Jay Roosevelt

I don't recall a lot of buzz regarding Parsons as a pass rusher. He was viewed as an off-ball linebacker.

Again, not just any random fan off a message board. But there are fans out there who are knowledgeable enough to do better than some GMs. I think they'd need someone to help with the salary cap side of things and maybe with the actual negotiations until they gained some experience, but in terms of deciding what players to bring in, draft and trade for I have no doubt there are fans who could do a better job then many GMs.

I legitimately think there are fans out there who could do a better job than 1/3 of the GMs in the NFL. I'm not saying just any fan off the street, but there are some very knowledgeable fans out there who watch film and really know the game and could probably build a better roster than some GMs. It'd make for an interesting realty show. I can see it now: Hard Knocks: GM Edition. One fan gets hired by their favorite team to be the GM for 3 years. At the end of that time they'll either be fired or extended based on the results. Would be a hell of a lot more interesting than what Tepper and co. are putting on the field these days.

This. The OL was playing well last year. This is a scheme/fit issue and is 100% on Reich.

Yes, but this has apparently happened before with Reich in San Diego and Indy. Was it always because of this?

Brings new meaning to Dalton being called the "red rifle."

I don't know about that. Half the time it's like the line just collapses immediately.

What in the world is it Reich is trying to get his OLs to do that has consistently caused such awful results?

This is beyond bad players. Other than Zavala we know these guys are better than this. There HAS to be something BAD wrong with this scheme.

Should have let him have the magazines. Results would probably be better.

After that game? All the beers. All of them.

I thought at the time that not hiring Wilks full time was the correct decision because I felt we needed an offensive-minded head coach to develop whatever QB we would be drafting. That said, Frank Reich was nowhere on my list of preferred candidates. He may come from an offensive background, but he coaches like Jeff Fisher or John Fox. I wanted Shane Steichen, Brian Johnson, or Kellen Moore. I would also have preferred a young defensive coach like DeMeco Ryans or Ejiro Evero to Reich. It was so obvious at the time that Reich was not the answer. I thought bringing in a good staff might make up for Reich's problems on some level, and certainly Evero has been a good hire on defense, but nothing about what we've done on offense has worked. It's been the complete opposite of what hiring an offensive-minded head coach should be.

I've been a defender of Bryce from the start, but I will certainly admit that he has been awful at times and the arrow certainly doesn't appear to be pointing up at this point. Having said that, it is so hard to identify where Bryce's struggles end and the team's struggles around him begin. As has been said, the playcaller is meaningless if the scheme itself is the same bland, out of date, predictable garbage we've run all year. I think if Thomas Brown was retained and allowed to run his scheme under a new HC (Evero?) then we might just see a massive improvement based on that alone. Bryce has been very bad, there's no sugar-coating that fact now. But there are larger systemic issues at play here that we have to address before we can even say with any confidence that Bryce ever even had a chance to produce here. That starts with the coaching staff and should also include a GM who can actually acquire good talent rather than giving it away for peanuts.

Fitterer is an idiot for a lot of other things, but yes, this was a huge mistake. Not only is Burns not worth two 1sts + anything (there are only a handful of elite defenders in the game that are) but turning that offer down killed any leverage we may have had in negotiations with Burns. Once he turned that offer down he essentially backed himself into a corner where he either had to pay Burns whatever he was asking for, trade him for less than what the Rams offered, or let him walk for nothing. It's amazing to me the talent exodus that has taken place on this team since Fitterer became GM. The sheer number of good, great, or elite players who we have either traded, allowed to leave without much of an effort to re-sign, or released is laughable, especially considering the lack of talent that we've acquired over the same period. Most of the actual impactful talent that we have brought in we then allowed to leave for nothing. From Haason Reddick to Stephon Gilmore to D.J. Moore to Christian McCaffrey to Rasul Douglas to Denzel Perryman to D'onta Foreman if the list of players we have seen leave this team under Fitterer isn't enough to make you nauseous a list of the players he has spent money and/or draft picks to acquire and/or retain certainly is. From free agent "additions" like Pat Elfein, Cam Erving, Damien Wilson, Hayden Hurst and Miles Sanders to the trade for Sam Darnold and his miserable draft record that has left us thin at basically every position and has produced almost zero value after round 1 and his contract extensions for the likes of Ian Thomas and Robbie Anderson I can't fathom how this guy still has a job. And that's not even getting into the Bryce Young trade and pick, which certainly isn't trending in the right direction. The only positive moves his entire tenure has produced are the signings of Frankie Luvu, Austin Corbett, and Adam Thielen and maybe drafting Chuba Hubbard. Jaycee Horn we know is a good player, but that only matters when he's on the field and we could have had Micah Parsons at that pick. As big of a problem as Frank Reich is, Scott Fitterer has been for longer. It's true that he made yet another in a long list of blunders by turning down the offer for Burns from the Rams, but given his record there's a good chance those picks would have been wasted regardless.

Conspiracy theories. There isn't any plot to move the team; Tepper is just this bad at being an owner.

Ahead? They've been here for 5 years already.

This. Otherwise Bryce may get killed.

This. At least Ickey has shown flashes; Neal has been completely awful.

I mean, I get why those guys are here; they were here when Reich got here (minus Zavala) and had played well last year. The question is why we opted to switch blocking schemes when it should have been obvious that our players aren't suited for it. You shouldn't dismantle your OL purely because of a scheme change (assuming the line has shown they can perform in one scheme) you just don't change schemes.

I'm not saying Bryce hasn't played poorly. What I'm saying is the entire offense around him has as well. Bryce has been bad. The OL has been bad. The receivers have been bad, Thielen aside. The RBs have been bad. The scheme is bad. The players are bad and mismatched; so are the coaches. All I'm saying is ANY rookie QB is likely to struggle when literally everything around him is bad. That's not an excuse; it's a fact. Bryce has to be better, but so does the team and coaching around him.

Based on his play earlier this year, the only blocking scheme Chandler Zavala is suited for involves legos.

If his footwork is so bad why isn't the coaching staff addressing it? That is something that should absolutely be fixable.

Y'all act like Andy Dalton is Tom Brady or something. Any QB is going to struggle behind this OL with these receivers and no run game, especially against Dallas.

I doubt this offense would look semi-competent against Dallas if we had Mahomes at QB.