BrianS

Someone needs to tell John Ellis that's not how it works. Air yards and YAC are not at all related. YAC has nothing to do with the QB, and air yards have nothing to do with the receiver. In TB5's single season in Carolina, he averaged 7.2 Air Yards per Attempt. We all said Teddy had no arm and couldn't throw deep. We were children. BY is averaging 4.7 Air Yards per Attempt. It's so ludicrously bad I understand why we have people still trying to defend him. It can't really be this bad, can it? I'm afraid so kids. It's another example of a great college QB who currently looks like they just can't play at this level. Twelve months from now we'll know for sure. It's going to be a long 12 months.

In 2010, we went 2-14 and were awful. The current level of awful. We drafted a QB at #1. We went 6-10 in 2011. We were still a work in progress. But it was obvious we had THE GUY. Don't tell me we can't expect the same thing from Bryce Young. Yes we can. They were each picked at the top of the draft. I want BY to show me he's THE GUY. I don't care if we win. I don't care if there are mistakes. I just want to see WOW!

We've run RPO. People get RPO confused with zone read all the time. What Cam did was a zone read. It's primarily a running play where you are reading a key defender to decide whether the tailback gets the ball or the QB pulls and runs. Sometimes you'll have a pass option worked into that, but it's usually designed as a run. We would be so far beyond stupid to have Bryce do any of this it doesn't even bear conversation. An RPO is a play that often looks similar to a zone read at the mesh point. The difference is that the QB is reading a key defender to decide if the tailback gets the ball or he pulls it to throw. This is the stuff Bryce "should" be good at. We were sold he was a super smart guy, reading that defender and creating a no win scenario for him should be right in BY's wheelhouse.

That QB draw in Green Bay was legendary.

The only chance we have is to franchise Burns and flip him for 2 firsts. Even if you assume he's our best player, we aren't 1.5 years away. We're two. If we don't flip Burns, we're even farther.

It makes absolutely zero sense to let Reich go during the season. None. There is nothing to be gained. None of the candidates who we might want to talk to are available. If you're cleaning house, it does make some sense to show Fitts the door. You can start that search now, you can take your time and do it right. Maybe even hire consultants and get out of the way if you're Tepper. Then when it's time to hire a coach, you have a new GM in place and can bring in other consultants to help the GM bring in the new HC.

Just getting ready to say the same thing. No one is saying anything about the situation in SD except to say that if JH had a defense he'd be winning a lot more games.

I think he'll get there. He's relying less on his legs and more on his brain these days. I expect the Ravens will be in the AFC title game game this year. That Burrow injury combined with the Watson injury basically handed them the division.

I do think there's a reason we won't switch, and it's our QB. He can't run that scheme.

If that's his reasoning - no one knows for sure - he's in the wrong. In the NFL route concepts are married to the footwork. If you get to the top of your drop and your receiver isn't where he's supposed to be, you move on to the next guy in the progression. You gotta do it that way to succeed. It also gives your QB the ability to go to the staff and say "Hey, I'm doing my part, what's up with the receivers?" I am completely baffled by the mechanics our QB puts on film. I am equally baffled by the lack of attention it seems to be getting among those who watch for such things. When you watch Cam's rookie footage, he has some footwork issues - but not nearly to the extent Bryce does.

I haven't seen this guy's content before, but he points out some things that other folks aren't. Specifically, he's showing examples of open receivers and Bryce not doing what is necessary to get the ball there.

Young has the same problem Tua and Mac Jones have. Average at best NFL arm. So what's the difference? With Jones, they look an awful lot like the same player if we're being honest. With Tua, the difference is the talent. Tua had similar problems before his roster got absolutely STACKED with receivers. With the receivers he now has, Tua doesn't have to throw to "NFL Open" receivers. He's effectively doing exactly what he did in college - throw to guys who are gapping their defenders so bad it looks like the SEC. Put any kind of stress on that offense at all, and Tue regresses to below average. Bryce has had opportunities to throw to "NFL Open" receivers. Plenty of opportunities if we're being honest. He hesitates. Or he's not set and ready to throw when the opportunity is there. Take your pick of the two.

I suspect not enough is being made of this "collaborative approach". It's a train wreck. It leads to a team with no idea what it's identity is. Sound familiar? Somebody needs to step up and say "This is what we are". Before the free agency. Before the draft. Before the meat of the offseason program. I understand wanting to evaluate the roster and fit a system to the players. But somebody needs to read the room and make a decision. "We'd like to be XXXX but we don't have the pieces for that and we can't flip it in one offseason". That's a reasonable response. I never heard it. Now I look on the field and I see a team with no identity. Our defense is struggling - injuries have hurt immensely and our offense isn't helping. Our offense is worst in the league. What is our identity? I don't have a clue.

It's good to see our tackles start to turn it around. Corbett's performance is probably to be expected given the injury. Hopefully they can continue to improve.

See, there's a flaw in your logic here. You're assuming that with Stroud here we'd be running the same offense. I feel comfortable saying we would not. Stroud is a classic pocket QB who also has above average mobility. It wouldn't make sense to run this scheme with Stroud. It was well known that Reich likes big, strong armed QB's. His system isn't strictly West Coast. He does have some WC concepts, but he's closer to Erhardt-Perkins which marries the WC concepts with the Coryell concepts. Had Stroud been the pick, I think our playbook would look very different.

See, this is important right here. Average QB's make the routine plays. Good QB's make the routine plays look easy. Great QB's make the routine plays look easy and then they stack spectacular plays on top of it. Everyone can decide for themselves which of those best describes BY this year.

I've lived that. It's a miserable way to live. You *know* what the right thing to do is, but you second guess yourself anyway.

Didn't know Casillas had pointed it out, but I definitely have. His footwork is bad, and what I find most concerning is that when you go back and watch his college tape, it's better. Even against teams like Georgia, BY was playing with better feet and base. Not so surprisingly, his ball had better velocity and accuracy.

That's easy. You go from an inside zone / power running team into a wide zone / West Coast running team. That's two very different kinds of lineman. We were built to run people over, and now we're trying to misdirect and outflank. I don't know what film the coaches looked at when supposedly designing a scheme to fit the players. It sure doesn't *look* like the scheme fits our players. At all. And of course, in typical Panthers fashion, what talent we do have is paper thin. One or two injuries can derail us. All because we keep trading away our picks. Did you know that of our last 10 first round picks, only one (Shaq) is still with us that isn't on a rookie contract? Yes, some deserve to be gone - Big Vern, KB - but how much better would we look with CMC and DJ on the offensive side? The worst part about those trades is that we actually paid BOTH of those guys and then traded them. So we took the big hit for the signing bonus and made the cap hits for them on their new teams much easier to swallow. It's nuts how bad we've been at roster building.

Why do we keep calling it a myth?

Just a sec now . . . . why would he change? Yes, 2022 was a bad deal, but it was widely reported that Irsay was meddling heavily - some say telling Reich who to start at QB. So, before that then. His Colts offenses were 5th, 16th, 9th, and 9th in points scored the years prior. That's pretty solid. I don't know if Reich is the problem. I am sure that our personnel is a problem. The decisions made there have not worked. Free agents, draft, cap, trades . . . it's all been a mess. And it seems likely that Tepper has his mitts in that too.

The fact that Tepper's wife is somehow running any part of the team is a tremendous red flag. She is completely unqualified. Fire Nicole. Hire someone like Kevin Colbert to run the team. Let him put his FO together, carte blanche. Fire whoever, hire whoever. With that done, let that group decide if firing Reich is the right call. The further away the Tepper's step, the more likely success is to follow.

The only person it makes sense to fire right now is Fitterer. You fire Reich now and you greatly damage your ability to bring in coaches. It says to every coach - "You get half a season and if it's not working you're gone". Coaches aren't dumb. They can see that this is becoming a bad place to be a coach. If you want to fire Fitterer, do it. Clean it out. And then hire a consultant to find your next GM. No Tepper involvement at all aside from writing the check. After the season, let your GM and another consultant decide if it's time for Reich to go. If this is just Tepper doing Tepper things, it's pointless. It won't change the course of this season. It won't make us look any better by the end of it. Even if our problems are schematic and coaching, you don't fix that mid season.

The Panthers offense with Bryce at the helm is producing a whopping 11.7 points per game. The Pickles led Panthers averaged 12.3. Gross.

During the pre-draft process, it was so blatantly obvious that Josh McCown had a flaming man-crush on CJ Stroud. He liked Bryce, sure, but McCown clearly thought Stroud was the better prospect. At the OSU Pro Day, McCown was even talking about shooting hoops with Stroud in Charlotte. SOMETHING changed that - and it certainly wasn't anything Stroud did on the field. Tepper is a known believer in analytics. He bought hook, line and sinker into that (*&@$ S2 test. Nicole looked at Young and saw someone her size. The Teppers didn't have to influence the decision much. Just "enough". I think our staff "liked" Bryce, and the Teppers tipped the scale when otherwise the staff would probably have made a different decision.