Ricky Spanish

For the past two months, I have been sitting on this voucher to either the Cards game or the Lions game, and I have absolutely no desire to claim it. 5 years ago, if you would have told me I could have a free game ticket I would have been over the moon excited to go. Now you literally couldn't give me one for free because I have no desire to waste my time watching this team. We just bought a house and spent the entire weekend moving. In years past, the FIRST thing I would have done was make sure the TV was set up so I could watch the Game on Sunday. The TV is still in the box and I didn't bother checking my phone for game scores until 4, and that was only to check my fantasy teams. I saw we lost. I am not surprised, and frankly I don't really care. I have no idea how anyone looked but I'm sure it was subpar because that is our new normal. Apathy has taken over. Any good will and excitement built up over the offseason is now completely gone. Remember when Tepper said that he wouldn't accept mediocrity? I guess he meant he'd except abject failure instead.

Jesus christ, that Raiders dude had fuging BRICKS for hands.

Oh you know I can't

The real question then becomes, will reps help this, or is this just who Baker is?

I fixed it. For anyone who runs into this issue when they copy and paste, make sure you select "paste as plain text instead" at the bottom:

I was penciling him in as a bust the moment Hurney selected him in the second round. Same with Chinn. Something a lot of people don't seem to want to talk about is how irrelevant Chinn actually is out there these days. No splash plays, just chasing guys down after they run past either him or everyone else. Burns Can't finish plays. Dude would be an all-pro if he could actually tackle. The entire defense is filled with disappointment.

I was about to get all sanctimonious but you're right, I did not realize he was on the sideline last year. It was so bad I stopped caring halfway through the season, but you're right. He's still a better coach than Matt Rhule though. Even if he has a butthole mouth and he's an asshat.

It appears we avoided the run

You're not wrong, The optimism just seems completely unwarranted based on the fact each of the QBs listed above went to the postseason last year and have had some history of success with their coaching staff. Ours goes through QBs like teenage boys go through tissues. There is reason to believe that their coaching staff will regroup and improve going into next week. What reason do we have to expect any improvement? We currently have the longest losing streak in the NFL and we just let the Browns win their first opener in 18 years with a backup QB. This isn't just an indictment of the QB and how that whole thing was managed, it's an indictment on how the whole team has been managed over the past 3 seasons. We go on the road to a team in NY who embarrassed us last year with no offensive weapons at their disposal, and they ended up canning their crappy coach who beat our crappy coach then hired a guy with a much better resume than our crappy coach. They also have a healthy Saquon Barkley, and our run defense was poo this past week, so I'm anticipating more of the same. Giants win 31-17

Jesus that's so incredibly harsh and completely fair. I love it. This Luke DeCock guy gets it.

Looked up some dudes: Pep Hamilton - If Davis Mills goes HAM, we need to kick the tires on him. Already has a solid resume beneath him Ken Dorsey - We'll see how good the Bills do with him. Would be nice to bring an Offensive minded coach Shane Steichen - Eagles current OC, young, and throwing together a solid resume so far. Let's see how well their offense performs this season:

I am pumping the breaks on Leftwich personally, at least I can see his body of work as a playcaller without Arians on the sideline with him every week. If there is minimal dropoff with the injuries they have sustained on the line and WR room, I am willing to give him a shot. No to Eric B. Brian Flores I am OK with. I would kick the tires on Kellen Moore. I don't necessarily want him but I'm interested to see what he does with Dak out for an extended period of time. Are there any young, up and coming coordinators that are high energy and have proven themselves yet? I really wanted either Hacket or Daboll last offseason but we kept Rhule. Giants have a completely different energy compared to last season and we'll see how the broncos look tonight, but I honestly can't think of any hot commodities in the coordinator rankings right now.

Let's see: Giants - Barkley - Thicc boi in all the right ways for a RB. He will run a train on our defense NO - Kamara - Stud AZ - Connor, who is good but we always beat AZ for Jake's revenge so I am penciling this one in as a win regardless. SF - Kyle Shannahan's offense that could get paraplegics 1k yard seasons. This will be an issue. LA - Meh, nothing special here, we have a shot to stop the run TB - LOL doesn't even matter we will lose @ ATL - We have a shot Cincy - Joe Mixon is a stud. bad matchup ATL - We have a shot BAL - The best Rushing team in the NFL. No shot Denver - Dunno yet but they have a good 1-2 punch at RB, outlook not great Seattle - We have a shot Pitt - Harris went down, depending on the severity we have a shot Detroit - Swift is about to go beast mode on the NFL. He's this season's breakout RB. TB - Lol again, we lose NO - Kamara again So, looking at the schedule, I don't agree with you at all OP, and I am in fact, very pessimistic about our chances moving forward.

For real, there isn't a SINGLE COACH on the roster I would rather take the reigns after Matt is shown the door. Not one. They all suck as head coaches and are out of their depth in that position.

Oh totally. He still never beat either head to head, or any coach of quality for that matter. Zero wins against coaches that don't suck.

I wanted to see just how bad Matt stacked up head to head against the coaches that have been fired since he was hired back in 2020. The hot seat coaches I found were from various articles across the internet, with Matt Rhule being the number 1 candidate in all of them. I made a chart to better understand some things: Some Observations: While the victory against the saints still counts for his win total, it did not count in favor of his head to head matchups since Payton was out with the Rona in week 2 of last year. Of the 25 Coaches listed above, Matt Rhule has a worse win % (.294) than 22 of them. The two he played and beat were fired last season. There are 4 games this year against guys on this list (2 Falcons, Seahawks, Cardinals) so there are more opportunities to get worse (or better if your an optimist). Matt Rhule's only wins in his career have come against coaches who have either been fired, or are on the hot seat this season. Much like at Baylor, a Matt Rhule Coached team has never beaten a quality opponent (unless you want to count NO last year week 2, but they still didn't make the playoffs sooooo not really). If you lose to Matt Rhule, you will probably lose your job soon. Tepper has inexplicably held on to Rhule for yet another season and no one knows why. You would think a Hedge fund Manager is aware of the Sunk Cost Fallacy, but here we are. Looks like it's going to be another long season homies.

My Sunday afternoons will remain free just like last season.

Until they actually win a game, I won't think they're capable of it

This team fuging sucks

Way more things can go wrong on any given passing play (sack, QB fumble, tipped pass, interception, receiver fumble) than on a run play (RB fumble).

I do data analysis for a living (and I love it). Truthfully, I have like 6 requests lined up over the next week or so but it's football season so this became top priority. Also, my dream job would be to watch film, chart plays, and then crunch numbers in terms of success/failures against certain fronts, players, positions, teams, etc. If you or anyone knows anyone in the FO that wants someone to do said job, I am available.

That is a major takeaway (pun intended) I got from this. Our defense was if nothing else, completely solid, and that was without collecting turnovers through that entire process. If we can cause more turnovers, our defense will be downright scary moving forward.

I keep seeing everyone bring up the fact that we were "The #2 Defense in the NFL last season!!11" countered by those that say "No we sucked donkey balls" and I'm kind of over it. Truth is, we weren't as good as some say and we weren't as bad as some say. They were really good at some things and really bad at others. I'm going to break it down into three categories so we can understand what the team did well (top 10), what they didn't do well (bottom 10), and what we were kind of okay at (ranked 11-22 or so) and what was done this offseason that may affect these rankings for 2022. I'm not going to look at total yards or total TDs allowed because that would not paint a true picture of the Defense's capabilities due to the offense putting them in bad situations all year. Instead, I will look at the efficiency stats (the per play, per drive kind of stuff) as a better illustration of our teams true performance because we gave the opposing Teams a better starting position by nearly 2 full yards compared to the rest of the league: So having that context, let's take a deeper dive on whether or not the defense was actually good or not Things we were good at Yards/offensive play Net Yards gained per pass attempt: Rushing Yards/Attempt Penalties in general and limiting them Limiting YAC (#1!) Blitzing a lot Pressures per drop back Tackles for loss 3rd down conversion percentage Number of plays allowed per drive (surprisingly really good) Net yards per drive (heavy correlation to our bad offense) Things we were not good at Turnovers both total, and per drive: Percentage of plays we allowed a passing TD INT Percentage RZ TD Percentage Things we were just OK at QB Hurries per throw Knockdowns of the QB per pass attempt Missed Tackles QB Completion percentage Allowed Adjusted yards/pass attempt Yards per completion QB Rating allowed 4th down conversion percentage Scoring Drive Percentage (this stat has strong correlation to how bad our offense was) Avg points scored per drive Overall Defense DVOA 2021 Summary: Personally, I'm a bit surprised at how there was significantly more good/Average than bad. What the stats showed me is that we are a controlled aggressive defense that limits penalties and is overall pretty solid. There are definitely some concerns, mainly RZ defensive play calling if we are giving up that many TDs per trip, but there is a solid foundation to improve upon, and our Run defense wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was last year. PFO's overall defensive rating of 15 is pretty reasonable considering our strengths (aggressive, getting after the QB) and weaknesses (turnovers, and big plays allowed). It cannot be understated how BAD our offense was last year and how much their ineptitude really hurt our defense. They constantly gave opposing teams a short field to work with and could not sustain drives due to turnovers and overall sucking. 2022 Outlook Adding Baker Mayfield as our QB might be the single best offseason acquisition for our defense. If he is even remotely average than the Team improves dramatically. Truth be told, if we had Teddy as our QB last year, we had the potential to win way more games based on how the defense played. Other offseason acquisitions include bolstering the LB corp, adding a pass rushing DT, adding a solid vet safety, and hiring Steve Wilks and Paul Pasqualoni. Offseason losses include losing Reddick and Stephon Gilmore to FA. While I'm not sold on Pasqualoni as an upgrade, Wilks in the DB room is a huge boost as far as coaching goes. He helped make Josh Norman, Kurt Coleman, and James Bradberry pro bowl caliber players and he should be a great mentor for our young secondary. While we lost Reddick, he wasn't the best run stopper, and I understand why we just picked up Henry Anderson to help with run support. Brown will need to step up in a big way, but the LBers we signed, while not the best in coverage, are good run stoppers and should help bolster our average run defense. We seem to be banking on a lot of our young talent stepping up in YGM, and the secondary as a whole. Truth be told, our secondary looks pretty damn scary on paper and I think they are the true engine of our defense. We are built to lock down the receivers and allow the DL/LBers enough time to get to the QB. Snow loves to blitz, and he loves to do it exotically. This defense is giving me some real legion of boom vibes in terms of construction - not necessarily results just yet. I have come out of this deep dive surprisingly optimistic and actually excited to see what our defense can do this year with better coaching and a better offense to support them. Statistically speaking, they seem to be on the cusp of being a truly GOOD defense, especially if they can start getting turnovers.

I almost feel like I should lock this because OP got it in one. No need to discuss really.