BrianS

Right. Except that they have everything to do with it.

He's played for the JAGS! Is that the organization you want to judge for consistency? Really? The stat you need to understand is that for the two years Minshew was in Jacksonville they only won 7 games. However, despite benching him repeatedly they won ZERO games with him on the bench. Here's a little deeper dive into his stats: There are three stats there which I find interesting. One, his completion percentage. It increased dramatically in year two. That's a great sign for a young QB growing into the NFL. Two, his TD%. At 4.6 for his career, it looks very much like another QB who is good but not great, Ryan Tannehill. Good but not great? I can stand a bit of that. Three, his INT%. At 1.4 for his career, it's amazing. Rodgers is one of the best you'll ever see at not turning it over, and his career average is 1.3%. Tom Brady is at 1.8%. Completes the ball, throws TD's, doesn't throw picks? Yes please. Big fan of his. I wanted him way, way more than Darnold. For reference, take a look at the guy we traded for on those same stats.

We're winning two more games. Tackle is NOT OUR BIGGEST PROBLEM! Watch the games! We have no inside anchor at all. Most of the sacks we give up are caused by . . . yes, inside pressure. We can't blow people off the ball for 2 yards. Tackles don't fix that.

Perhaps. But I've got to believe that another season of offensive incompetence like we've witnessed this year will end with Rhule being ousted. Now, I'm not keen to wait another year to see this happen, but at least we know he's feeling pressure now.

Nixon was not named OC, the Panthers only said that he would act in that capacity over the final five games. I'm still hoping we go after an actual NFL OC this offseason.

Ok, the thread title is misleading. The Panthers didn't say Nixon was the new OC, only that he was taking over for the final five games. I don't think he's the right choice, but at least they haven't made him permanent. They really need to go find someone from outside the org and they need to do it early so that person has the FULL offseason to put their system in place.

I do think the Darnold trade looks bad right now. Still, I have to keep reminding myself that we're now on our third QB in Joe Brady's system and NONE of them have looked consistently good. In fact, they all have the EXACT SAME PROFILE. Look good for a week or four, then look like crap thereafter. Teddy looked good . . . then bad. Sam looked good . . . then bad. Cam looked great . . . then bad. Maybe we need to fix the system.

Can anyone explain to me why Brady Christiansen is at left guard here? Even prior to the draft Daley had question marks surrounding his agility, but his strength and power were highly rated. BC was thought to be quick but perhaps not as functionally strong. It just doesn't make any sense. Daley looks like a guard playing tackle. BC looks light on his feet.

The trick to having a good line is only paying on or two guys top dollar and finding other guys who can not suck while doing their job. In particular, it's far more common to find teams paying most of their OLine money on the tackles than the interior. This is why I've been such a proponent of Brady Christiansen. Not because I am convinced of his ability, but because it's CRITICAL that we find out if he has it. If the guy is a LT, we need to KNOW going into free agency. Likewise, we spent a draft pick on Deonte Brown. The dude needs to play. If he's an NFL guard, we need to KNOW going into the offseason. If both BC and Brown turn out to be NFL players, our entire offseason takes on a different complexion.

This is factually inaccurate. There are 18 "on field" coaches on the Panthers staff. I'm not interested in the assistants, interns, etc. Just the guys doing the coaching. On the offensive side of the ball, There are only three guys with ties to Rhule: Jeff Nixon, Frisman Jackson and Matt Lombardi. On the defensive side of the ball, there are four guys with ties to Rhule: Snow, Evan Cooper, Frank Okam and Mike Siravo. On special teams, you've got Ed Foley. Of the guys with ties to Rhule: Jeff Nixon - has more years coaching at the NFL level prior to working with Rhule than he has years working with Rhule Frisman Jackson - definitely a Rhule hire, but was making his way up the ranks before he ran into Rhule. A former NFL WR, Jackson already had seven years of coaching experience at progressively larger schools prior to joining Rhule at Temple. Jackson left Temple and coached WR's for the Titans for a year before re-joining Rhule at Baylor Matt Lombardi - Was a scout for the Browns before he became a coach. Spent three years at Louisville before joining Rhule at Baylor, which he then left to become a coach for the Dolphins before re-joining Rhule here. Phil Snow - No real need to get deep here. Evan Cooper - This is one of the guys who makes Rhule look like a nepotist. His only experience as a coach has been with Matt Rhule. Strangely, a lot of his history is on the personnel side. Very weird. Frank Okam - Former NFL player Okam got his start at Rice for three years prior to joining Rhule at Baylor and subsequently following him here. As a six year NFL veteran, he would at least know what NFL coaching looks like, you'd think. Mike Siravo - Had a long career as a coach, including some time on the same staff as Rhule, prior to being hired by Rhule at Temple. Followed him to Baylor, and to Carolina. Ed Foley - A coach since 1989, long history. Did not immediately follow Rhule from Temple to Baylor, but did so eventually when the coach who replaced Rhule at Temple left. He then followed from Baylor to Carolina. As for the guys he hired that had never been part of his staff, the ONLY ONE without extensive NFL experience was Joe Brady.

Don't we still have an assistant GM position open?

We're definitely in a bad spot, but truthfully, the only "win now" move was Gilmore, and even that one has some upside in that if we lose Gilmore, we'll get the pick back as a compensatory. Darnold was a calculated risk that failed, though I still think the price was too high. If you look at Henderson as a third round pick, he's in a good spot. Even if we let both Jackson and Gilmore walk, the top of our CB room next year is Horn, Henderson and Bouye. And we get picks back for Jackson and Gilmore. The sky isn't falling, but it's definitely cloudy.

I think all the people being critical of the Horn pick have conveniently forgotten just how bad our secondary was last year. You cannot bring Henderson and Gilmore into any conversation about the Horn pick because neither of them were on the team at that point. We had tried drafting lesser prospects and gotten nothing worth mentioning. Horn fixes the CB spot. Done.

Wouldn't be against it, but it would be tough. He'd have to put on a lot of weight / muscle to do that. He's a lot smaller than TD was when he came in.

I like DJ, really do. There's been a lot of chatter on the boards here about "hospital balls" being thrown by our QB. When you start hearing footsteps as a WR, you start dropping passes and being less enthusiastic about running routes. Sounds like where he's at. Now, where I disagree with many of the Huddle masses is that many want to talk about those throws as QB responsibility. I think a lot of that is part of the scheme. You don't just scheme to get a guy open, you scheme to get him WIDE open. This means that you actively scheme to drag defenders out of areas where they can take those big shots, or at the very least don't drag defenders into those places. I've seen our scheme do both. I've always seen the problem with Burns. I think everyone can see his limitations against the run. But against the pass, even when he's playing well, he is heavily guilty of overrunning his target, making it too easy for the QB to just step up. I think he just needs to decide if he's an DE or a LB. If he's a DE, he's gotta bulk up and improve his strength so he has a bull rush to go with the other moves. If he's a LB, he needs to go to a 3-4 team. Not sure what to make of Brown. People expecting him to be Aaron Donald are surely disappointed. I was hoping for Star. Not ready to give up on him, but we do need to see him progress. Our team has a problem with run defense. I gotta be honest, it's damn near CRIMINAL to move Chinn further from the LOS when you know you are having trouble stopping the run. I think our problem is that we don't have a real FS. Burris is a SS, but not as good in the box as Chinn. Burris however would be even worse as a FS. Hopefully we fix that this offseason . . . somehow. Robby was never worth what we gave him. End. Jermaine Carter is that guy who should sit on the bench and be that reliable backup who gives our starting MLB a breather. He'd be great for that. Snow is fine, but he's gotta get that run defense figured out. I don't think he values run stopping DE's nearly enough.

I agree with regards to our OLine . . . but our ST's are actually in a good place right now. Our punter is #5 in the NFL for gross average, and middle of the pack for net average. The mess we had early in the year has weighed down our team numbers, but Edwards is doing well. Likewise with kicker. Gonzalez is having a career year with us. He's at nearly 91% for FG's right now and he's making great progress on his touchbacks. We gotta look at the big picture as fans and make sure we don't get caught up in how frustrated we are. For example, across the NFL, an average offense scores 24 points per game. If our offense was just "average", we'd be 6-5-1 right now. Likewise, the average NFL defense surrenders 23 points per game. Our defense is "above average" by that measure. The twist comes in that any time we give up more points than the average, we lose. It boils down to our offense being really bad, which is easily what we see on the field. Defensively, we are just painfully inconsistent.

I'm not sure where the idea that Rhule was an "offensive" coach came from. His past experience is actually very balanced. That's kinda what made him a good HC candidate. Positionally, he's coached: Linebackers, Defensive Line, Special Teams, Quarterbacks, Tight Ends and Offensive Line.

Broncos are relevant why? Can't we just:

That's really the bottom line. Three winning seasons with the best QB in franchise history and the greatest MLB to ever play the game.

This is where I disagree. The defense haven't been great, like we initially thought. But they've been good. If you take away drives less than 25 yards (aka drives where our offense crapped the bed) we gave up 20 points last week. Likewise, 24 the week before on the same metric. These are not outstanding numbers, but even so they are borderline top 10 defense numbers. Imagine how much better they could be if our offense could, you know, sustain a drive. I don't understand how we currently average 4 yards per carry over the season but we can't do something simple like sustain a drive. Doesn't that come down to play calling? Are we just getting too cute? Our problems earlier in the year were just about stuffing the ball in when we got close. Well, we solved that issue. Now we can't get down the field. Something is broken on the offensive side of the ball. Our line is terrible, yes. Our QB situation is quite murky. Consider however that our offense has the second most third down attempts in the league. Something is wrong there. WHY are we constantly in third down? Being the third most penalized team in the league doesn't help. "Don't beat ourselves" right? Our defense has faults, yes, but they are miles ahead of our offense.

Never forget that our SB defense went to poo right when McDermott left the building. WTF hasn't done anything this year. They have one win against a good team, and if you go watch that game against Tampa, you'll quickly see that it was actually the Bucs who beat Tampa, not the WTF's.

That doesn't change the fact that he hasn't shown anything aside from his time on one of king Andy's teams. And don't forget who the coordinator for that Super Bowl season was: Frank Reich. Pederson's team took a nose dive when Reich departed for Indy. Coincidence?

I'm not saying BC has been great against the eye test, but for heavens sake. He owns the fourth best rating on our roster over the season, as a rookie, often playing out of position. Can the guy get some snaps without it being forced by another injury? I swear I cannot understand this staff. While I generally don't use PFF ratings as a bible, by this point in the season there is enough data to at least see general trends. What I see here is that Taylor Moton has been pretty good. Sam Tecklenburg, also pretty good. Oh wait, we don't play him.

My concern about Pederson is that he has not proven successful without being under Andy Reid. He has shown exactly one season of offensive success outside of an Andy Reid team: 2017 Philly. That team just plain caught lightning in a bottle. Otherwise, he's been average. Now, average would be a step up for us, and maybe all we need, but that's what Pederson has been.

I read that at the time and agreed at the time. Unfortunately, it seems that Brady isn't the guru everyone thought he was. Maybe a step up from Gase. Maybe? What we effectively did was talk ourselves into the idea that Sam's problem was the situation. That's all fine and dandy, but what we followed up with was putting Sam back into nearly the exact same situation. A line whose play demanded he be a very fast decision maker and a scheme that might not be very good. Definition of insanity.