Khyber53

He may be waiting to see who Rhule comes back with as OC, OL coach, DL coach and STC. Those candidates will show an awful lot about the direction Rhule will and is willing to take. It also will show how much draw power Rhule's system has for coaching personnel. How many actual coaches will line up for a job here when they could be tied to a coach with a two season losing record and only a potential third season of employment (if things don't improve rapidly). Can Rhule actually dig his way out of the hole he is in? That may well be what David Tepper is assessing. In the meantime, a bunch of really bad teams, with tendencies to pick really bad coaches, will be flooding into the marketplace. Most of them will choose poorly. One or two might hit on something good. Knowing that rushing to judgement last time probably got him less than he wanted might make dragging his feet a bit more palatable. Until Tepper comes out and says out loud, "Matt's our man for 2022" nothing is written in stone. And I think that bewildered, sleep-deprived look Rhule had at the press conference might just reflect that situation. As to Fitt, I think he must have been assured he'd be here for this year.

Simple question here brought on by the somewhat late firing of the Giants' head coach on Tuesday. Since Sunday evening after the game, has Tepper come out publicly and said, not hinted at but said, "Matt Rhule is going to be our head coach for 2022." ? If so, can you point me to where he said it? I just want to settle it in my mind. Otherwise, I don't think a promise has been made to Rhule at this point. He may have been given papers to gather his (projected) coaching staff and to report back. If that grouping is loaded with more Temple/Baylor toadies and is short on NFL experience, Rhule may get the "This just isn't going to work out" speech.

In both Fox's and Rivera's cases, the team was going somewhere in year two. In John Fox's case he caught lightning in a bottle with the unexpected play of Jake Delhomme (aided by superstars Smitty and Pep). Rivera was bringing a hard-nosed version of football back in a soft NFCSouth and Cam Newton was literally running over everyone in his path. In year two of Rhule's tenure, we get nothing after game three. We aren't dictating the game to our opponents, we're sticking to a game plan after the half that mirrors the first half. We play as if the other team were never going to make adjustments. And we just get stomped and stymied. After bad Panthers games I used to joke that we had had a Bojangles buffet at halftime. Plenty of fried chicken but not enough napkins leading to greasy fingers and sleepy players. This year, we've been so bad after halftimes that it wasn't even funny to joke about it. Plus: Soft, unmotivated teams can't play well in the second half. They don't have enough grit to keep the efforts up. Michigan vs. App State a decade or so back tells the tale of that situation.

Hey, I applaud your reasoning and well-thought out post. I just don't agree with your conclusions.

If you have to fire that many people from your staff, maybe you aren't very good at managing and developing people. Just sayin'.

Don't bother. Just save the good ones for next year this time.

Imagine how much better Darnold and Cam's stats would have been if Robby had dropped 15 or so less balls. There are people who work on the neutering line at the hog farm who don't drop as many balls per season as Sideshow Bob did. Put that clown on a bus.

They were being very generous to us.

No, after week three we were all thinking, "This could be the best blind date I've ever been on..." Week four and the real person started showing through.

From who got brought in last offseason, I believe Fitt must have been a resume` reader and didn't watch much tape or check with the doctors.

Trimming away at what wasn't working. I still think the bad runs to the core, but we're going to have at least another year to find that out. I sincerely hope I've been wrong about this team's coaching.

Dude was up all night. You can tell by looking at him.

We slog through another season, enduring a shot at mediocrity. Perhaps we'll fall just short of that, again like the last three years. Maybe, somehow, someway, Rhule is right and the special sauce is just about in place. We'll tune in. We'll hope for some spark in the off season. We'll hope that this chicken poo turns into chicken salad. And we'll eat another sandwich of it at the end of next season. Hope it's better than the one we've been left chewing on today.

Yeah. OK. Guess we're all just going to have to kick rocks for another year or so.

It has been a skid since Tepper took over. We only have the skidmarks to show for it.

I thought we had hired a rockstar OC with Brady. That's what everyone was telling me. I guess a lot of things aren't what they appear to be.

Sometimes the most valuable skill a person can have is the ability to not screw up something that is working. This guy has that.

Settle in, hunker down, hope for the best. Works for us on the Black Monday watch and if Rhule somehow gets another season here. It's all we can do at this point.

I've been pounding on that drum since the Dallas game when we were exposed for being soft. Heck, our defense looked soft against Houston... Houston. Statistcally we're near the top of the league, but a lot of that came from our five wins against wounded or wasted opponents. If a team was even trying, they could knock our quick but soft defense on their asses. Our offense wasn't getting back on the field because we could not get turnovers or make stands on third downs. Our defense was our best asset, so it looked really good in comparison to our flaccid offense and our Keystone Cops special teams.

Sure, watching until the bitter end. And if Rhule is coming back, I'll just have to watch through all of that crapfest as well. This is all a big circus, the good stuff will eventually come back, but man this is the longest clown act that I've ever seen. They need to all just climb back into that tiny clown car and hit the road. And take frikkin' Sideshow Bob with them!

The bottom five in the league are so bad, it would take decades of bad performance and scandals to get down to their levels. Just simply keeping the franchise here is enough to keep him out of that cesspool.

And Bill "Fish" Fisher is also great. He does some of the App State broadcasts as a fill-in. All around great guy, too.

Bengals over Cowboys.