Captroop

Not pointing fingers but someone's angry drunk posting, lol!

What a difference a week makes: Granted, I asked about in the NFL ever, vs. Panthers all time, but this thread has a very different tone.

You know, I meant to make that a sub-paragraph under the post, but totally spaced on it: I believe the reason that we're not seeing the leadership out of Bryce is a result of the coaches trying to cover their asses. I look at Bryce, and I see a teacher's pet who's getting special treatment, and I think the rest of the team sees that and resents Bryce for it. I see them holding Bryce out for a phantom injury, and it was pretty damning footage when you saw Bryce coming into practice, lock step with Josh McCown, and none of the players seemed glad to see him. I see Reich taking the blame publicly for "calling a play for Thielen when Thielen wasn't on the field," and everyone questioning, why the hell would he admit to that? To me, it looks like a coach taking the fall to cover for a rookie clock management mistake. I know I've seen that in the workplace where a manager took the fall for their pet, and it sure looked like that to me. And all that goes back to the post above. The coaches feel like they HAVE to shelter Bryce and HAVE to cover for him, because investing the world in him was their call, and they need to save face rather than let Bryce take the lumps. As a result, I don't think we're seeing the leadership, because right now, the players don't see a leader. They see a teacher's pet. Bryce needs to make mistakes, and take the blame in order to earn the respect of the locker room. The coaches coddling him only makes that process harder.

I don't feel bad for him. He'll cry himself to sleep on a bed of money the rest of his life regardless of which trajectory his NFL career takes. We shat the bed, now we need to sleep in it. And that means rolling back and forth over this pant-leg excretion for the rest of the year. The absolute worst case scenario is him being shell-shocked into mediocrity if there was any hope of him being our future starter.

If anything is likely to "David Carr" Bryce, it's the amount of pressure that's put on him in terms of our expectations to succeed based on his performance alone. Being the #1 overall pick already comes with with an enormous amount of pressure. Now imagine the weight Bryce must be feeling every day knowing: The Panthers made me their #1 overall selection The Panthers traded up to make me their #1 overall selection The Panthers traded next year's 1st round selection to make me their #1 overall selection The Panthers traded their best offensive weapon to make me their #1 overall selection Multiple people put their careers and livelihoods on the line, vouching for me that I was worth trading all that for An entire coaching and ownership regime is betting their future on me being the centerpiece of their offense and the star of the franchise The Panthers gave up so much they can only surround me with mediocre talent, and they count on ME to be the reason the team is successful The coaches are starting me over a more qualified veteran because everyone needs ME to prove THEY were right If I don't pan out, the investment the Panthers made in me will be what sets this franchise back a decade And now imagine all of that going through your head and not only not being immediately successful, but being the center of attention of a team that looks like it may be historically bad. Frankly, the amount of expectation that our FO, coaching and fanbase has piled on Bryce is unreal, unprecedented, and unfair. Because at the end of the day, all that we gave up for him, was our team's bad decision. So if anything has the likelihood to "ruin" Bryce Young, it's the stress of knowing that because of the amount we gave up for him, which is not something he ever asked for us to do, and in spite of the weak team we surrounded him with, he doesn't get the benefit of a rookie learning curve. Every mistake is exponentially worse, because the amount we gave up for him can only be justifiable if he is great NFL QB. I still don't know if Bryce has the physical tools to be a great QB in this league. But if Bryce mentally survives this season, I'll actually have a lot more hope for him in the future.

I believe in the Sales principle of "Get to No as quickly as possible." In the NFL it's get to "Bust" as quickly as possible. If Bryce can be "ruined" then we don't need to invest in him any further. The league isn't ideal, so we don't need a QB who need a perfect situation in order to be successful.

Start Andy for what reason? To try to compete? At 0-5 the season is lost and we don't have the talent or guts to rattle of a string of wins and try to make a post-season run. Start Bryce the rest of the way and let's see if he's got any fight in him. The absolute worst thing we can come away from a crappy season with is uncertainty. By the end of this god-awful, forgettable, and hopefully uncharacteristically bad year, I want to know if Bryce is the future, or if he was a misstep, and we need to start over again. Starting Andy, and just leaving us with questions as to whether or not Bryce "has it" leads to just another wasted off-season and sets us up for another lost year. It's tough, and we've definitely thrown Bryce in the deep end with weights on his ankles. But that's the situation. Now it's time to sink or swim.

So our QB we mortgaged the future and drafted #1 overall can succeed in an ideal situation with perfect coaching, exceptional skill position talent, and an offense that's built from the ground up up to cater to him specifically? Hmm. You know what out #1 overall QB sounds like? Any other QB in the league.

So the fans literally know better than our FO. That's not encouraging.

Finally something Bryce is good at! He's so tiny you have to go for his head to tackle him

Me too, bud. Me too...

I hate to say I told you so. We never should have traded up. We certainly never should have traded up to 1 giving up as much as we did. And we definitely shouldn't have drafted Bryce. Teddy, Sam, and Baker were never the problem and we should have rolled with them, and either groomed a future QB, or earned #1 overall. This team it literally a decade away from being relevant again. I'd say we should blow it all up. But we've irreparable hamstrung ourselves.

Yup. I had to miss this game because I gotta drive my wife to the airport. I think I'm literally going to have more fun doing that. The Panthers actually made watching the Panthers painful.

I'll say this on the subject: I want Bryce to spend an entire game going for chunk plays. I don't care if he leads the league in interceptions after this weekend. I want to see him throw the ball downfield. What I cannot stand is this rinky-dink 5-yard pass and screen nonsense. We suck, I get it. I'm not expecting miracles. I just want to see him stretch the field. I want to see if he can actually succeed in time and with better playcalling. And that's it. I'm checked out this week and am going to do something better with my time than watch, fully expecting when I see the box score it'll be more of the same. But if I see the stat line Sunday night, and Bryce goes for 350 yards, 0TD, 3 INT, I guarantee I'll watch next weekend.

This this this all day. The scouting staff needs to wear a LOT of what is going wrong with this team. Fitt gets the blame for making the pick, but this scouting staff are the ones with boots on the ground evaluating the talent and making the recommendations. How can people who do this for a living be so consistently wrong when guys who explode are taken later in the draft?

So, looking like we're giving the Bears #1 overall.

Do we really want to call it a return? It's more of a pre-departure.

I approve. I'm firmly in fug it mode. I can't be more disappointed in the team than I am now. So let's roll the dice.

I'll watch the Panthers if I've got nothing better to do. But I'm not setting aside time for this team anymore. The weather is too damn nice right now to squander another afternoon on cheap gameday "specials" on draft domestics and this quality of football. I'm gonna go play 18 holes.

Seriously. I think he called the Hail Mary play where everyone is just in a scrum in the endzone.

One thing that really stands out - and it sounds like a size bro complaint because it is - is Cam was so big, that defenders had to try to wrap him up around the midsection to get him down. That gave Cam the opportunity to try to make a play while being contacted. In the play at 1:22 in that video, Cam ends up making a throw with a defender wrapped around his waist like a tutu. I just don't see how Bryce will ever be able to make a throw with a defender hanging off him. Hell, I don't presently see how he can take a hit without fumbling.

I have to say, I'm really pleasantly surprised by how well some members of secondary have really stepped up. And there's a reason Chinn is the only jersey I've bought in recent memory. Guy is just a lunch pail playmaker.

The Herschel Walker one is genuinely fascinating. I want to read a book on how that went down.

I highlighted why I don't think it's as high in terms of being a bad trade, because the stakes were lower. They have a team brimming with talent. They could afford to take a swing on trying to hit on a franchise-changing QB. We have had a dearth of talent for years, traded away one of the few playmakers we had, and gave ourselves less capital to try to build with. We DEPENDED on Bryce hitting, where I don't think the '9ers did with Lance. I think the state of the team also needs to be factored in on a trade.

But they got multiple 1,000 yard seasons, a playoff run AND they got 2 first round picks BACK for Ricky Williams. I don't see how that trade can even be in the conversations for worst of all time.