Khyber53

It's not just that we've been so bad for so long now, but it's the knowledge that we can keep being bad if things don't change drastically. I wonder if this is how it felt for Detroit Lions fans around say 1973?

I remember one of the old salts of the NFL once opining that if you have a QB competition, you don't have a QB. Seems the old saw still cuts true.

Billionaires, what ya gonna do with them, am I right? This century's longer lasting plague...

If we would use his mobility a bit and roll him out where he can see, he might be okay. There's something wrong beyond that, though. He's worse than I had expected.

Let's keep running CMC up the middle for 10 out of 12 touches per game. Or keep Baker throwing from a pocket he can't see out of or throw over.

I made it a blanket statement because honestly, we're blanketly bad. Cover our heads with the blanket and wait for February bad. Our great defense, even, is doing this against some pretty poor teams. And that should be kept in mind while evaluating our coaching... we're only doing fair against bad or depleted teams. Much like the beginning of last season, just without the wins.

In the Cardinal center's defense, that would have worked for a punt formation...

The 49ers will kill us.

I'm just hoping Rhule isn't here through Monday, but look where that hope has gotten me... I'll just tune in again next year, grousing about how we're going to suck again and just sit there and take the beating the team will deal out to us every danged week. I'll outlast the bastards. Eventually.

If we thought it had been bad so far, we've got a murderer's row of opponents down the stretch for us. I'm just hoping they won't make us wait until that late bye before jettisoning Rhule and Co. Whew. We stink man. If it wasn't for Luvu's early pick six and the late, late game heroics of CMC on two plays, we'd have been just destroyed. And I never thought I'd actually have come to the point where I was thinking Sam Darnold would be a better play than Baker Mayfield. Heck, Taylor Heinicke or Kyle Allen did better in Rivera's last season. Woof.

How anemic our offense is. How our defense can be worn out over the course of a game. Yanno, you saw it, you know now if you didn't before.

Super Bowl teams are led more than built. Coaching, QB, MLB. We don't really have those at the moment. It also helps to have a really good medical/training staff on hand as injuries can derail even the most star studded teams. The best teams are those who somehow endure the season.

I think we get exposed badly in this one. 24-10 Cards. The Saints were worse than anyone imagined, just like Cleveland and NYG are worse than they looked against us.

Nice work! Thanks for that write-up and visual aids!

It speaks volumes. Also that sometimes we can't win with him out there, particularly when we game plan for less touches for him. In all honesty, it'd probably work better for us if we just went to pure wildcat, installed CMC as the "QB/Wildcat" and put an extra blocker on the line every down. The kid can probably pass as well as PJ Walker, since he can apparently do everything else (he does have a passing TD to his credit if I recall). Heck, he'd probably be safer that way.

If he's not there, then we can pretty much notch an L for this Sunday's game. It will also add about 200 degrees to the seat temperature for Matt Rhule if we get that L. Honestly, if I were on the team and injured, I might take my time getting back onto the field. Killing yourself for Rhule and Co. just doesn't make good career sense.

I'm still caught at the point of: "Is this a team that is almost there" or "did we win against a team that is falling apart and play close to two teams that are actually really bad"? I hope it's the first and that we can get the offense figured out and marry it to what could certainly be a tough defense. If we do that, the Rhule will have proved me wrong. And I'll be mighty happy about it. Hopefully we'll learn a lot about this team vs. the Cardinals.

This is an offense designed on paper for the first team that would hire McAdoo and give him a coordinator's position. It was then modified to fit and maybe fix Sam Darnold and to address some massive rotations on the offensive line, possibly ones for the worse. Hopefully it would utilize CMC but wouldn't rely on him too much because of injury or to prevent him from injury. Then it was tailored to additions on the O-line of some experienced players. Tailored again to maybe utilize Matt Corral eventually, with some effort to streamline it for his learning curve and strengths. Then a trade was finalized so it had to be made to fit Baker Mayfield's style of play (and smaller stature). Then training camp comes and aa "QB competition" that had differing results for the passers because of their own innate abilities, strengths and weaknesses. The "competition" wasn't settled truly settled in practice until injuries to Corral and Darnold forced the issue. That left McAdoo with an untested mess tailored to everyone and no one. You end up with plays that use Baker's arm but leaving him in position behind a line he apparently can't see over. His mobility is nixed because they wanted Darnold to be more steady in the pocket. The whole thing has been dumbed down to suit the quick learning curves needed for Baker and Matt, to the point where even the dimmest of opposing DCs (or MLBs) can diagnosed what is going to happen by the simple placement of CMC. This isn't a hybrid, it's a hash of leftovers and half-baked concepts. Maybe it will develop an identity. Maybe not. It's just not very good right now and foundationally it looks unsound. It's off the cuff alchemy on a budget and I don't think lead is going to turn into gold.

Once their college costs are totally paid off.

When we picked him up I had absolutely no idea who he was, just that he was coming here from the lowly Jags. It was a ho-hum, meh thing in my opinion. Well, crap, maybe I was wrong. The guy looked like a star on the what, two plays he was given???? Give the man a seat at the table and let him eat.

Wish the fugger was playing football.

Great kid but I think he over trains.

Ditch Rhule, let the next real coach decide what to do with CMC. No use hamstringing the next regime. Take the canolli, leave the gun.

And... meh.

We had really good reasons to win the last two games as well: The Browns were being QB'ed by their second stringer who had limited pre-season work and a "meh" history behind him, plus both of their starting tackles were either playing injured or were out for the game. The Giants were coming in off of a terrible season, a brand new coach and a lot of question marks in positional groups due to poor management by the previous regime... oh and let's not forget that their QB was on the Sam Darnold trajectory there as well. And we just fell flat or fell short depending on how you look at it. I'd love to see us get a win over the Saints. I can even see the OP's points. I just don't think we can do it because of coaching quality rather than on field performers.