KSpan

As I've heard a few times before, "Hope is not a strategy."

It doesn't, but Teddy was a sunk cost and keeping him would have been choosing to destroy any chance of on-field success. It was a lesser-of-two-evils gamble and while the staff unfortunately did not appear to choose wisely with Darnold vs. the other options out there, that still doesn't make getting rid of Teddy the wrong decision.

8 yr. old me playing Tecmo Super Bowl knew that it was an advantage to have all my plays running out of the Run & Shoot formation because my friends didn't know what play was coming. I'd like to assume this would be standard knowledge among NFL-level coordinators as well.

Fitzpatrick, Tyrod, Dalton, Trubisky, and Jameis were all signed to 1 year deals this offseason. None of those guys are any kind of long term plan and likely wouldn't do much better, if at all, but at least someone like Trubisky has actually won some games (if they were bent on a reclamation). Any of those guys though do replace Teddy, prevent the Darnold situation, and still send the signal that wilting/failing like that 2020 offense did in crunch time isn't acceptable. Again though, this whole thing should have been precluded in the first place by not dumping Cam as they did.

Teddy's a loser, or at the very least not a winner, and proved it last year. The team simply couldn't keep him because of how painfully obvious it became (and continues to be now in Denver); keeping him would have been a huge alarm to the team and indicator that they weren't truly looking to compete. That's ignoring that, rightly or wrongly, he came across as uncoachable and not a team player. Maybe Teddy was on to something regarding the staff but you can't have a guy like that at QB. Where the big gaffe came in was compounding the mistake with Darnold. As has been said a million times the proper play was to keep Cam in the first place.

I'd say it was less that he was set up to fail and more that he was stepping into a high-risk unknown situation and ended up being unable to overcome the challenges. Can't blame him for betting on himself but set up to fail implies the situation was intentionally constructed for no chance at success, and I don't see that being the case.

Tough to draw a conclusive judgment on this specific situation outside of clear observations such as Cam's arm, similar to those pushing that last year was hard to use for judgment due to COVID, new staff, etc. Longer term observations such as Rhule's impact and overall time performance and preparation, however, are still pretty fair game IMO since there is continuity in Rhule and he made the decision believing it to be the better alternative even given the circumstances.

They got lucky with Kingsbury but he did bring more NFL experience than Rhule and was smart enough to hire a staff with NFL coordinator and HC experience as well.

They weren't giving up Minshew until they had a good look at Lawrence, so he was never an option for Carolina due to timing. Wouldn't have hated it though.

It's Teddy Time.

Teddy sucks, and his suckage does not mean that Brady, Rhule, and others (such as players they hitched their wagons to like Teddy, Sam, Whitehead, etc) don't suck as well. If the offense continues to be crap then it will make it more clear just how far the suckage extends and can hopefully be fixed.

I suspect they did it much earlier in the week and are just now announcing, or at the very least were planning contingencies/the path forward throughout the week.

I think the difference here though is that the picks being discussed were at a glaring position of need that continues to be an Achilles heel. DT (assuming Brown isn't completely flaming out) and CB were definitely improved with these picks, but OT and the OL is by far the crappiest unit on the field. There was clear logic and reason to take those tackles over who they did and yet they didn't.

$4MM or more of that is dependent on Carolina winning the Super Bowl and Cam being named MVP, so it's realistically about $6MM.

It was Rivera's (and Hurney's) time to go, full stop. The thing to be wary of was Tepper getting cute and then being he could outsmart the NFL, which is what appears to have happened. Any time one undertakes a change there is risk of it not working out in a best case. A quote to exemplify: The enemy of the best is not the worst. The enemy of the best is 'good enough'. Perhaps cliche, but sums it up exactly.