Khyber53

And the latest. A guy's wife goes missing, he knows she's gone, decides to head into work that day instead of calling the cops. Gives them a ring after he finishes his shift. Doesn't bother to join in the search parties, has a new girlfriend a couple of months later.

I'm going to harp on this once again. The one glaring advantage to having the #33 pick, the first one on day 2 is that there is going to be a full night to develop clarity on who is available. And there are very good chances that we can take the very best player available for the entire rest of the draft. I know we are needy at Edge, WR, CB and LB. And those are most likely going to be the most picked over positions for top end performers. On the flip side, there is an extremely good chance that neither an RB or a Safety will be picked in the first round. Perhaps only one TE would be gone by the end of the first round as well. Could we go RB or TE at 33 and find our man? Yeah, I think we really could. And I'm beginning to think we really should. Give me the best RB of the draft coming in at #33 and never let him forget all of those that passed on him. Get that rolling ball of butcher knives we need. Or get that sure handed, big TE who can work the seams in the defense and grind out the difficult yards. There's opportunity where we sit, as long as we don't fritter (Fitterer) it away by trading down to take more, lesser, players.

I think the economy outside of housing is actually the strongest it has been in a couple of decades, but housing hits everyone. If a person is already on a mortgage or has a long-term lease locked in, they need to just stay the course and ride this out. And make the most out of the job market... if there isn't more money for you where you are, move on and move up. Job loyalty sure is taking on a new appearance.

Like I said, all bubbles burst. Real estate ones just take longer. Look at how many years it took for it to break loose in 2008. More than a decade of rabidly refinancing mortgages and leveraging poorly vetted borrowers versus Freddie Mac's marching orders to buy up every mortgage that hit the secondary market and then the bundling of subprime mortgages with the intent of them failing to get the mortgage insurance payoff. So many pieces in place, so long to crumble completely... much like a house with termites slowly, slowly weakening here and there before finally it just falls into a pile of sawdust. Yeah, this bubble is about two years from bursting. Sell while the buyer's market is in play and then wait for the collapse, Of course, do it too soon and you find yourself floundering in the renters' market. It's a mess, isn't it?

Or it works out to $450 per night, in other words, AirBnB rates for that area. This is probably some kind of dodge to get around local regulations on person to person short term rentals, but I can't say for sure. We've allowed our housing market to be ruined by massive investment groups, foreign investment companies, Ramada Inn conference room seminar attendees and poorly trained flippers who think they are contractors. Oh yeah, and having massively low interest rates for a three decades running. When the bubble bursts, and they always do, it's going to be a hog slaughtering day. And then maybe things will get back in proper alignment again.

And is now the special teams coordinator for UCLA. Dude isn't leading a bad life, not at all.

And hockey teams have 53 players plus a practice squad to build? Nope, 18 plus two goal tenders. You've got a large college base from the US and Canada to draw players from plus a massive worldwide presence to grab players from. Not trying to bash hockey at all, just that if a team is smartly run, they can turn over an entire roster in a single season if they need to.

Throwing things against the wall just to see if anything sticks.

Sorry, you're right. Showing my age I guess.

We've had neither strength nor conditioning on this team in the last three seasons, perhaps longer. We're basically the SE Louisiana State Tech MudDawgs, pre-Waterboy. I heard three of our big injuries last season were actually from playing Foosball in the game room. Joe Horn actually pulled a hammy reaching down to grab a bag of potato chips from the vending machine outside the DBs room.

WTF is Anthony Rizzuti? Joe Blow #84 Mock Drafter. I can't wait for the draft to be here and then over so we can move on from this.

Or the charity tank since we ended up giving it all away.

It's not tanking if you couldn't win a game if you tried. That was us last season.

We have the very first pick of Day 2. After all of the first round dust has cleared, all of the infighting and wrangling has gone on, and with a full night to consider the options and see what gem has fallen --- we'd give that up? A team that sucks so bad that the only four surefire starters on the team are a DT, a RT, a punter and a kicker???? And we're going to trade away that prime piece of real estate for a much later second rounder and one for next year, too??? fug that. Keep 33, pick the best damn player left on the board. Get the guy that is going to make the other 31 teams regret that they missed out on him. Maybe, maybe think about trading our pick at 39, but only for a king's ransom. Or pick the OTHER missed gem. Everyone wants to be all fancy and trade around. Look where that got us. Take your picks. Make your Team. Win some games. I know those are alien concepts around here, but poo man, don't get clever get better.

I just can't get excited or upset about it either way.

Oh boy, we won the offseason! Again... In April... Again... Sure would love to just win some games. Again.

Offseason program in Carolina, also known as Remedial Football Basics 101. Let's hope the new professor understands the subject.

I've got to agree with him on this.

I'm still not cheering the Morgan hire, yet. We've supposedly won the off-season for five years running. Though the Brown extension is a great one at a reasonable price, I think we can also surmise that it was a no-brainer since he was one of about three guys who put in decent work last season at the beginning, middle and end of the year. Right now Morgan still needs to prove he's more than a blind squirrel having a good day.

That's the makings of a moderately competitive UFL team, or a championship caliber Division III Arena Football League team... the Gastonia Gazelles or somesuch.

If he's there, I think you have to take a serious, serious look at taking him, unless one of the other shining stars in the draft has somehow fallen. But yeah. even the starting QB position can't be considered as a lock by anyone on our roster right now. Having two suitors for a franchise QB roll could be a very good thing. Sure couldn't get any worse, right?

To be honest, mainly I just spoke about how bad Fitterer sucked at making draft picks, rather than a single player. Seems rough to just pick on some kid straight out of college and tell him he sucks before he's done anything. Now a 40-odd year old football exec who is supposed to know what he's doing, and who has been anointed by a billionaire? That guy, I don't have a problem saying he sucks when it's pretty obvious. He was a chump, a mark, a rube and was a sports exec of the George Costanza model.

Nobody would listen to me back then. I'm getting used to it now.

Just because someone is stupid doesn't make it ethical to take advantage of them, even though it seems that's the way the world works.

I'm going to be honest here, I've thought of all different things that could happen at 33 and I come down to this: Stick with #33 and take the best player available, whoever it is. This team has so many holes in it that whoever has sneakily slipped down past the picks beforehand, we need to grab, no matter what position they play. Our team sucks so bad right now that any good player can make a difference. And I'll even go so far as to say if Nix or Pinix happens to be there, then grab them. Let them fight it out with Bryce to win the starting position. At the end of the season, one might be tradeworthy and one might finally be the guy we were looking for. That's harsh, but it's reality. There isn't one safe spot on this team, not even Brown at DT. (And he is a phenomenal building block but we are about to hit major sticker shock for him after this season). Pick the best player available. We get to watch a lot of teams make desperation picks on day one, we get to have some of the better teams winnow the chaff, and we get an entire night to think over who is available. Don't pick with the hope for a positional rebuild, we have 22 of those spots that need to be addressed. And do it the same darned way with our second second round pick. Hell, take the the remainder of the Nix/Pinix group there. I think we'll see someone else at 33 than a QB that's the best available, but I'm not going to rule out continuing to fish for a franchise QB.