kungfoodude

Yeah, for all the grief Brady gets for some of the "WTF" play calls, we don't have the luxury of running simple plays that most teams could execute with reasonable success rates.

I think supposedly he has but his call list is also likely to be much smaller than Ron's was.

We are literally missing starters at S, so that is less of a problem, IMO. The defense just needs some additional depth and an upgrade or two. The OL is a complete fuging disaster. Literally almost no salvageable parts. That is the five alarm fire that has to be addressed. After that, we have to upgrade to a starting caliber QB. You get both of those problems solved and we are probably looking at a winning team. Not a contending team, but a winning team.

The "business decision" comment stood out to me. I will be curious to see how the next game goes.

Associate head coach, assistant head coach....something. I distinctly remember quite a few Huddlers saying they hoped we would get some longer tenured NFL coaches on the staff to help them out. It just didn't really happen. The bulk of the NFL experience on the staff currently is with the positional coaches, of which only one has any experience at the NFL coordinator level. I think that will prove to be a mistake in the long run.

Yeah, I honestly think this was just a bridge too far for him to jump this early in his career. This might end up being one of those situations where his early failures propel him to later career success. For his sake, I hope so. But, in the meantime, I don't know what we can really do to remedy the issues. The OL is what it is, Darnold is what he is and I don't think Rhule is the guy to step in and take over playcalling duties to alleviate some of the problems. The best we can hope for is that they circle the wagons week to week and just kind of start to figure out how to salvage what we have on offense and attack our opponents weaknesses rather than just running our scripts.

He has never been consistent in his entire career. Even without a historically bad WR performance, his warts are pretty obvious at this juncture. We aren't seeing much of anything different. He still struggles even with a clean pocket, sometimes even more than when he is pressured. He just isn't the guy. Unfortunately for all of us, we didn't even set him up to where we saw him fail on his own accord, we gave him one of the worst OL's in the league.

We will never know if Darnold would have been rehabilitated by a competent OL in front of him, because we didn't assemble that. It's also unlikely we are able to remedy that completely next offseason. What we do know is that even with better weapons and with a "better" offensive scheme, Sam Darnold looks just as bad as he did in New York. I think the writing is just simply on the wall for Darnold. He just isn't an NFL caliber starting QB. In reality, that writing was rather evident prior to him signing in Carolina but we were desperate after our better options were unavailable. What that means for us is less clear. The QB class from college is absolutely dreadful and we have less draft picks than normal. The free agent class may offer some hope but the prices may be extreme. So, although Sam Darnold is very clearly not the future here, we might see him start next year or at least be in a competition for the spot.

Agreed. It will be interesting to see what we do next offseason. I think the win now mentality will break down over the course of this year and some measure of reality/self-reflection will start popping up. The hope is that we put emphasis on correcting the biggest roster weaknesses and perhaps re-evaluating some of the coaching staff. I don't think it would be impossible to see Brady end up being let go if our offensive struggles persist throughout the rest of the year. I can't even say it's all his fault but I suspect Tepper is going to want at least one head on a pike.

If there has been any lesson in the first six games, it is there are no solutions to the OL problem. The solution will be next offseason and the offseason after that, most likely. This was the pile of turds they assembled and they can shine, shine and shine some more but they will still be a pile of turds.

I don't think CMC is the cure for our offensive ails. He is a big help but he can't throw the ball, block for himself nor call the plays.

I find it hilarious that people are still on the Darnold bandwagon. Then again, it took almost 3/4 of the 2020 season for the majority of the Huddle to see the obvious with Teddy. The level of deja vu is pretty crazy too. "It isn't Teddy's fault! It's *insert other unit/coaches*'s fault! Teddy can't do it all!" Fast forward to late season, "WHY ARE WE EVEN STARTING TEDDY??!! PUT IN PJ OR WILL GRIER AND SEE WHAT WE HAVE!!"

That would be pretty awful, especially to be the season that set the franchise losing streak record(four straight seasons). Fan apathy would probably be at an all-time low. I think at that point, Tepper probably has to regroup and consider moving on from Rhule. Either that or Rhule is going to have to justify what changes he plans to make to even get one more year. I suspect you would see Brady get jettisoned if that latter scenario happens.

I believe it would have been nice to keep a couple of key veterans around(perhaps Gilmore is one of those guys) and also to have some more NFL experience on the staff itself. It is extremely hard to build a successful NFL organization when very few in the room even have any real idea what that even looks like.

If we extend our losing streak to December, any wins we get in December would likely be other teams resting their players. That kind of losing streak would probably get him fired. Tepper watching the game alone in the box on Sunday probably doesn't bode well for Rhule, TBH.

I don't know about happy. I can definitely see it as a possibility and I can understand how you can get there. You can't expect a team with a bottom 5 OL(being very generous) and the worst starting QB in the NFL over the last 3+ seasons to have a tremendous amount of success. The shock would be if that didn't happen. So, those mistakes being what they are, what does the rest of the team look like after 17 games? Do we clearly have a defense that is capable of being a top 10 unit? Do we have enough weapons on offense to be potent with a better OL and competent QB? Is CMC going to be part of the future of the franchise(injuries, etc)? If we get a lot of affirmative answers to those questions, I will probably chalk the bulk of our issues up to the obvious.....our OL and QB are complete trash. Now, if the problem appears to be more and more coaching related(which is possible), then I will be very, very concerned. Similarly, if it looks like the first three games were the outlier and we are a very bad overall team(defense, CMC, offensive weapons, draft picks, etc), then it is time to panic.

That was a bad game yesterday, no question about it. But, I am not going to jump off a cliff after a bad game and I am not going to jump off a cliff after a three game losing streak. There are still 11 more games to judge where we are at as a franchise. I'm not peddling some dumbshit Sunshine Squad optimism, just saying we are in the midst of a season and we need to get the full picture before we start being definitive about anything. If we keep getting worse and worse as the season progresses, I am absolutely on board with the "Fire Rhule" bandwagon. But, maybe we still end up as a 6-9 win team and are relatively still on schedule for where we should be.

Hard maybe. Not sure it says much other than the decision to take a bust QB and put him behind a bottom 5 OL unit was extremely stupid. But, anyone with any sense could have predicted that wouldn't work out. It was actually pretty mind numbing how many didn't see that portion of our struggles coming.

I was initially a Rhule skeptic but let's keep in mind that he is just 22 games into his NFL career. I share the same skepticism that I initially did but I am not ready to jump off a cliff yet. Perhaps if we finish the season at 3-14. That's something we all had to know was going to be a thing. The coaching staff has a learning curve to navigate, as well. All while during a complete rebuild.

Pretty sure they said he had a concussion so he has to clear the protocol. Darnold successfully got him rocked, something he tried to do to DJ earlier. I'll be glad when the post-Darnold era begins. He is tough to watch.

We probably aren't going to see TMJ for at least a couple of weeks.

Yeah but he always looks like that. I can't tell if he is specifically in a funk or it is a larger issue with Darnold or the offense. I have a suspicion from yesterday's game but I will see how it looks moving forward.

Didn't we just try that yesterday?

I don't know what is up with Robby but something clearly is. Yesterday wasn't a great example, as the drops were EVERYWHERE. It was crazy. Like someone put a hex on the ball. I will be curious to see if that was just a bad game by the team or if there is something else going on.