Jay Roosevelt

8 minutes ago, Waldo said:

Anyone talking about building up Young by building a roster around him is delisional and can't face the fact they drafted Bust Young at an incredible cost.

I mean, you may well be right but what choice do we have at this point? Unless we get EXTREMELY lucky and have some stud QB fall to us in the 2nd or 3rd round we can't really do anything but build around Bryce and hope he comes around until at least 2025.

The investment we made in him means we basically HAVE to give it a go with him before moving on. Not that, again, we have much choice. What are we supposed to do, start Dalton and never give Bryce another shot? Release him? Trade him for nothing?

All we CAN do is build the best roster and staff around him we can manage and hope for the best. At least if we get the team around him decent then we'll be in better shape once his replacement is drafted.

We're probably 4-9 or something with Reich still coaching. Better, but still going nowhere fast in the long run. The OL is still a disaster, the run game is still hit and miss, the receivers still get little to no separation outside of D.J. Moore, who defenses key on and prevent from making a big impact and the defense is still keeping us in games only to eventually fold due to the offense's inability to do its part. This hodge-podge square peg/round hole coaching staff still isn't the answer only maybe it takes us a little longer to realize it.

The Bryce trade looks really bad at this point, but is FAR from the biggest issue facing this franchise. Worst case scenario is we're REALLY bad for 2 years and end up in position to draft another QB in the top-5 in 2025. It's the Tepper-shaped elephant in the room that is really going to hold us back in the long-term.

He's bad and regressing, yes. Historically bad? Not sure I'd go that far.

Realistically, it's going to take time but that doesn't mean we can't see substantial immediate improvement next season.

It starts with making the right hire at head coach and then with replacing Scott Fitterer with an actual real life NFL-caliber GM.

My personal preferences for those spots are Will McClay and Bobby Slowick.

In terms of free agency and the draft I would make the OL - specifically the interior OL - THE priority of the offseason. Release Bradley Bozeman and sign Miami's Connor Williams as our starting center, then sign the Patriots' Mike Onwenu to start at LG. Have Brady Christensen become our "sixth man" on the OL as he can play either guard or tackle spot when/if someone gets injured. 2024 will be Ickey Ekwonu's last chance at LT; if he doesn't rebound in a new blocking scheme he'll have to move inside to guard in 2025, which is also when Austin Corbett's contract is up.

I would franchise tag Brian Burns and trade him, even if we don't get the kind of return we'd like to get. There's no way I'm even considering paying him $30M/year. Based on his performance this year I doubt we can expect a 1st rounder, but it's always possible there's a team in the late 1st willing to give that up. If not, take what we can get and move on. Scott Fitterer's biggest blunder was turning down that offer from the Rams and that's saying something.

We obviously have to add some talent at WR and Tee Higgins is the obvious best option available. I almost hate to spend that much on a free agent receiver, but at this point it's hard to pass up the chance to add a player like Higgins, even if we'll have to overpay to sign him. That said, if we hire Houston's Bobby Slowick (who is my #1 choice in this scenario) then adding the Texans' Noah Brown makes a lot of sense as well.

In the draft it's too early to target any specific players but I think we need to focus overall on getting the best value for our picks. That may mean trading down from the top of the 2nd round or it may mean trading up. Whatever gives us the most impact out of the draft overall. Obviously WR, OL, EDGE, CB, and LB are all positions we should target.

Lock David Tepper in a broom closet somewhere?

The question is do you grade the trade and the pick together or separately?

I maintain that the trade itself wasn't bad at all. Compared to what other teams have given up to move up in similar deals we got a pretty fair deal. You can argue whether we should have traded up to begin with, but in terms of the actual trade itself the value wasn't horrible by historical standards.

Now, the pick... certainly it's not looking good right now. But even if Bryce does end up a total bust I still don't think it's the worst trade in NFL history. You gotta realize how much ground that actually covers.

1 minute ago, PNW_PantherMan said:

It doesn't look like he quit.  He's wide open and the throw is just missed badly.

I was talking more generally than about that specific play.

Well she's not wrong.

11 minutes ago, LinvilleGorge said:

Bryce defenders be like "Mingo fuging SUCKS!!!"

This may be an example of two things being true at once.

You can definitely tell they were trying some new stuff, but if that's the case it's going to take some time for the team to adjust and there's not really enough time left for that.

The basic issue of the defense knowing when we're passing pre-snap remains, however. And when your receivers are as bad as ours that's a big problem.

Meh. Not a huge deal in the scheme of things.

3 minutes ago, Mr. Scot said:

I think what ultimately doomed Frank is that he wanted to take a slow approach, and maybe wasn't as hard on players as he should have been.

Now with that said, I don't see how anybody could win in an environment that encourages the kind of bullsh-t we're hearing about.

True, but if Frank really thought the slow approach was the way to go it really shows a huge lack of awareness on his part given who he was working for.

In all honesty, it sounds like Reich was an absolute disaster of a coach. I don't blame Fitterer (as much as I think he needs to go) or anyone else on the staff for pointing out these issues to Tepper. If Reich and McCown didn't think pushing Bryce to improve his footwork was a priority then they both absolutely deserved to be fired because that's one of the most basic functions of a coach. I mean, what kind of coach doesn't even bother working on his rookie QBs footwork?

You can blame Tepper for the failed approach of hiring too many different coaches with different philosophies causing this, but this article makes it even more clear to me that Frank Reich was providing very little - if any - leadership as the head coach and was much more of a problem than we even realized.

I think you can view the entire offense this way on the field as well; it's a mirror of the dysfunction that has been going on behind the scenes. Too many cooks in the kitchen and a dysfunctional mix-match of different players who fit different schemes who might be productive in the right scheme/situation, but all together in this offense can't even figure out how to put one foot in front of the other.

3 minutes ago, Mr. Scot said:

I'd prefer Will McClay as the GM, but if you're pulling somebody from the Eagles, I'd take Brandon Hunt.

Hunt was expected to be the heir apparent to Kevin Colbert in Pittsburgh, but the team gave the job to Omar Khan instead. Hunt left for the Eagles shortly thereafter. Given the Pittsburgh connection though, he would be known to Tepper.

There is also at least the possibility that given his prior connection, Hunt might have enough clout to stand up to Tepper if he has the spine to do so. In that situation, you don't necessarily need a team president like Colbert.

I like McClay too. Just saying Tepper has made this whole process so much harder than it has to be by trying to constantly prove to everyone that he's the smartest guy in the room.

JFC. This poo isn't rocket science. Hire an experienced team president who can help Tepper run the organization and act as a buffer between him and football operations. Then hire a GM who has a good resume with (and an actual role in) an organization known for building competitive rosters. Then have those two work together to find the best coaching candidate that they can work with to build a winning organization.

Just one example:

PR: Kevin Colbert
GM: Jon Ferrari
HC: Frank Smith

Tepper has really made this a WHOLE lot harder than it should be.

We have a MAJOR problem on the interior OL. I know we're down both starters at guard, but you just can't go into a season with depth this awful and expect to compete.

52 minutes ago, 45catfan said:

-Moral of the story: Frank was a dinosaur, but we were playing 1950's ball last year during our winning streak as people are now lamenting letting Wilkes walk and Reich was expected to work miracles in year 1 while he apparently forgot how to teach QBs.

The fact is neither Wilkes nor Reich was ever going to be the answer. Tepper should have gone with a young offensive coordinator back when he hired Rhule.

Way too many conspiracy theories on here about Nicole Tepper. I seriously doubt she has as much influence as people seem to think.

In other words, David Tepper doesn't need any help to be a terrible owner. If we are keeping Scott Fitterer it's because he's Dave's rubber stamp/proxy, not Nicole's.

Steichen was my #1 choice last time around. Reich wasn't even on my list.

We'll see. We really have no choice but to wait and see. Hopefully we can actually manage to hire a decent HC who runs an actual modern NFL offense and hopefully that works out.

If not, it's back to the draft board in 2025.

No. Never.

I actually didn't think Bryce looked bad under center. No worse than shotgun anyway and the run game looked more effective.

It was a little better, but we're nowhere close to being where we need to be.

What happened with Horn?

I'd hire him in a second as GM, but head coach? Nah.