Peon Awesome

Interesting.. we really do seem to be locked at 9 at worst. The 7-9 teams all ahead of us have a much higher SOS, so looks like we'd be 9th even if we beat the Saints, which is a relief. Atlanta beating Tampa is highly possible especially if the starters get pulled. I'm less optimistic about Denver beating KC with the 1 seed on the line and Seattle beating the Rams with the playoffs on the line, but both are obviously not impossible. Seems like we should resign ourselves to 8 or 9.

No doubt it's horribly tragic and no one thinks this game is more important than his health. Would have been disastrous if they tried to immediately finish the game. It's fair to wonder what they're going to do now though. I don't think that's disrespectful. If they choose to cancel the game and let the seeds fall where they may, that's perfectly understandable and I doubt anyone is going to riot even though it could be the difference between a 3 seed and a 1st round bye/home field advantage throughout for one of these teams. The Bills would gladly give up a 1 seed if it meant Hamlin is ok. No one is honestly questioning what matters more. The question is what is appropriately respectful of the situation and the players and balance that with what is feasible. If we're being honest about the situation, the guy is still on a ventilator in the ICU with no clear idea if he's even going to make it and the Bills are practicing and planning to play this weekend. Is that really more respectful of the situation than the league possibly rescheduling the game in 2 weeks at which point he might be in clearly stable condition and recovering? I don't know what they're going to do but it's fair to wonder how we decided where the line gets drawn.

I don't know if he's going to be a solid starter or not but I do know impatiently moving on from every player that didn't shine under a Rhule micromanaged team for the majority of their Panthers tenure is definitely a recipe for failure.

I was trying to think if there was any scenario where the game has no seeding implications based on the outcomes of week 18 and I don't think so. If Cincinatti loses to Baltimore, then obviously Cincy has to beat Buffalo to win the division. If Cincy beats Baltimore, they could jump to a 2 seed with a Buffalo loss or even the 1 seed if both KC and Buffalo lose in week 18 by beating Buffalo. If Buffalo and KC both win in week 18, then Buffalo would have the 1 seed/1st round bye in play by beating Cincinnati. There is literally no outcome that won't be affected by that game. Which is unfortunate because I'm sure most would prefer it be cancelled otherwise. Getting back on that field after witnessing such a tragic event has to be awful.

Darnold has done enough to warrant a contract offer. The question is how much? I think he's played himself into a Trubisky-like contract (2 years, $14 million with almost all the guarantees in the 1st year). Any more than that and I think you let him go elsewhere and potentially nab a decent comp pick.

There's been an alarming trend for teams moving on from their starting qbs and the new team being very disappointed in what they get. Darnold, Mayfield, Russell Wilson, Matt Ryan, Carson Wentz x2, DeShaun Watson (early returns at least). QBs are too valuable for teams to move on without good reason. That'd be my main concern with Carr. He's objectively at least average as a starter if not better, and should be an upgrade. His contract is overpriced but non-guaranteed, so you could take a flier and cut him if he doesn't live up to it. The problem would be the draft picks to give up. A day 3 pick we got from San Francisco would be worthwhile but I think with enough teams desperate for an upgrade at qb (Jets and Colts at a bare minimum), I suspect the asking price will be too high.

We're either going to be in control the entire game and win convincingly or lose by 1 possession. Loss of Horn against a talented Bucs WR corp, playing on the road and Brady summoning whatever he has to eek out a last playoff run makes me thing we might see the latter unfortunately. Hopefully I'm wrong. I didn't expect us to beat up the Lions like that. If we can exert our will in the running game, we should win.

I didn't believe it at first but that's actually right. In that scenario, Carolina, New Orleans and Atlanta would be tied at 7-10. The first tie breaker for the division is record between the tied teams. In the scenario you outlined, those would be: Carolina: 2-2 Atlanta: 1-3 New Orleans: 3-1 That would be a really sucky way to lose the division but amazingly in play.

Here's the full video for those interested

I get wanting more from the team, but we also need to get a reality check. A third of the way through the season we were the laughing stocks of the league and the betting favorites to get the number 1 pick. And to add insult to injury, since then, we traded away our best player plus our #2 receiver, and handed the reins of our offense back to Sam Darnold. Isn't controlling our own destiny to win the division with 3 weeks left kind of best case scenario for this year? Don't get me wrong; I think we can do better than Wilks and am embarrassed at our performance today. But I also acknowledge we basically played at the level of our talent.

Not great that the Bucs are looking like the superior team against the Bengals. At least the one point of solace was that the Bucs were supposed to lose and we would likely still have control of our destiny if we win out.

I don't get the people on the TE train. How many teams that drafted a TE in the 1st round look back fondly on that decision? Plus TEs tend to have a steeper transition from college to pros for whatever reason. Even Kyle Pitts was supposed to be a once in a generation freak that was closer to a WR1 than a tight end and he went from a promising rookie year to invisible most weeks this year. What's his best case scenario? Debatably ok value at the 4th pick? No way I go TE in the 1st and preferably not even with either 2nd.

The Steelers game is a good demonstration of why you don't sign Foreman to a generous extension. He's a solid and reliable option, especially when your team has the mismatch at the line of scrimmage. But he doesn't have any truly elite traits to elevate the offense when they're up against a good defense. Sure a lot of running backs wouldn't have been successful against this Steelers front. But why spend significant resources on a position where there's an abundance of serviceable talent unless you're counting on them making a difference in situations like these. Foreman at most probably warrants something like a 2 year $5.5 million deal; I'd feel better if it was about $4 million but I'm not going to grumble over a million or so. But more than that is money best spent elsewhere.

Yeah if we can't win a home game against a bottom 10 team with their starting qb out, we don't deserve to have our sights set on the playoffs. Come out unprepared and lose and it would take a miracle finish for Wilks to have any chance to keep the head coaching job. This is where he shows his mettle. You have to have the entire team firing on all cylinders.

So this Vikings-Colts got me thinking about the definition of "garbage time" as used by the tweeter, which is win probability of 20-80%. I figured most of this game would have been considered garbage time and I was right (from 1:16 left in the 1st to 2:31 left in the 4th) even though clearly a lot of that was far from what we would think as garbage. So then I went back and checked the Panthers-Bengals game. Once you look at the win probability chart, it makes sense the Panthers fare as well as they do. Cause by their definition, "garbage time" started at 12:26 in the FIRST QUARTER. Literally all but the first 2 and a half minutes wouldn't have been used in the calculation for the graph in the tweet, as amazing as that sounds. Part of it is that the Bengals were so heavily favored given how bad the Panthers were considered at the time that they nearly had an 80% win probability from kickoff.

San Francisco is finding out they could do just as well with a 7th round rookie as one they spent 3 1st round picks to get. Hell, I know he's barely been on the field, but the little we've seen from Lance so far makes him look like the worst of the 3.

Based on the chart it's anytime one team has over an 80% win probability. I don't think this is how people conventionally think of "garbage time" but I assume the writer used the term to simplify the tweet. Your suggestion is too extreme for that definition; that's gotta be easily over 95% win probability. But it does give flexibility in that it's not limited to any specific part of the game. I bet midway through the 2nd quarter of the Bengals game qualified by that metric which may be why we score so well.

32

This seems quite reactionary for Baker basically having one incredible drive and otherwise an OK game for him. Tremendously impressive for him to do it with less than 2 days of having the playbook. But to then extrapolate that to ask why players do so much better elsewhere than here is a stretch. Teddy Bridgewater got a couple starts in Miami, a team with a juggernaut offense and a fantastic new offensive minded coach, and in that time massively elevated Tua's MVP case with his underwhelming performance. Robbie Anderson somehow went to Kyler and the Cardinals and became even more of a minus. Meanwhile, we have Luvu turning into a legit force after being a special teamer his entire career. Eddie Pineiro was nearly run out of the league with his crappy fill in performances elsewhere before turning into an arguably above average kicker for us, following Zane Gonzalez who also revitalized his career with us. Our defense and special teams are actually pretty solid and at least decently coached. Our offense leaves a lot to be desired although is definitely better than the embarrassingly abysmal crapshow we had with Rhule.

The idea that this is an IOU for San Francisco seems pretty silly. What would that even look Iike? You really think whatever they might do to help us, with zero obligation whatsoever, would help us more than them losing a couple extra games starting Purdy and increasing the value of the picks we got from McCaffrey? Be real. Instead it's far more likely that the team realized San Francisco would be desperate for a qb in their playoff pursuit, there'd be a good chance they'd claim him off waivers, which would push his salary onto their cap and save us nearly 2 million dollars for a player that we had no more use for. You could make the argument for holding onto him for a comp pick, but a) that requires Fitterer to stay out of free agency which he hasn't shown a tendency for. Especially since we will have so few free agents that anyone would want, meaning we'd almost have to sit out of free agency completely to net a pick. And b) Baker’s value has tanked so much that at best maybe we're looking at a 6th even if we play the comp rules perfectly. Probably more useful to have an extra $1.7 million or whatever it is then a best case scenario of a 2024 6th round comp (effectively a 7th).

If he plays really good, some team is going to offer him at least fringe starter money (like Mariota or Trubisky this past year) and I have no interest in getting into that kind of bidding war for him. Take the comp pick. If he plays awful, he'll come dirt cheap but why would we want an awful backup? Maybe we hit a sweet spot where he has his ups and downs, but mostly turns into a decent but unspectacular game manager. In that situation, sure I'd offer him like a 2 year, $8 million contract if he's willing to take that. But again, if it turns into a bidding war, best wishes Sam.

I want to win the division but the frustrating thing is the team can't decide if they're really competing for a division title or a top 3 draft pick. They seem to follow up an impressive performance with a stinker. Still can't get the rancidness of the Bengals loss off us. Win at Seattle with another good performance by Darnold and I'll be all in. If they get their asses handed to them, I'm back to looking at the draft standings.

We have the benefit of getting the rest of the season to evaluate Wilks before we have to make that decision. I'm not sold right now but I am willing to keep an open mind based on how he does the rest of the year. I did really like his decision to go for it on 4th down and it showed growth; never expected to see him fake a punt in our own territory in the 1st quarter against a team with a struggling offense. If he keeps showing a willingness to evolve like that, I could be persuaded. I suspect his ceiling is peak Ron Rivera, a coach who can get his players to play hard for him and steer a team loaded with talent to some playoff success but struggles to give us tactical advantages that could help us upend teams that are clearly more talented on paper. I mean you could obviously do a lot worse but at the very minimum we better do an exhaustive head coaching search that includes interviewing several offensive coordinators.

Really? You wouldn't care if we traded multiple picks to take Zach Wilson because it means "we tried"? I definitely care if we try and fail. Also your definition of "trying" must be very restrictive. It's arguable that very few teams have tried harder over the last 3 years to find a qb. We signed Teddy Bridgewater to the biggest free agent contract for a qb that year, traded multiple picks for Darnold in 2021, traded for Baker, and traded up in the 3rd to draft Corral. I mean, you could point to teams that really didn't try to upgrade qb like the Lions or even the Seahawks, although they managed to coax a career year out of Geno Smith. But it's pretty disingenuous to say the Panthers haven't tried just because they didn't trade a ransom to draft a first round qb last year especially when those qbs are looking pretty underwhelming for the most part.

I literally said I wasn't going to waste my time scrolling through pages of threads from a year and a half ago to post a bunch examples to make you happy. I figured me immediately finding a couple on the first page of threads in my search at least gave the hint they were easy enough to find. But if you don't remember or just weren't active enough on this thread to see that several people were pushing for us trade up for Zach Wilson and the examples I posted aren't enough to change your mind, I guess I'm just going to have to figure out how to go to sleep tonight knowing Mr. Krovvy isn't convinced.