Khyber53

They've all been knock offs ever since. He had everything, great arm, great speed and an overactive survival instinct. Tarkenton often said he never had a plan on the scrambles, he just wanted to see the next morning from something other than a hospital bed. If you straightened out all of his runs, he'd probably still hold the NFL rushing record for all players! And is still #14 on all time passing with 47,003 yards on the career. I believe four Super Bowl appearances, too. Dude is way underappreciated by the league.

Hmmm, that's very interesting. I wonder if it's an old school/new school thing that keeps some teams from using it. It seems to be really intuitive.

I used to spend my summers working as a brick mason's laborer when I was growing up. Did it a few other times later in life when jobs and money were really scarce. Tore up my shoulders, tore up my back, probably helped do in my knees. The shots of cortisone and stuff I've had to take probably made things worse over time. And there are sooo many people who work like that every day of their entire lives, just getting ground down to a nub. They get some shots when they can afford it, have no health insurance to speak of and often have to resort to alcohol and pain killers to make it through their days, working and not. A lot of them are just completely worn out by the time they hit their mid 30s and just hang on somehow because that's all there is for them. It sucks to be in constant pain, but having a bunch of money in the bank can certainly help. Or if not, if there was just some way they could get medical help. I wish the best to the guy and other players like him, but man, my sympathies on this rest heavier on much less fortunate people.

We need Fran Tarkenton. Someone go back to 1973 and grab the guy.

We need to be heavily into the Carr interest, especially early on, if for nothing else to drive up the price. He's a good guy and a good QB, and if we could have him for the right price, he'd be great here. We won't be able to get him for the right price, though, so we should do our best to make sure whichever one of the NFCSouth teams snags him, that there's a nice, hefty contract that will richly reward him and hamstring them for the next four to five years.

Okay, I get it, this is your special thing and you're going to argue for it under any and all circumstances. Good on ya, mate. Go for it. Nothing, nothing, nothing in the tea leaves, the numbers, the horoscope or in good sense says he'll be coming here, though.

I could have very well have been wrong about that. So many names swirling around from so many different programs.

I dunno, a lot of folks fought over Watson this past year. Wilson probably got some attention. Sometimes you work hard to bring in a crowd of suckers to sell a lame horse and someone walks out thinking they bought a thoroughbred just to find out they got hosed. This may well be one of those times, or it might not. The cost of it being one of those times far, far outweighs the rewards right now. If he were truly life-changing and perfectly healthy, the team that has built its entire offense around him and made its entire coaching plan based on getting the most out of him would pony up whatever it took to make him happy and keep the ball rolling along. They haven't succeeded in doing that yet. That should give us pause right there. Lamar is a great player, but his style of play requires a team built to suit his skill set, just like Cam Newton did in his day, too. Those teams are harder to build than one for a more traditional pocket passer. And they are very hard to build from scratch if one sixth or more of your salary cap is tied up in one guy's contract.

It's not an analogy, it's an aphorism.

I was going to say that we need to draft one, but you make a good argument here. That new TE coach we snagged though has some connections to the draft this year, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a reuniting moment.

Those big casinos aren't built on winners, they're built on idiots who say gamble big.

Let's just let other teams fight over and overpay for Lamar. Good guy, good player, too rich, too risky for our blood at this time.

I've been pounding on the table over the years that the biggest success factor in a QB is processor speed rather than physical size, speed or arm strength. But I had no idea that anyone had developed a real way to measure it. This is pretty cool and could change a lot of drafting info. I wonder how it changes over time for players, too, especially after taking all the hits (or delivering them). Could this also be a predictor for brain and nerve damage over time? I hope we'll hear more about this and I wonder if during the interviews portion of the Combine if our guys will be asking if the player would be willing to release their score to them...

Someone from this division will probably land Carr and they'll have a two year advantage over the rest of the division, even if another team hits on a good QB in the draft. He's not going to be cheap, though. So is that $35 million a year (and probably more) right now in our cap situation a good investment for a quick run at the division and the playoffs or could the money be spent better? I know what I think, but I wish I knew for sure how it would shake out. He could have a great eight years ahead of him and mesh beautifully with our WR corps and thrive behind our improved offensive line. But I'd said the same thing in hopefulness about Baker Mayfield, too. And that ended up being just tragic and painful to watch. Woof.

So, what you're saying is there's no way in heck that Robbie, errr Chosen, Anderson will make it back onto this roster???

This may prove to be true.

At those prices I'm not sure it wouldn't be smarter for NYG to tag Barkley and enter into the Derek Carr bidding war.

Bozeman has been great here, but that $16.6 million is a huuuuuge hunk of money. He deserves way more than the $2.8 million he got last season if we want to continue with him. If we put him somewhere in the top 10 salaries for centers in the NFL, we're looking between roughly $8 million and $12 million per season. And that's going to require some serious cap massaging and converting a lot of the salary into bonuses... which oftentimes end up as dead cap with us. He's 28, almost 29 by the time the season gets into full swing... could we get enough out of him to roll out a full five year contract and not regret it down the line?

Actually, Daniel Jeremiah has a lot of close ties to North Carolina, and went to Appalachian State, so he's usually one of the better when it comes to assessing things for the Panthers. This time, though, I was like "he's crazy." Then I looked at what Taylor Moton is going to be costing us over the next three seasons. We need him for 2023 (and cutting him would not in any way improve our cap) but in 2024 and 2025 we'd save $10.7 million and $17.5 million by cutting him and letting someone else pick up the tag. And Moton, while still good, hasn't been great and those salaries he's scheduled for really demand greatness. A starting tackle on the first round salary schedule for four years and with a fifth year extension looks really attractive from a dollars and cents sense. Bookending it with another first rounder (Icky) on the same line looks really genius both in cost and impact. Still, I'd rather see a DE or TE in that spot for us.

We shall see.

No, it doesn't. Taking Richardson with so little experience and rough performance based purely on speculated potential is well, just a bad idea.

I really just can't wait to see the free agency moves, the draft, training camp, preseason and finally, the season start again. I haven't been this excited and optimistic about the Panthers in half a decade.

Dude's gone and not missed. I wish him the best but really, he's someone else's headache now. And Arizona has a whole, heaping pile of them. They are the Divas of the Desert.

I've said it elsewhere, many times over. Here we go again. I'd stay out of the Carr, Lamar and probably Aaron Rodgers kerfuffle that is going to see at least two teams overpay and get cheated. Look for another vet to fall out of contention who can serve as a good bridge/backup. Let the coaching staff take a good, solid look at Matt Corral -- which I am sure they have already done at this point. If they think there is a possibility there, go with him and look to add that veteran presence to help him mature quickly. If he's not the guy, then move to the draft. In the draft, forget about the massive manboy crushes the four top QBs are attracting right now. Two out of four are statistically going to wash out and cost teams mightily. There's a chance that it's three out of four. Let someone else waste good potential on bad returns. One out of the four will most likely be excellent, but which one... no one knows. In the first round, we set back and let the worst teams pursue those QBs, leaving much better players on the board at #9 than one would normally expect. We take the best player available. My pecking order for this would be DE, TE, LB, CB. At number nine it is almost guaranteed that at least one of bona fide best at their position players will be left in one of those spots. Take them. In our first pick in the second round, grab the best of the remaining positional guys from what is left from that list of four. Stay out of the quarterback race at all until the end of the second, probably the early third round. There are going to be some very good QBs there... Tennessee, Georgia and TCU will all have QBs out there still, perhaps not Madden-darlings, but solid, battle tested and championship earning guys. There's where the finds of the draft will be. Grab the one that best suits our coaching staff's long-term vision. Go into camp with them and Corral competing for the job, spurred along and cushioned by a good journeyman vet. Wish PJ Walker the best and maybe give Darnold a chance for back-up QB money, perhaps with some incentives for playoff performance. Build the team they want and give some QBs a chance. If those QBs don't clear the bar, we still have high picks out there and the perennially bad teams will have probably four high pick QBs filling their rosters and won't be in the immediate running next year.