've argued that he's bad. A judgment you insist can be made independent of the influence of a coach he didn't choose, yet somehow the same standard can't be applied to players which he did. You're applying a pretty significant double standard here.

How exactly does a GM who doesn't have authority over the head coach fire him? (Tepper gave Rhule full control when he hired him)

Except you are... exactly that, whether you mean to or not. The draft picks look bad, but it's got nothing to do with how they're being coached. They just are. The coaching is bad, but that has nothing to do with why the free agents and trades look bad. They just do. See how ridiculous that sounds?

That's a lot of spin to avoid actually defending your argument. Fitterer wasn't one of Tepper's guys. In fact, none of the guys Tepper actually suggested even made it to the second round of interviews. He wasn't one of Rhule's original suggestions either. In fact, he only came along as part of the process after Tepper and Rhule had trouble coming to any sort of consensus on their early candidates. Basically, he was the one guy that the two of them were willing to compromise on. But hey, since you're prepared to fire him as well, are you also prepared to cut guys like Horn, Ickey and others that he drafted? You've said he's a bad drafter, so are we parting ways with the draft picks? For that matter, how about pre Fitterer guys like Jeremy Chinn? He started off great but now is ineffective. Since you don't seem to believe coaching has that much of an impact, it must be Chinn himself, right?