Khyber53

Doing your own demo, if you aren't a skilled carpenter, can suddenly become frikkin' expensive.

Sometimes the most powerful blessings are the things you didn't get. Whew~~

I want to be wrong about this season. I want Tepper to have been right to keep Rhule on board. I want us to find out that it really did take three years to build something great here. I want to find out that we have a complete and balanced team that can compete and win against anyone on any given Sunday (or Saturday, Monday or even Thursday). But I'm afraid I'm not wrong. I said when everyone wanted Rivera fired that we very well could be in for worse than we were jettisoning and I think we've proven to have been that. Not boosting Rivera, just saying that the ownership here was unwise in their decision making and apparently oblivious to the good advice around them. (And we can only blame Hurney for so much, Tepper makes the decisions, writes the checks and guides the ship.) Let 'em surprise me. I'm tired of not being surprised.

Sad to hear of anyone passing away at such a young age. Rest in peace and I hope for strength for the family who is certainly mourning this life lost.

Does he have a lot left to give, though? That's a rough job. If he could make it a year, he'd give us a bit of strength in the center of the line, but more importantly he could help train up some of the younger and softer talent we have there. We need a lunch pail, do the unsung work kind of guy on the line right now and in the future. He wouldn't be that guy, but could he help make the next one? And that's a question I can't really answer. Star made the linemen around him look better because of the heavy lifting he did. But did he ever get someone else able and willing to do that work alongside of him? In a world of leading men actors, where can you find a dedicated character actor to really make it work? I'm not sure those guys can be taught, just born.

Ask me after that first preseason game against the Commandoskins. There's a lot of Hey!s with this team right now and that's good, but there are a lot of Hmmmm?s as well, and those could be bad.

It wasn't a shining endorsement, but being the 14th best football team in the league would be a huge improvement for us. We weren't just a QB away, though, and he doesn't touch on the other problems. We did address some of them, particularly committing to our O-line in a big way, but that defense looks spotty in the front 7 something fierce. And if we don't move Jeremy Chinn back to LB, then we're going to get run over again and again.

Channel that inner walk on... every QB on the roster should be digging down to find that guy. If one of them isn't willing to fight for the job, then that guy isn't going to fight to win on the field with this team. We need a QB with spark. Hopefully one of them will find it. I hope Baker plays lights out. I hope Sam finds what he was missing a thrives. Heck, I hope PJ Walker finds Green Lantern's ring and somehow becomes a decent NFL QB. But in all honesty, there's still a chance with any of those guys that by mid-season we may be starting Matt Corrall. Those guys are all second (or third) chancers in an unforgiving league where the opponents are actively teeing off on your faults and blind spots, where old injuries are targeted, where your coaches are on the hot seat. Tough, tough situation. Whoever finds their inner Delhomme can win in this situation with this particular team.

Winner winner chicken dinner.

There were games where I don't think the guys on the sidelines could bear to watch the game at all. Sometimes that was echoed in the coaching box. And us at home...

Good statistics and ones that surprise me, to be honest. It certainly didn't look like we were holding our own there. Maybe some of the really bad teams we played last season weren't able to run the ball against us nor pass against us, skewing the rushing statistics just as the overall defensive stats were skewed. Good teams just took us to the woodshed with their running games. I just remember they moved the ball on us at will.

Our biggest problems on defense last year really point to the coaching. Snow had a scheme more than a defense -- he didn't build a complete unit. And the unit he built was just too soft to keep teams from bullying it. Good coaching can fix both of those problems. I'm kind of pessimistic that Snow can be that guy for us. He doesn't seem up to the task as a pro-level DC.

If Warner has this right and Macadoonio does as well, Mayfield could be set up to succeed here. I hope that's the case. He doesn't have a Smitty here, but he has a DJ and that's a heck of a steady weapon. And CMC is more of a backfield threat than anything Mayfield had in Cleveland.

The whole situation there, plus the Watson pursuit and then the trade to here have been filled with shadows, shade and smoke. Honestly, we don't know what we've got, we don't know what we're going to do with it and we have no idea how this will shake out. By the end of the season we could well be looking at Mayfield and Darnold still shooting it out in an effort to secure a back-up QB job while Corral starts for a coach as yet to be named. This is going to be the bumpiest season we've seen since Seifert. Maybe worse. Or something magical could happen. Maybe.

I'd be so happy to see it. I'm more optimistic than I was before. But I've been bitten year after year, so I'm not sold yet.

Okay, if Smitty doesn't intimidate him, then we might, might have the next Delhomme coming into camp. That'd be nice.

We're once again at the "on paper" optimistic side of things. That side of the pillow warms up pretty fast around here and isn't comfortable for long. But hey, through training camp, we can dream a bit!

I agree and part of the point I am trying to make is that Cleveland's colossal blunder with Watson (and it will be massive) is going to work out well for us, probably in the way that Rhule had hoped Darnold would have worked out. The difference is that at the time, Mayfield was lighting up things and making Cleveland relevant. Wouldn't it have been great to have been able to look into the crystal ball and see this down the road for us back in Feb. 2021? If we had been prescient enough to tell the Browns, look, we will back out of the Watson hunt if you'll be willing to trade Mayfield for what we gave for Darnold plus a couple of additional mid-round picks? Both teams would have been better off. It's all a pipe dream, though. We have Mayfield now, at a reduced price, but after he'd been battered around and kicked to the curb by the Browns. Let's hope he's recovered and is ready for one hell of a rebound.

Because we'll grab for any hope when we're drowning.

Of course not, but the world around them is certainly changing. That's what they actively fight against, but it never stops change from happening. In truth, they've been fighting it for 30 years or more now and we may actually be seeing the final act of the play now. The tipping point is near enough in the future that most of us will live to see it and become part of that next day.

$14-18 million for playing back-up QB and riding the pine isn't the worst thing in the world for either guy. At some point, people will be calling for you to come in and you'll be the most popular guy on the team. Let's not spend too many tears for whoever isn't given the starting spot.

Best of luck to Cam.

Crazily it would have cost the same as Darnold, since their contracts are required to be the same. The trade might have cost us more than it did now, but probably along the same lines as Darnold's did now. Smart shopping can really make the difference I guess. If we just new what would be on special ahead of time.

Had they just made this deal last season...

The world, it is a changing and the oil producers know it. We're going to see a lot of legislation and efforts to protect oil production in the near future and they'll be the equivalent of trying to legislate better buggy whip prices in 1903.