kungfoodude

Mac Jones.....get ready....

True. He never was able to capitalize on that potential.

It does seem like an improvement on a weak area. Guess we will see how it works out.

Solid run stopper also supposedly a pretty dirty player. The Nixon cut is baffling. That draft class looks weaker and weaker.

I'll wager about 60% of those are actually New England bandwagoners that jumped over.

Our most delusional sunshiners and biggest negative nancies don't hold a candle to Falcon or Saints fans "regular" fans. I'd disparage Tampa fans but they will just disappear again once Brady is gone. They never really have any actual fans. Just people taking time away from getting hammered, high and hanging out on the beach.

Yeah, I am skeptical of our run defense overall because I just think we run a scheme with personnel that aren't suited to excel in that front seven. We have some high caliber talent but the overall makeup and especially the depth seems much more suited to creating pass rush pressure than being physically dominant or locking down the line of scrimmage in the run game. We will see, though. Maybe it is better than expected

Not sure that will be true or not, depends on how they use the personnel. We thought putting Fox out on the edge last year would result in better run support last year and that still didn't materialize. I think the general scheme we run is basically pretty weak against the run. Our front personnel are also pretty weak overall against the run so that probably amplifies that. It will be interesting to finally see what the position group performances are.

I would say overall roster is probably bottom third of the NFL. But we are a bad team that has been rebuilding for three seasons. That's kind of the lot we have for the moment. The important thing is that it appears to be improved over the roster we fielded in 2020. Now THAT was a bad team.

I can agree on DB and WR but outside that our depth is very, very thin at most positions.

Given what we preached about Rhule's track record of third year jumps, I think 10+ wins and a playoff berth are necessary to be "successful." Ideally a win in the playoffs to establish with complete certainty that we have had a monumental jump to being a success again. Either less than 10 wins OR less than 1 playoff win have to be failures, IMO. If you want to keep selling further improvement and the future being bright, you have to show something more than 0-9 wins and no playoffs.

I expect it to be a hard fought game. I think our OL will struggle a lot with their pass rushers. CMC will keep them honest by gashing them a few times. I suspect they will try and run the ball down our throats and have a lot of success with that. I think we win the TO battle and that is the difference. Panthers in a close victory. Concerned about DL/OL and CMC's health.

The odds of us beating a Tom Tampa team seem extremely low. This isn't Rivera who had Tom's number.

I don't think so.

If we can stay healthy.

You should definitely be worried about our OL. They didn't perform very well in the preseason as a unit(some very good individual performances) and they are desperately thin. That is a big concern.

Tampa had a long streak of mediocrity and poor performance that left their roster brimming with talent. All they needed was someone like Brady to elevate them to an elite level. We definitely aren't there yet. We might not be far away with 2-3 good offseasons in a row.

I agree with that general window of success. If we can make a quality coaching hire in 2023 and get QB solidified, we have the potential to be able to gather our way to the top. Especially if we can draft better moving forward. We might be able to set up a 6-8 year span where we are top or near top of the division. But....that is a lot of "ifs." I sincerely hope we show enough in 2022 to entice a very good coaching candidate to us.

Yeah, I am willing to bet based on what he said that not everyone was actually using whatever database they had.

I find it pretty strange we didn't have a prospect database already. That explains a lot.

Yeah but we also might just have our bar set too low. TBD.

Yeah, the failures are largely for lower round picks but this can easily go the other way. If Henderson doesn't pan out and Baker only sticks around for a year with modest team success, now we are looking at a scenario where almost none of Fitterer's trades have been very successful. The same argument could easily be used for Daley or Little. It isn't like we got a windfall. In Little's case we turned a 2nd rounder into a 7th. So those aren't exactly home runs, other than the fact that none of us even believed it was possible to get that out of them. So that's why I don't fall in mine with the "Fitterer is a genius with trades" crowd. I don't see a genius yet. I see some definite potential to be a very shrewd guy, pending some players panning out. But I also see that he could just be a guy appearing to doing a lot and accomplishing very little. Time will tell.

Yeah and hindsight is how you judge personnel moves. Not before.

But that was why Gilmore wasn't worth it. We went 2-6 when he was here and we lost to Tampa anyway. It was ultimately pointless.