Khyber53

I really like Ron Rivera. I think he's a good man to build team spirit and instill a toughness to a team. I hope he takes some time off, enjoys his life and family. I really think his calling would be in a senior defensive advisor role on a team with a young head coach. I wish him the best. And it was great seeing John Fox out there on the sidelines in Detroit yesterday. Another good guy who had some good runs as HC and has moved on successfully to that advisory type position.

I know. He assisted us into this mess of a roster. Let's clean the whole house, not just the crusties left beside the wastebin.

Bring him into the office and lay this on the table: One year contract at $11 million. Sign it and we try to trade you. You get a prove it year with a good paycheck somewhere with a chance to extend that contract there if you play up to their wants. If not, just let him go and accept the third round compensatory pick and wish him the best.

Besides the Carolina connection from his playing days, why? Remember to include his successes as an executive here in your answer.

20-odd years without a shutout loss. Second longest streak in the NFL. We finish this turd of a season off with two back to back shut-outs.

If Bryce had been playing this way in a vacuum then sure, it'd be smart to give up on him. But he wasn't. There was no running game for the first 12 games. There were no real receivers out there except for Thielen that had any idea of how to get open or to find creases/seams in a defense. Our O-line was legendarily bad. Our Tight Ends room was forced to use Ian Thomas as its featured player... Ian frikkin' Thomas. Our coach was rightly fired, our OC was so epically unprepared that he would have been the 12th worst OC in the Canadian Football League (and they only have 9 teams!). We aren't going to be in the running to draft one of the big name QBs coming out, but we might be able to get a decent guard or tackle at 33. So why ditch the guy now, when he isn't going to cost us much money AND if he sucks then we will get a high draft pick again before we rightfully jettison him. Or we can drop $9 million on a retread like Garropolo or Keenum once we're left with the floor sweepings of free agency. And then pick 8th or 9th while sitting through another useless season. Give Bryce the reins for 2024 and tell him he can keep them for as long as he can hold them and move the team forward. Maybe the next coach can find in him something. He certainly didn't get what he needed, no matter his own short comings.

He may be the only person on this team to have earned the right to that paycheck. Let him go and well, you've got nothing to build on. If Fitt stays, it's almost guaranteed he'll be traded away for a handful of magic beans or pocket lint. One day, he will all of a sudden get old and be unable to compete out there. This year, he was surrounded in the receivers room by a bunch of 21-25 year olds who suddenly got old and were unable to compete out there. There's more firewood to cut before we think about even imagining letting him go.

This has been a burn the tapes and bury the balls type of year. Clear the table, start afresh next season. Activate goldfish mode.

Billionaires were inevitable. Protecting them like sacred cows is the real travesty.

At this point, these are just rumors on the wind.

No good can come of this.

What a life journey Ryan Leaf has been on, one heck of a redemption story. He has pulled himself back from disaster and become a sports pundit with a unique and extremely valid voice. Glad to see him doing so much better. And I think he's right about Bryce Young and the Panthers.

Thanks for trying to add some levity into this, OP.

The approval of David Tepper to become an owner of a Carolina-based franchise has to be one of the biggest misreadings of the room in the history of the NFL. He did not fit the culture here, he didn't want to fit the team's culture and he sure as hell didn't know what he was doing. I've disliked him since Rivera's last season and departure. Not for firing the man, because that writing was already on the wall, but for both how it was done and what was to follow. He has proven himself to be a bullshit artist since arriving here. And like all bullshit artists, they can't really tell other bullshit artists from those who are actually skilled, hence the bad hires in the front office and coaching. He's a well-financed poser.

Would you have pushed hard to recover from injury when Rhule was your coach? And that it would all be for nothing? Can't blame the guy for making business decisions.

I admire your optimism and point of view here. I'm still pissed about it, though. Never go all in on a shot at an inside straight. We got suckered.

Sadly, this isn't the worst example of team ownership the league has seen, from either a management or public relations perspective. Heck, he's not even the most problematic owner at the moment, much less of the last five years. Tepper's not going anywhere and the other stuffed shirts in the ownership group aren't going to even tsk tsk him over this. He's going to be here and futzing about with this team for a couple of decades most likely. Sucks but it's the reality. Maybe somewhere along the way the stars will align and we will be contenders again. But even then, we're stuck with a carpet-bagging, know it all Yankee who is just here to show his ass and rattle his jewelry when we peons get mad. Yay team!

Yikes, I stand corrected. My bad.

A case can be made she was behind the only decent draft pick we've had in a while...

I keep thinking that each week, and then... there we go. Another week left and well, honestly I'm interested to see how we can find another shark to jump in this circus of embarrassment.

More than anything, I'm getting the "I'm not involved in this" vibe from Fitterer. He's just doing the innocent bystander thing. He's in that moment when an idiot boss does something stupid and you just want to hang back, not get involved and just take it in. No emotions left in the guy.

It wasn't. That was embarrassing. First shutout for the franchise in 21 years? Seems about right.

This one could be actually interesting. Might even be a you know what for us. Would be nice.