Jay Roosevelt

I'm kind of surprised the numbers project to look even that good. 

4 minutes ago, Bear Hands said:

Hi there,

I'm seeing retweets and narratives being driven, and it's kind of a funny thing.  So just wanna throw this out there:

Every single team in the league, EVERY TEAM, runs zone concepts on at least a third of their running plays.  Even ones considered power, and yes, even us last year post-Rhule under Wilks.  

It's all a matter of coach and their scheme/philosophy/style/background.  If you really broke it down, there are 32 schemes in this league, and this black and white, power v. zone dichotomy does not exist.    

Examples in CAR:

• Rivera's running game was zone-read, inside & outside zone blend.  Jet sweep and gap were deployed as well, but not as prominent.  
• Rhule's offense was a 50/50 zone/gap split under Brady.  Held mostly throughout Rhule's tenure  
• Wilks' was a gap heavy, pin & pull, power concepts focus with less zone (~35%).  Notably had some pretty diverse concepts that works for us in that monster Lions game last year.
• Reich historically is about 55% zone (primarily inside--he loves his split runs), with gap used in that 35% range.   

Elsewhere...

• Kyle's West Coast offshoot is zone-based, primarily outside.  Passing game is built off PA and motion -- the trick is to have consistent formations that deploy very different outcomes/create options all over the place to help spread the field.  Offensive disguises.   
• McVay is an interesting blend of zone but has more gap and trap involved these days.  And as many know, plenty of misdirect.

And bigger picture..

• Offensively, Sean Payton was one of the guys to really blend a WCO and EP effectively.  He uses a mixed-concept run game approach.  Zone, gap, the full bag.  The passing game, as we all endured when he was in NO, is a high volume of quick short passes to kill teams slowly and then inserts mismatches to get the bigger plays.   

So what am I getting at?

Yes, we have a new coach and a new scheme and it appears to work terribly.  But this idea that we completely changed our offensive language from an offensive lineman's perspective is incorrect.  It's a new scheme, a different playbook, but from a blocking assignment standpoint, we've changed the ratio of deployment. 

This is not a black and white league.  There is not simply zone v. gap.  There is not simply Spread v. WCO v. EP v. AC.  Everything is its own unique composition pulling from all parts of football life.   

Let's slow the roll with this whole pining for what Wilks ran.  It is not like you can go from A to B.  And then back from B to A.  What they can start doing is starting to tick up the gap calls.  It doesn't require a wholesale scheme change, especially when everything we have is already implemented.  You're not just flipping the script, it's all about the usage rates.  

Bigger picture offensive notes:

We are currently deploying the second highest rate of 11 personnel in the league (Behind the Rams) to help create mismatches because our personnel sucks, and we still can't do anything.  Reich's aging scheme is trying to leverage itself between the OLs we have and our QB...and none of it fits well together.  It's a bag of misfit toys playing with an outdated playbook.    

So the "why do we suck" falls into many categories in this regard.  Sure, the scheme isn't working that they've developed, situational playcalling sucks, positional-coaching itself seems bad, the players are underperforming, and we don't have certain personnel that virtually every team in the league tends to have these days (pass-catching RB, a shifty-speedster at WR). But again, this is not a magic fix that we can just rewind to Wilks' Scheme.  

Okay, thanks.           

Bear Hands for Panthers O.C. 2024!

I'd be happy with Kellen Moore, Bobby Slowick, Ben Johnson, or Wes Phillips.

Tepper had the right idea wanting to hire an offensive coach, he just picked the worst one imaginable.

5 minutes ago, t96 said:

Bieniemy can be added for HC

I fully expect him to get the Washington job once Rivera is fired, unfortunately.

7 minutes ago, ForJimmy said:

I think as @CRA stated we didn't want anther top 10 pick used on a linebacker.  I don't think it was realized how good of a pass rusher he could be and has become.  We also had Burns and needed a LT, QB. CB, and probably a lot more...

https://www.nfl.com/prospects/micah-parsons/32005041-5275-3418-9a2d-9826287ee445

NFL comparison there is Myles Jack who is more of the traditional MLB type of player vs pass rusher.  

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

1 hour ago, Mr. Scot said:

Yes they are.

Fans on here might have info about five to ten guys they like because they've seen highlights of them. GM's have to have info on hundreds.

They also have to be able to look beyond the highlights and attempt to project things like character, medical, etc. and not just in the first round, but all the way down to the seventh and undrafted players.

Fans on a message board thinking they could do better just because they picked a certain guy in hindsight are roughly equivalent to the people who think they could coach an NFL game because they won a Super Bowl in Madden.

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.

18 hours ago, mrcompletely11 said:

this isnt on campen

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

9 hours ago, Mr. Scot said:

We have big, "road grader" type offensive line personnel but we're running a zone blocking scheme that requires smaller, more agile linemen to be effective.

It's roughly equivalent to sending a big blocking tight end on a speed route while asking a small scatback to single block a defensive end.

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

17 minutes ago, Hugor Hill said:

I bet she is..............

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

51 minutes ago, Tbe said:

It’s mostly not being able to get WRs open quickly which results in more sacks and pressures.

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.

1 hour ago, Cam Lawter said:

I saw Frank Reich at a grocery store in Charlotte yesterday. I told him how cool it was to meet him in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother him and ask him for photos or anything. He said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?” I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but he kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing his hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard him chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw him trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Athlon Scout Magazines in his hands without paying.

The short girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Sir, you need to pay for those first.” At first he kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter.

When she took one of the magazines and started scanning it multiple times, he stopped her and told her " You're too short to be a cashier" and then turned around and winked at me. I think I know who he was talking about.  After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.

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

18 hours ago, mc52beast said:

Asking this so close to the end of a game? Most of us couldn’t tell you how many beers we drank.

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.

3 hours ago, NAS said:

Sadly we haven’t hit rock bottom yet

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

4 minutes ago, pantherj said:

Put in Dalton.

This. Otherwise Bryce may get killed.

5 hours ago, LinvilleGorge said:

Neal is a flat out bust. He's trash.

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

1 hour ago, kungfoodude said:

we had that plan, I have no idea why Bozeman, Ikey, Zavala, Mays or most the the rest of these guys are here. They literally do not fit that plan. 

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.

14 hours ago, mrcompletely11 said:

Sure buddy Sure.  It's never bryces fault.   Just leave him alone.  I got it.  

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.