Khyber53

This silence thing has all the hallmarks of the Jerry Richardson / John Fox dead man walking final season. I expect about the same results, except that Fox could coach and lead men, even if he was obviously, grudgingly phoning it in.

Dang. Why cheat the golden goose?

I think the kid is good and is going to set someone's line for a decade. If we were trading back, I'd say go for Linderbaum. I'd advocated for him even at 6, but with recent pick-ups he's maybe not as necessary (depending on if our new center is worth keeping). Still, a good center doesn't, and shouldn't, be the biggest guy on your line. He needs to be the smartest one and have the best technique. Linderbaum's main knock, imo, is that he's not big enough to also play guard. He's a center and that's the only place you're going to be able to use him. If you've already got someone in place there, it's a hard sell to pick him up. We now have Bozeman and unless we want to move him to LG game 1, there's too much redundancy to take Linderbaum. The kid is going to be great, somewhere. If we take him somehow, we're going to be getting a foundational type player.

Honestly, Darnold's biggest problem was that he became the guy they said he was. He held onto that potential through our first three games, then almost did in the fourth and then completely lost it from there (except for almost single-handedly bringing us back and winning the Minnesota game). He was the guy who got scared, who got rattled, who saw more ghosts than the Sixth Sense kid. Maybe a Belichick could have fixed him, but our guys couldn't. Now, considering what we've paid for him and the alternatives this year, trot him on out again and get us a high draft position next season.

Good, it's going to go either one of two ways: 1) he's going to start the year and hand the reigns over to a younger dude or 2) he somehow finds what he's been missing and becomes a winner here. Either way, it's probably the best thing we can do right now. Use that first round draft pick on getting the best o-lineman available and develop something that works. If Darnold doesn't work out at all, we'll get a back up some experience (we need to pick someone like Zappe up in the late rounds) and we can wade into the next draft with a high pick, new leadership and a much better pool of QBs. And if Darnold somehow makes the connection and plays lights out? Well, we can go back and say it was a great move back in the day and pat ourselves on the back like we knew it all along. Everyone wins. If we pick a QB in the first round, chances aren't good for his getting a winning season here right out of the gates. Rhule will probably be fired after our fifth loss and the new HC will come in and be saddled with a QB that doesn't fit his needs, was drafted too high and has been badly coached. That's a recipe for misery stew.

We'll either hold on to what we've got and make two picks that will contribute, potentially start, or... We'll trade back and forth, give up some from next year, and come away with two picks that will contribute and potentially start. Really, that's kind of what most teams end up with, plus some special teams contributors for a year or two.

Man, I am sooo not ready for a work out date. Too many cheeseburgers in the off season.

Good luck man! It never rains forever, the sun will shine again.

Fitt, Rhule and Tepper don't understand how things fell apart, can't understand they are making it worse and can only dig the hole deeper as they flail about trying to make whatever it is they are doing work. We can get rid of two of the guys at any time and restart. We can't, however, get rid of that horse's ass that bought the team. A lot of folks have been like "Fitt's the man, he'll get this straightened out, he's not worse than Marty was." Guess what? He's not made things better, he's gotten us into cap space hell even faster than Hurney did and has no idea what he is doing. And Dan Morgan? Sheesh, the guy was just the fourth best middle linebacker that ever played for the team, but I don't know where everyone thinks he's going to be the guy to save the franchise behind the scenes. What a frikkin' train wreck.

Yeah, this was the right move. Needs to be in the regular season, too. The whole "teams have to play defense" argument would hold water if the rules didn't favor the offense so heavily. The old way would have worked for the 1973 Bears, but it's a scoring league now and this rule needs to reflect that reality.

I think it'd be more correct to say that teams with a losing season is because they don't know why they lost. Sometimes it's just a close, close game, hard fought and the ball bounces one way more than another. But if you've lost most of the games in your season, you sure haven't been able to see and correct your mistakes and problems. Rhule can't see his problems in my opinion. And that's an experience thing. He'll probably do much better in his next coaching gig.

Honestly, at QB right now I've been pounding the drum that we use the draft to take our next back-up QB and save the position for a stronger QB class next season. Use the first round pick on the best offensive lineman available at the time and move on. We need to make a pick that is good for the life of the franchise, coach not-withstanding. And as to that QB I'd take. Grab Bailey Zappe in the late rounds. He holds the NCAA records for most yards passing in a season AND broke Joe Burrow's record for most TDs in a season. He wasn't at one of the big programs, so he won't be going near the top, but he will be going. He has the "it" factor that makes for a winning QB -- around here, you'd call it the 2003 Delhomme vibe. He's also shown massive improvement each season, at different programs and different coaches. He can be coached, and that is a massively important thing. Draft Zappe, run Darnold out to start the season, replace him with Zappe and see what we've got. If he is only fair, then we've got another high draft pick and a back-up on the cheap with some experience. We're going to need that after the next coach jettisons Darnold and PJ Walker during the Temple/Baylor purge.

Wooof. Let's just write off 2022 and think about who the new coach will pick with the first pick in next year's draft. John Fox in his lame duck season was more awake and interested. Sheesh Rhule does look drunk there.

With all of the possibilities that will be available to us, a good team would pick the right man that they need. Considering us, we'll probably take Sauce Gardner at 6 and then another long snapper in the fifth.

Pssst... it actually sounds like last year's draft a lot...

I think some of his injuries are caused by over training on his part.

If you line CMC up in the slot on a regular basis and sometimes pull him back into the RB pre-snap placement, it will have the same disruptive effect on defensive alignment as it has when he moves out of the RB placement and heads to the slot. Maybe even more so. His value isn't just the ability to move the hell out of the ball once he catches it, but that he can actually CATCH THE FRIKKIN BALL!!!!!! I can't emphasize that enough, he can actually catch the ball, unlike Sideshow Bob and most of the rest of our receivers last season. Frikkin' Anderson and Thomas and just about everyone had numerous drops last season where the ball actually hit them in both hands. Multiple frikkin' times a game. And not even way out there passes, I mean soft ball, here ya go type passes. How anyone other than DJ Moore still has a job here as any type of receiver I'll never know. Sheee-it. Put him out there, if for no other reason, that he can make catches and he isn't terrified of contact like Anderson.

Touchdowns vs interceptions is the stat that impresses me. Misses can be throw aways (which are smart) or drops or even attempts to just grab a pass interference play. Touchdowns and interceptions are pretty solid, though. It's interesting that the winner for 2021 in this was Bailey Zappe from WKU. He had 62 TDs to 11 INT and broke Joe Burrow's NCAA record for TDs and passing yardage (he threw for 5,967 yards with a 69.2% rate on 686 throws). Talk about undersung. Someone's going to pick him up way, way, way late in the draft and find a diamond in the rough.

Two things really could have fixed this for Darnold, two things we sadly didn't have: a steady offensive line AND good coaching. Put him in Belichick's system or Reid's and he'd win 8-9 games probably. Here, well, we saw.

Good coach, great guy. Good luck to him!

Honestly, I like that one.

With the exception of Detroit, any of these teams could be trading partners for our pick and I'd say deal it. At least one of the QBs will be a long term good player, but I have no idea which. I think we pass on QB until the later rounds and maybe grab Howell (if he falls to the third) or Zappe even later. If we can grab either, throw them out there and get them some experience. I'm not looking for a long-term starter there, just a backup QB on the cheap that has some kind of upside.

Woof.

It was referred to as the "brain drain" as the best kids often left town after graduation and never came back. No opportunities, no future for them there means that what they leave behind has even less opportunities and less of a future. Just a downward spiral. And it's not that the kids don't want to live there, they just know they can't. So many hope to come back some day. It just never happens.

^This is so much the reality in much of rural NC now.