Khyber53

Good for him. And yeah, he looked the part on the show.

I've been saying it for a while now and I'm going to keep saying it: Mac Jones will be our pick. And he'll be the right pick. I know, a lot of folks more in the know are saying he's a bust, doesn't have it, would be a wasted pick. Heard the same thing, from a lot of the same people, when I said CMC would be our pick at #8. They were wrong, so wrong, then and they are wrong again. People point at Jones and say he is a product of the system. He had a pro quality O-line. Pro-level receivers and RB. Had pro-level coaching and game planning. Pro-type program all around. He had everything a professional football team should be able to provide him, right? So how did he do? The guy was accurate (311-422, 77.4%, 4500 yards in 13 games, 11.7 yds avg, 41 TD, 4 INT), won every game he played in last season (including a playoff game AND the national championship) and even Nick Saban praised the guy's maturity and leadership. He's not a gym rat, he's not the tallest guy out there and he's certainly not the fastest. But he wins. He works. He does the film study. He reads the defense. He spreads the ball around. To the right team. He's the pick. If not, then we will live to regret it big time.

If we decide that there isn't a franchise QB at our pick in the draft, then we pick the best player available and continue the rebuild. If that means Bridgewater gets another season, I'm not upset with that. There is a chance with better protection and another year as a starter we would see some improvement with Teddy. It would be a better move than investing big in a reclamation project like Darnold, Carr or someone of their stripe. In the end, Teddy would have a year's head start on upgrading and we'd only have his contract to deal with rather than two contracts of that level to pay at once.

They got rid of Cam because this was Cam's team. There was no doubt about it, any new coach coming in would either be beholding to Cam's wishes or he'd have to move him away. Cam's diminishing capabilities on the field (his charisma was completely unaffected by injuries) only made the decision easier. For a complete rebuild, Cam had to be shown the door. New coach had to be the biggest dog in the yard, just like Steve Smith had to be moved out to let Cam take the leadership role.

Oh bother.

Nope. Nope. Nope. Someone will. Someone may find there's an injury lurking unseen, though, something soft tissue that won't be easy to catch on medical exams.

I could see Teddy working out really well for Belichick. Better than he did here. There was something nearly collegiate about Brady's calling the offense at the later part of the season. Hopefully he learned a lot (and will get up into the danged coach's box for a good view). Not saying it hurt Bridgewater's performance, but yeah, I am. It hurt the team for the coordinator to not have a good view of the entire field. He couldn't see defensive movement tendencies and had to rely on what the receivers were telling them about how open they were on any given play (never trust a receiver on this -- they are always open).

Give me Peyton's arm, Brady's vision and Tarkenton's ability to move. Let Luke teach him to read defenses. I'm not asking for much.

I think he'll have his best season to date this coming year. I think he has a personal need to put up hall of fame numbers and set records. He'll knock down at least one more record this coming season. The kid is just that good.

Yanno, I'm just hoping that accuracy, leadership and reading a defense are higher priorities than athleticism for our next starting QB. He can be as immobile as a second generation Manning as long as he can get the ball out quick, accurately and to the receiver who can make the most of it. A Mahomes or Wilson is fantastic if you've got one, but there sure are a lot of QBs who've been touted as the next ones who were just second rate versions of them. Great mobile QBs aren't the norm, no matter how sought after they are, they are rare finds.

If Cam were still healthy and able to actually compete, then this would be a big deal. Honestly, Carolina wouldn't have moved on from him. He wasn't healthy 2018, he was really bad off in 2019, he got cut here and performed poorly in New England for the 2020 season. I hate that it worked out that way, but almost every great football player's career ends earlier than they want and mostly due to injuries if they were ever really good. Cam's at that point. Has been at it. Did Rivera ruin his career? Quit trying to blame anything but the fact that football is a massively dangerous contact sport. What do you think "leave everything out on the field" means? This is the nature of the game, and it's rough when it takes out one of your heroes. It's rough every time.

Here's the deal. I still think pursuing Watson is a bad idea. It's like being at a used car lot and telling them, nope it's just too much money for a car I really shouldn't buy. The next thing you know, everyone comes out of the woodwork to explain how we can afford it by jiggling the numbers, getting some easy financing, put some additional money down now to ease it up later. And yet, it still comes down to it being a used car, with some very rough mileage (sure, it is just a couple of years old, but...) with long-term payments that I'm saddled with. Sure, it looks fancy, it'll impress the neighbors and all the other people want it sooo bad... I'm just not buying it. I get a bad feeling about it and what it will do for me (or won't) down the road.

It's easy for you and I to negotiate millions of dollars away from contracts, since they are pretty imaginary for us. For guys who actually have contracts that pay out $35 million, they may be a bit more reticent to waive those earnings in the effort to be a good guy.

And that's an awful lot to work with. Watson's expected to cost $35 million, which doesn't sound bad, but if we picked say a QB at #8, we're looking at I believe a contract of $2.8 million... leaving us about $32 million to work with for say O-line, retaining DJ, Burns' contract, etc... Just saying, Watson might be worth that $35 million on the open market, but the opportunity cost of us taking him gets steep considering the other things we can do with that money.

Once we basically sell the farm to by Watson's favor, you can pretty much write off everyone else on the team. When DJ's contract time comes around, he'll be too expensive based on what little, tiny bit of cap space we have left. Pretty much the same for anyone else we don't trade away to get Watson. Really, let's just keep working at building our team and quit trying to buy something off the shelf at a wild premium. And that's even if Houston is willing to give him up. Heck, prices might fall amazingly if he has another season playing for the Texans.

Lol. I'm not triggered, just amazed. There's a difference between price and value. You're hung up on price, but don't really appreciate the value. There wasn't a guy on that list who had turned in a single season like CMC had.

Let's see, so the Panthers would be Watson, a single-syllable last named DT, a couple of linebackers a few folks have heard of and 49 JAGs after making that trade. Oh yeah, with an unproven coach and a team owner who "knows football." Yeah, that worked well in Houston last year. How about we don't trade our rebuild in progress for someone's broken down plans?

What about 1,000-yard receivers that get over $8 million a year? Do they pay off? Just asking, because the guy we're attempting to say is overvalued broke a thousand yards receiving as well as 1,000 yards rushing. Oh yeah, he was also excellent as a back field blocker, too. Off the field the dude is doing as many fashion as Cam was, was dating a frikkin' supermodel, was putting on pounds of muscle and being another well-spoken and charismatic face of the franchise. Really, just let it go. Had he not been injured (and then I think held out by Rhule to preserve him for next season) we'd have most likely gotten another spectacular season out of him. When playing the guy was literally the whole team when our offense was on the field. Had they been able to figure out a way to get him on defense and special teams, they'd have had him out there then, too.

Team leadership would have lost their damned minds if they traded away CMC for Watson. And Watson would have lost the best receiver he'd ever had. Please stop.

Please let him go to Miami. It'll be good for him and his pocketbook. Let him buy a home there and pay no state income tax on checks he receives for playing home games. Huge advantage for him.

Every team cuts players this time of year. Not sure why any move like this always fires off a flurry of rumors. If we end up trading our future for Watson then we'll never finish the rebuild and it will say that what our coach planned for was basically flushed down the toilet because Tepper thought he could buy a Lombardi trophy. He could have done that last year when Brady was on the market had he wanted to.

In his defense, injuries are injuries. And it isn't like he's had good o-line coaches until this past season. Heck the guy was Kyler Murray's blindside OT throughout high school and was a starting LT from freshman season on. I really think those two concussions (and who knows if there were any in college and HS that made him more susceptible) were the biggest factors in his tenure here. What looks like a bust to the outside observer might have more to the story. He's still on the relative cheap for us, but I think we need to look at him playing guard. Wonder if he has ever played center??? Keeping him around could be a good choice, if nothing else as depth or for an extra tackle on goal line/inches to go plays. He has power, he just may lack technique and aggression.

This is year 2. We rebuilt a pretty fair amount last season and it showed in the final outcome. If Rhule agrees this is year 2, then we're going someplace. If Rhule says this is year one because the Hurney year doesn't count, then we may never go anywhere and there may always be an excuse. I've long said Rhule's history shows massive improvement by year 3 in his programs and I think we'll see that here. Now, if he starts moving the starting line, then he's signaling he may not be up to the task. 2021 is going to tell us a lot about Rhule and our future. Sure hope he works things out. Eight or nine wins is a minimum to keep my belief in the guy.

Okay, not bad. $4 million here, $4 million there, eventually it turns into real money.

You're right, and there's the crux of the problem... sheer numbers. There are about 350 million of us in need of the vaccine. That is an astronomically huge number, especially when it comes to manufacturing something (not just the vaccines, but the syringes, vials, boxes, alcohol swabs, etc... all while maintaining our regular supply streams of those things for normal medical uses). It's just an incredibly daunting task that we have to do just to get our country squared away, not to mention assist the rest of the folks on this planet. And on to school personnel... we often forget how big our education system is, particularly when you figure in all of the personnel beyond classroom teachers. In NC, the largest single employer is our education system. There are 98,590 classroom teachers alone, and probably one to two more support/administration people per teacher. That's big. But it could be done, going back into the original question, it's just a matter of will. And, I think, if we want to get the kids back to school and keep the environment safe for everyone involved, the state and counties need to do this.