Khyber53

The bad part is that there's a lot, a metric f-ton, of worse kickers out there than Joey Slye, some are already employed or will be before the season begins. And there are maybe a handful of kickers available out there that will prove to be better than Joey Slye. The worst of it is you won't know who those were until about the midway point in the season. Some guy who has been kicking lights out in the pre-season will get the yips by the third game. Another guy will pull a hammy or tweak a knee the second week in practice. Another one will nail some 50-yarders and every PAT that comes along while the other one can hit anything under 45 yards, but can't reach the end zone on kick-offs. Another guy will be the next Morton Anderson and roll out a 25 year career as a leg for hire. It all depends on how willing coach is on risking the known kicker on the roster already. If Slye can get over the yips on the relatively short kicks and PATS, then he's a decent kicker. If Slye can't ditch the problems, then things can go south fast for the team. But do you take one of the unproven guys or a vet that got jettisoned for one of those new guys? Helluva situation to be stuck in. Kickers man, amiright?

Hope he heals up perfectly and quickly in time for week 2.

I'm in.

This, 100%. He's got that Ray Guy thing going and it's pretty amazing, with the addition of the bounce finesse that seems to be spot on.

That really was trash, both belt bouts sucked. As was most of that card. Wow, the creatives are really sh!tting the bed over there at WWE. Amazing how hard they are working to put over Roman Reigns as a Godfather-esque heel and Bobby Lashley as someone the fans even care to see. But hey, we've got at least another month or two of watching the same danged matches over and over and over again.

There's much more nuance to the disappointment than just the record. To post another losing season in a row will be devastating. Let's see how the season plays out, I'm personally hoping for a winning year.

I like Rhule, he seems like a decent guy and a heck of a motivator. He brought in Joe Brady who was touted as a wunderkind for his work at LSU. He brought in Snow who had a reputation for being a hard-nosed, experienced defensive mastermind. That being said, last year was a disappointing mess. 5-11 is 5-11 no matter what excuses you give. And he was one of a number of coaches at new gigs, but posted one of the bottom records. Covid, for all it did, hit all teams pretty much equally. Each of those new head coaches last season were headed to bad teams, badly built and poorly led. Rivera (who had certainly worn out his place here) was fighting cancer and undergoing chemo through the season. I think the honeymoon period didn't end with Cam. Cam was shot and was just going to be too expensive to keep. He went to New England and well, yeah, let's move on. It was badly handled but I got the feeling that it was kind of a mutually awkward break up. The honeymoon ended when we went into the off season 5-11, another losing season leaving a taste of ashes in our mouths. And he we are. Rhule, Brady and Snow are still our coaching triumvirate. We've got a new QB and a fair amount of praise for our draft picks. Two games into a meaningless but potentially telling pre-season and we're hearing the same rhetoric and somewhat strained praise again. I hope we have it together this year. I want to cheer and celebrate. I don't want that disappointing feeling that was at the end of most games last year. I don't want to look at the roster and see the CMCs, DJs, Burnses and others that should be doing better than this just being forgotten by the rest of the league. I don't want them to be like Barry Sanders or Megatron stuck on a Lions-like team that will flounder year after year, no matter what they do. The honeymoon is over. Rhule and Co. need to win many games this year. They need to contend in a very weak NFCSouth or they need to perhaps go back to the college ranks. As many can tell you, sometimes a great college resume` just doesn't translate into the real world. And, could someone make a frikkin' stop on third down?

I'm sure there's a place he can get it. Don't think it should be from us.

Yeah, the math just works out that way.

Like jaw-droppingly surprised! Don't want to spoil it, but daaaaaaang!

I'd feel better at $8mm per.

If Darnold goes down for one or two series maybe either one could manage. But really, neither one is capable of holding the line for more than a quarter. They really are that bad. And Darnold... well, we really still don't know.

Kinda wish they'd wait on Anderson until late in the season. He faded so fast after week 5 last year that I think we should take the long look before we tie ourselves to a multi-year contract with him. We should be working on locking up DJ first, because he can be the long-term guy here and there's some really good talent behind him.

Those back to back to back rushing attempts at the goal line were vanilla plays. Against a vanilla defense. If your offensive line can't get push for that, in that many attempts, well, errrr... you have a motivation problem. Goal line stands are about pride and the Ravens showed how seriously they take it. Maybe we should take that little note from Teddy B and practice that red zone stuff a bit more this season.

Perhaps having a kicker that's really accurate from 35 or less would make the offensive play calling more aggressive. If you knew that your kicker had no shot of making that 55 yarder, you might be more apt to try and push that ball up the field.

Let's just hope that after the first half of next week's game we've got at least one viable QB. Grier looked decent last night, Walker looked decent the week before. Neither showed much for end of the game heroics or working with what they had at the end (both were playing against the back-ups to the back-ups in their final sequences respectively). I'm not sure that we lose anything by cutting both and just picking a random back-up QB with some experience.

Snag Jake Verity. It's not like Justin Tucker's job is in danger.

With the exception of our first series, it was a game of our reserves vs their reserves, with a lot of camp bodies thrown in. Their guys were better than our guys. Their guys committed almost no penalties. Our guys were still struggling with it. Outside of that first pick, the most impactful player on our defense was Luvu, a guy who basically just got here this week. From this, and the general timidity of our play calling (soft, soft, soft zone defense) our coaching looks like they are expecting their three opening opponents this season will be Campbell, UNC-Asheville and Dartmouth. Sure hope what they are showing right now isn't how they are prepping for the regular season. The sky isn't falling, but only a fool watches clouds gather and doesn't think there's a chance of rain.

Yes, we weren't playing many of our starters, even during the first series. Yes, a bunch of those guys won't see the field in the coming year. So, we have to keep that in mind, but here are a couple of takes: 1. Slye isn't going to cut it, sorry, but there's going to be a kid from ECU available at the end of preseason that looked pretty good. 2. We have an excellent punter. 3. I'm not as worried about our linebackers group as I was before. 4. Teddy Bridgewater may have been right about one thing: Brady apparently isn't big on practicing for red zone and goal line plays. Three runs at the middle of the line in a row from the 3? 5. We have the makings of an offensive line, if they can get the mixture right. 6. Dan Arnold, maybe. Tommy Tremble, definitely. Giovanni Ricci is an upgrade over Ian Thomas. 7. We're still playing a zone defense that's softer than a pack of Hostess Twinkies. 8. CMC and DJ Moore will greatly improve the offense. 9. Sam Darnold? We know barely anything more about him than we did before. We did learn that he can stand in the pocket and not immediately start a Claussian-type screaming run for the sidelines at the snap of the ball. So there's that I guess. Wow, that was a pathetic showing. Will Grier was one of our best performers out there. Let that sink in. Doesn't mean the sky is falling, but I sure expected to see things a bit better than that.

Six receivers with Cannon taking the last spot for returner duties. It's a great group but that seventh guy's spot is needed for o-line depth.

Right now, I don't think I can even guess at how we will turn out for this season. We have some historically weak opponents. I'm not sold on our coaching staff yet. We're taking a roll of the dice when it comes to QB. We have a lot of really great young talent. The o-line projects to be okay to really bad. Defense fields some excellent players, play calling and philosophy were soft and suspect last season. Same guy calling the defense from the sidelines like he was a high school coaching volunteer with a borrowed clip board. We could be 3-14 or 14-3 before this all shakes out.

Dang. Well, at least you gave it a shot.

Slime tends to stick to everything it touches. Let him go to someone else's locker room or stay in Houston.

It's pretty darned good. Give it a Wednesday night once or twice.