Khyber53

Dude's doing his best on a bad team with bad passers and no other receiving options. He'll have over 1,000 yards, again even with all that weighing down his performance. There's even a good chance that he'll have 1,100+ yards for the third season in a row. You guys lob around "forgettable" and "ideal number two" like this guy was nothing special, just above JAG status. He's good, really good. Just give him someone who can throw the ball to him. Design some plays that aren't CB friendly.

Clean the entire house.

No one outside of the fanbase watches our games week after week. Hell, it's hard enough for the fanbase to keep watching week after week. How are the national sports writers supposed to have any real picture of what is happening here. We could have suited up a Sasquatch, two little green men and the Loch Ness Monster and no one would have noticed. We've just got to keep making the noise locally and hope the ownership is listening and not just reading Sports Illustrated and the Forbes lists.

And rightfully so, both times. Double ouch.

DJ is a model citizen, fantastic receiver and nowhere near his potential. Even with bad QB play, bad scripting of plays and inept coaching, he still far outshines every receiver we have on the team -- combined. You don't let him walk, or more specifically, you do what it takes to get him to stay. Yes, he is a first rate receiver, but we need him as much for his intangibles as anything else. There's a fair to middling chance we will have an entirely new coaching staff next season, hopefully someone that can actually coach. That guy, and us, deserves a reliable receiver and non-diva team leader. DJ fits that admirably. Pair him with the right QB on top of that and you can make a lot happen. Is he going to cost us? Yes. And compared to other things we've committed to, he's the only surefire thing we've got going on the offensive side of the ball.

LT, C, G, G, QB. fug the rest.

He was just making sure there was no chance he would be in the building when they drag Rhule out of there.

Hubris is a heady drug and a deadly one, too.

You, me and the rest on here could. Those guys currently with offices at Panthers HQ, ummm, no. You could give them Green Bay right now and they'd somehow miss the playoffs.

Not trying to get Rivera back here, but yeah, you are right on both counts -- best here and he has a competitive, if incomplete team. The guy has a ton of things he could use for excuses but he goes out there and just fights for it, and his players fight for him, win or lose. And that's in the same time frame that Rhule has had here. And both have had a year of Marty Hurney's "help." It's comparing apples to road apples. Now, final say on the hiring of head coaches really goes to the owner, even more than any GM. Tepper got Rhule because of the perceived potential, his use of analytics and scrappy young attitude and team building resume. It fits Tepper's experience and business acumen. Richardson hired Rivera because he was an experienced NFL coach and had been a hard nosed player that the players would respect who had championship credentials and the Super Bowl ring to back it up. Richardson, a successful business man in his own right, had also been a football player drafted to a team that had a world championship. Practical experience, man, it makes the difference in coaching and team ownership. It did take two misses for Jerry to get his first coach to take the team to the big dance, though, so this may take time.

I'd rather receive five of those than have another year of Rhule here. I hate to cheer for anyone to lose their job around Christmas-time, but honestly, he's been given millions, would still get millions more and, if they act quickly, he and his family can be back in Texas in time to visit with their friends and family there for the holidays. I mean, it's a win-win rather than a loss-loss. That's got to be a plus for everyone, right? And we can watch the Panthers play the day after Christmas with all the wonder and enjoyment of kids who are waiting to see what those last well-wrapped gifts would bring. It would gift us with hope.

It's not just that we're bad, or that the teams we beat were that bad. It's the lies that it created along the way. That #2 defense rating? We give up very little passing yardage, because either your team is terrible and can't protect their QB, or you have a good team and you just run right over us in the rushing game. Not building up many yards against us? Hard to when we give you an average starting spot around your 43 yard line. The wins that made Sam Darnold look great also made our defense look like the best since the '85 Bears. This year, we beat the wounded and the witless, sometimes the wounded witless when we got lucky. This team was worse than last years and much worse than the year before's, we just got a very favorable schedule when it came to playing some teams that were just falling apart. Had we just faced the Jags and the Lions, we'd be deep in the playoff hunt right now. And that's some crazy poo right there.

He's mad at anyone who puts things in a sack, since he can't do that anymore.

It was really big print with great big pictures. Seemed about eight pages or so. Best guess is that it was our entire playbook. Offense and defense. Pictures for the offense, big print for the defensive coordinator. Small footnote for special teams was all, it reads: kick da ball, catch da ball. Tackle mebbe.

The Temple thing wasn't about getting guys on the field he knew could play. It was about getting guys in the locker room that would create an instant culture and he could count on for loyalty.

There's a lot of wisdom in this. But it requires changing regimes. Cam has some limitations, but it isn't him that built this team or dumbed down the coaching/game planning to the point that it's no longer a professional team.

If he somehow wins out the rest of this season, I'll happily give him another chance. That being said, I don't think there's a chance we'll win another, much less all of them from here on out.

A lot of people want to gloss over that, but it is a darned big ol' deal. The defense actually sucks, just not quite as bad as the offense. Really, this team sucks in all phases of the game like perhaps never before. And considering the talent we have on both sides of the ball, that's just criminal.

I know. I keep checking back in to see if the firing announcement has been made. This is so very disappointing.

You can guess mine by the two teams I besmirched there...

Well, it could be worse. Tune in next week to see how.

Scheme has a lot to do with it. If your scheme is predictable, your route running is vanilla, then cornerbacks around the league will see it on tape and be able to jump routes. Our nearly complete lack of play action passing also means that the defense rarely has to cheat up to stop the run on passing plays. Basically, we're not a very complex team offensively. They've said time and again it is because they are installing it slowly and making sure the QBs have it down before adding more. The problem is that of the three QBs we've had as starters (Bridgewater, Darnold, Cam) all three have been pro starting QBs elsewhere in their careers, and in the case of Teddy and Cam at multiple teams. These guys can handle the full weight of professional QB duties from the get go. The only one without that experience is PJ Walker and well. What we have, though, are coaches that aren't used to handling the pro level load. They're literally feeling their way along blindly, adding a bit here and there. They are trying to learn the pro game while they are in the midst of it. Basically, though, they are performing as if Tepper had hired on a bunch of free-labor college interns. Yeah, we're not very good and the rest of the league pretty much knows it and understands how we can be beat.

When Fox and Rivera left, they still had great loyalty from their players. It's why they could get late season pushes from their guys, just to try and save their coach's job. I'm not seeing it here. At all.

Not without messing with their Alumni contributions.

Well, there's a lot that we haven't been doing like a real NFL team does. Honestly, we couldn't even play in the Myrtle Beach Bowl, much less win it. He's turned us into not just a college team, but a lackluster one. Georgia Southern maybe, or East Tennessee State U.