Khyber53

It's been a few years... since anything really good. We somehow are good at keeping hope alive, though. Actually, let's put away the negativity for the moment. We have been to the Super Bowl twice, and that's twice as many times as most teams and two more times than quite a few of them. So we've got that. What we are classically good at, though, is a tough running game and a solid defense. When we have those things rolling, we tend to do very well.

Okay, so here's the latest. The channel owner wanted me to take some arrest footage and make it lighthearted. Hope you like it. (Also, they apparently didn't get the reference, so they chose not to entitle it A Tale of Two Karens.)

I don't have a lot of faith in our team's ability to assess FAs.

If DJ and Jaycee were to cover each other in practice...

Rare are the guys who are lightning fast AND have good hands. So very rare.

On the flip side, though, by not running regular deep routes, you aren't gassing the DBs either.

Maybe what we need is a new trainer staff. Since the exodus of trainers that followed Rivera to Washington, we've had one heckuva string of injuries and lingering problems. And you could make a case that the weight room and conditioning staff haven't been up to par either. Injuries happen in football, even in training camp and practices. Bad teams, though, often get bitten by the injury bug again and again, year after year. Cincinnati had one of the worst histories of it in the league until they completely redid their entire staff a few years back. We may be in the same situation. Just a thought.

Good luck to him. He's getting an opportunity here. The same opportunity that any DB that is second string behind Jaycee Horn gets... eventually.

I've kind of felt that for a while, we haven't bothered to take a stop watch with us to the Combine. I mean I don't want us to turn into Al Davis' version of the Raiders picking purely based on WR speed, but c'mon... it does matter.

We were running an offense that really would have swung well with both CMC and DJ Moore on the field. But those days are gone. Let's give it a bit more time. I'm sure the coaches are seeing the same things from the tape that we are. Surely they will adjust.

Local fellow, good guy. Here's hoping he can make the most of the opportunity. He was really on the cusp of a good career before injuries just knocked him out of it.

Sad, but very true. When big names get hurt, things change.

Injuries can and do happen to any and eventually every football player. Horn, though, seems to be really susceptible to injuries. Might be bad luck, might just be that he should have been a receiver instead of a DB. Either way, I feel bad for him. And I feel bad for us.

Congrats on the wedding!

We'll know better after next week. I do think that Chuba earned the starting position for next week's game, though. Maybe Sanders was having an off day. Maybe there was a reason the Eagles were okay with letting him go. We'll just have to see.

Let's see how it goes next week. There's a lot of work to be done, but all things considered, we should be heading into the season with a lot of work to be done. We didn't embarass ourselves out there. We need to stretch the field and work on conditioning -- the Dline and OLine were both gassed by the fourth quarter and it showed. I'm going to blame that on the exceptionally hot summer that kept practices short and lower effort. Also, I think Chuba needs to start next week. His performance deserves some cheers and honestly Sanders needs a wake up that we need better effort.

Honestly, Bryce had the day that a rookie QB should in his first start. He wasn't the problem. On offense, there just wasn't much improvement over last year except for Chuba Hubbard. Chuba really put the work in and it shows. Double H might be good, if nothing else he can be the outlet pass we've been needing. That O-line was okay for the first half but man, conditioning was way down and you could see it after halftime. Maybe they need too keep the Gatorade Fast Twitches off the sideline until the 4th quarter. The defense looked like they got better than last season. Brian Burns certainly made a case for being paid. Still, week one is supposed to be a liar, you can't judge anything by it. Just like preseason games. But I saw pretty much the same kind of vanilla play that we were bored by in the preseason. At least we weren't playing the Cowboys.

Panthers 28 Falcons 24

Thhen let's do this!

This game is going to be really contingent upon someone stepping up and taking the place of Brian Burns. This is the best chance they will have to grab that spotlight. If no one does, then we are going to get run over.

They won't let it go next week after being called out publicly about it. There will be a "tighten up" memo sent down to referee crews about this. They may already have it.

And year after year after year after year of not doing that has made us probably a little standoffish when things start to look difficult yet again. The really abysmal pre-season and the handling of the Burns negotiations have diminished my hope going into this season. Just win fellas and you'll win me back. We won seven games last season between the worthless Rhule and then Steve Wilks being handed a team with a bare cupboard. I hate to say it, but Reich and Fit need to at least hit that number before I'll begin thinking we didn't make yet another huge mistake. Normally, I'd think asking for seven wins out of a new head coach would be ridiculous, but you've got to compare it to the guy who got fired AND then the guy who didn't get hired. Hoping all of this works out and that preseason was really meaningless and that the Brian Burns thing is happening as it should. But really... there's a restlessness in the fanbase that needs soothing. Win. That's all it takes.

Burn is right at the top tiers of pass rushers in the league, or so we keep telling ourselves. He is, without a doubt, the best we have on our team. Our underperforming team. Retaining him is going to cost an arm and a leg and we will have to pay as if he was already in that top tier, and then hope that he gets to it. Sadly, with no one on the other side to also challenge defenses, Burns will just turn in another 10 sack season here rather than have one of those breakthrough years that we've been looking for since he came to us. Trade him if we can, get as much as we can and free him to get those big bucks and be matched up with a teammate that will take some of the pressure off of him. And let's be really honest here, where he might not be as big of a liability in the run defense. Burns has all of the potential in the world to be great, but he hasn't gotten there yet. I just don't want us to mortgage our future on someone who isn't setting the league on fire already, yanno? If he comes back and wants an average salary at the position, then yeah, if the coaches feel like he is going to make it as a OLB in a 4-3. If not, he's gotten enough attention to grab some good offers and get us some draft picks back.

And another one I wrote. I did not make the grammar error in the tagline, though. Production crew (we're spread across four continents) did a bang up job with this one. There were a lot of technical difficulties with the footage but they rocked it.

Hope this is still going great for you!