Mr. Scot

Can't find the full original interview anywhere, but I did find this... https://www.clevelandbrowns.com/video/steve-smith-on-cleveland-browns-qb-baker-mayfield-i-love-his-attitude-and-charac

Yeeeeaaah...nobody was predicting Matt Rhule was gonna be fired this time last year. And hell, I'd like for Rhule to be a good head coach. I'd also like for Sam Darnold to be a great quarterback. I give those two things an equal probability of happening.

Doesn't that description kinda remind you of somebody else, though? Not namin' any names, but...

I'd like to see a film / stat breakdown of Mayfield's first two seasons (under Freddie Kitchens and the notorious Hue Jackson) vs his last two under Kevin Stefanski. (maybe our buddy @ellis can do something like that) Stefanski's likely a better coach than the other two, though from that Athletic article by the Cleveland writer it sounds like he was a bit of a dick to Mayfield.

Honest NFL guy thinks he was scapegoated, and he may have a point. But yeah, it's also true that he was given a job he wasn't ready for just yet.

That day might not be so far off as you think it is. All indications are Rhule needs to do something to save his job this year. It's far from guaranteed that he will.

Side Note: I can't unsee this now...

Alpha males love being alpha males...while actively disliking other alpha males... "I can't stand him because he's just like me"

Now all we need to do is fire that other unqualified guy and go get an actual NFL head coach.

This isn't a "Joe Brady fetish". It's a discussion. My longstanding opinion of Brady (expressed within this thread even) is that he was handed an OC job way too soon. He needed to start as a position coach and work his way up but the NFL's "Sean McVay fetish" landed him a job he wasn't really qualified for yet. Unfortunately, he was also working for a guy that's equally unqualified for his job.

From what I've seen, it looks like Dave Aranda is doing better at Baylor than Rhule did. I do agree he's better suited to college though. When I look at Rhule, I see less "head coach" and more consultant / efficiency expert. He comes to your team, helps improve some things and then moves on. That doesn't really work in the NFL of course...

For every Haason Reddick, there's a Tahir Whitehead Not that it matters either way. Your job as a head coach isn't to develop players. It's to win games. At the pro level, Matt Rhule doesn't do that. Rhule could definitely be a successful coach...if he returned to the college level. At the pro level, I'm pretty sure of 500 season is his ceiling, and I'm not especially confident he can even reach that.

That's a picture of how I'll probably die, through likely with a different candy. Maybe some Reese's...

Mayfield and Smith actually have a lot of similarity in their personalities. It's also true that guys like them tend to dislike other guys like them.

Like PJ Walker? Rhule made a name for himself by improving teams, but never to the point where they were championship level (or even capable of beating teams that were actually good for that matter). Looking at that resumé and thinking he deserved full control of an NFL team was flat out stupid. You may as well just handed the team over to the coach who guided App State to that one upset win over Michigan. Cool moment sure, but not substantial enough to deserve this sort of thing.

Moton is great. Moore is great but probably better suited to be a number two than a number one. Burns is great against the pass. The run, not so much. Chinn is great when used in the proper role. We found out last year that safety probably isn't that role.

Who were their opponents? If you look back at Matt Rhule's college record, you'll find that in the vast majority of cases where they faced an actual decent college team, they lost. It's one of the reasons why his hype was so overblown.

Yeah that's...funny, but pretty obviously fake.

Yeah, not a Phil Snow fan at all. I think most of the praise he gets comes from those early games last year, but it didn't take long for opponents to figure him out and he never came up with any sort of answer. That "number two defense" thing is a total crock.

A habit I stole from Stephen King Can't provide tone of voice in a written format so if you want to emphasize something, you have to use visual cues. In the case of extended quotes like this one though, it's because the board's quote function on mobile became kind of wonky during a previous software upgrade.

That particular observation is likely pertinent to several of our coaches, including that guy at the top of the food chain. In college, you can just do what's working throughout an entire game and win because the other team probably doesn't have the players to stop it. In the NFL, you'd better be able to adjust. If you can't, then that whole checkers vs chess saying applies.

I'm not prepared to predict that the Panthers are going to "shock the world". Hell, at this point I'll be happy if they just shock me.

I think Brady suffered somewhat from the league's current and fervent desire to find the next Sean McVay. Had he gone the normal route of working his way up from position coach and things like that, maybe it would have been different.

Not the last one... And there are definitely a few in there where he has to scramble.

Heard that a lot. There's also the clip of Robbie Anderson blowing up after a pick because, despite the defense knowing and sitting on the routes, we weren't changing them up