Khyber53

Dang, that is tempting... so incredibly tempting. Late first round picks can be very good ones and the Oline depth in this draft makes it possible. I'd really say have them on the phone until that fifth pick is made and if our number one choice on the draft boards isn't still there, or one of the top two LTs isn't there, then pull the trigger and trade.

As long as everyone else is lining up to take QBs, let 'em! We may luck into the best OT in the draft this way.

Barring a few odd phrases he liked to use, I always like Mixon's work. It was great to hear how big a part of your Panthers experience he was.

(I didn't actually. I really have no interest in that complex at all.)

I sure hope they do that. I really don't think Willis is going to live up to the hype. If the Saints or Falcons trade up and snag him, we will have dodged a bullet.

So, let me get the gist of this, Tepper's just as good at real estate development as he is at football?

This, 100%. Zappe might be the real deal, but if he's not, then he's going to be an inexpensive but decent back up for the QB we draft next year. Zappe holds the record for NCAA yardage and TDs in a season, and that's playing out of WKU. While it's not the SEC, he was against better competition than Jerry Falwell U. (Liberty).

The guy had some of the greatest movies of the last 35 years. Die Hard. The Fifth Element. Unbreakable. Last Man Standing. Bonfire of the Vanities The Sixth Sense. Pulp Fiction. 12 Monkeys. And Hudson Hawk is a movie I dearly love for all of its fever-dream goofiness. I wish him and his family well.

The South has been tough for us for a while now.

I think that's fair, if it'll just cost us a 3rd in 2023. Anything to send him and his butter fingers elsewhere.

Grammar.

Do NOT want this to happen, no sir. No way. Now, if we gave him a call, I wouldn't mind a bit.

You may very well be right. And looking at how our defense just completely fell apart after the Dallas game, a strong case could be made for the best edge or LB available. Still, I want to see us grab the best O-line player available at 6.

Around here, stuff like that just goes missing.

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.