Sgt Schultz

It may have happened before in the history of the NFL, but I haven't seen it. There are certainly backroom deals, but because Manning said trees would tap dance before he played for the Chargers, this one was out in the open. In the end, everybody landed on their feet, which is a minor miracle. The Chargers didn't win a championship with Rivers, or even get to one, but they got closer than they would have without him and probably got closer than they would have with Manning the way things evolved.

That was actually a trade of players, not a trade of draft picks. San Diego drafted Eli and the Giants drafted Rivers, with the pre-arranged deal to swap the players. A rather unique situation.

I see my effort at eating, editing a post, and talking to my wife paid off in the last post sounding like some combination of Klingon and pig Latin. It should say the needle in my BS meter has not jumped once since October 9th. I guess I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.

Good stuff. We have a coaching staff that has "been there, done that." My the needle BS meter has not gone even jumped once since October 9th. Nor have I felt like I needed a shower after hearing one of our coaches speak. That is progress! This season could actually be fun again.

Probably not, but he is OOU. I think you could assemble the greatest NFL minds ever, including digging some up out of the grave, task them with using their incredible knowledge to create an organization and environment that would foster frustration and underachievement, and all of them together could not do "better" than we did during that reign of incompetence.

The case against trading a couple of first round picks (assuming that is beyond the swap of first round picks this year) is that your scouting staff and coaches don't see a guy who they believe is a franchise-changing QB in this draft. If you trade the picks anyway and they are right, you aren't making that deal again for a few years. Nobody is going to want your package of seconds, thirds, and fourths. So if you are going to do it, you had either better be right, have an abundance of picks to trade away, or be willing to trade some other valuable pieces if you miss. And most of the times I have seen this done, it has been a swing and a miss or a foul tip. It is a bad comparison because I think the 49ers roster is better than ours in almost every position. But, make them our roster, then assume Lance is a flop, and you have no Garoppolo or Purdy in the room. Maybe Corral is our Purdy, but we have absolutely no idea about that yet. Those results are not pretty, and there is no avenue up for a couple of years barring somebody releasing a QB that can raise the results. And I see that @mountainpantherfan2 just posted something similar.

There is also the possibility that the past team debacles attributed to him (and he is ultimately responsible for, whether they were his decisions or not) might be due to the personalities involved. Go back to the 4-3 vs. 3-4 mess with Rivera and read the room. Our defense stunk late in that year. Rivera had no answers. Hurney was a yes man trying to save his job. I doubt Tepper said "run the 3-4" but something like "maybe we should consider a 3-4." To a guy with no answers who probably felt the job slipping away and a guy who was the Panther's version of Mr. Haney (for those who don't get the reference, look up Green Acres), even hearing they maybe should consider it gets interpreted as being told the boss wants them to do it. Now go to coaching search #1 and read the room, which consists of Tepper and the same yes man who has an insatiable appetite for meatballs. Tepper has talked about sports science and reliance on analytics. Both our yes man and the snake oil salesman being interviewed latched onto that as their golden ticket. Add a plate of meatballs and you have a recipe for disaster. Tepper's main sins may be nothing more than giving the wrong people the benefit of the doubt and naivety in telegraphing what he is looking for. Those are on him, and I would say his obsession with analytics above all else and misunderstanding what an NFL HC has to do are also his to own. But, when the guy who should be trying to talk you back from the ledge knows more about a plate of meatballs than what an NFL HC has to do, off the ledge you go. And you hopefully learn from it. I'm not absolving Tepper from these things, after all, he is ultimately responsible. But given his chief advisor was Hurney and he was green as an NFL owner, what did we think was going to happen? Had he sent Hurney out the door before Rivera, maybe all this plays out differently, who knows?

Our personnel are perfectly suited to run a 3-1/2 - 3-1/2 defense. I say that in jest, but Evero can probably figure out how to make that work. If so, it would create havoc with the opposing blocking schemes. Regardless of what we run, some bulk and help in the LB corps is needed.

I was think that very thing......didn't we lose an owner over this a few years ago?

I think @mrcompletely11 alluded to Washington working with (whether it qualifies as development is in front of the jury) RGIII and Cousins at the same time. As that turned out it was a good thing they did, because Shanahan decided RGIII only needed one good knee in the NFL during the playoffs and sacrificed whatever his future might have been for one game. Dallas, back in the cave man days, brought Aikman and Steve Walsh in the same year with the intention of developing them both and trading one (we know which one that was). Aikman was not a sure thing when that started. As much as I think Shanahan screwed the pooch with RGIII, both of those staffs were very good. I'm not saying our current staff is not up to that level when it comes to developing young players, especially QBs, just pointing out that neither was the typical NFL staff, let alone the buffoons we had here recently. Most teams don't try to develop more than one QB because 1) they don't need to, and 2) it is above their coaching staffs. Hell, developing one may be beyond a good number of staffs in the NFL either because they aren't good enough or they are under the gun to produce NOW. But, good staffs can pull it off and wind up getting something in return for their efforts when they peddle one of them away. Back on the original topic, my concern is the definition of "going hard" for Carr. I like Carr, and I think he makes us a playoff contender when he walks in the door. The Raidahs situation during his stay has been a clusterf*#k, but then again, it has mostly been that since the 90's. His availability is an opportunity based on the Raidahs bumbling and getting stuck with McDipstick. But, I don't think this team is yet to the point that we are more than a contender for a playoff spot. I think he is going to cost more than I would like to see us spend. That leads us to a guy like Brissett to hold the reins until we draft and prepare a younger solution. So, I am okay with signing Carr......at the right price......which will very likely not be enough to sign him. I'm also okay with us drafting more than one QB (not in rounds 1 AND 2) and stashing somebody on the practice squad. We've been so weak at the QB position we almost have to throw some mass of them against the wall to see what sticks. Honestly, whatever this staff thinks is the way out of this QB dungeon I am okay with trying, with the possible exception of resigning Darnold and expecting different results.

Submitted for your approval, one narcissistic, mind-altered owner who thinks he is a football genius and thinks on another dimension. It is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of (deluded) imagination. It is an area which we call the Jim Irsay's Twilight Zone.

Well, either you aren't being cynical or we both are. When I mentioned we haven't done it in eons I could not think of a case where we actually did it more than once in the same year, which could be dumb luck. The fact that our winning seasons appear to be almost random, the smart money is on identifying talent, assessment of strengths and weaknesses, and as @Toomers just posted, knowing when it is time to move on from someone all being just luck.

There is a reason they are polishing their second Lombardi trophy in four years. KC does a good job of not only assessing what talent is available, but what their own needs and weaknesses are. The Panthers haven't done that effectively in eons. If we do one of those things well, we seem to whiff on the other. I'm hoping the new regime changes that.

And, at the same time you are suggesting SI, the LA Times, and several others don't know what they are talking about. So, pick your poison. Mark Davis is one of the least wealthy owners in the NFL, he is paying Gruden to sit on the sidelines, and would then be paying McDiptstick to join him. Nobody knows for sure what these two contracts equate to, but Gruden was reported to be around $10M a year and McDiptstick was making $4M a year as the OC for the Pats and reported to be making "substantially more" to go to the Raiders. So, the guy who is somewhere between the 29th and 32nd richest owner (including the Packers who are technically owned by no one in particular), could be paying out $18-$20M a year for guys no longer coaching plus, say, another $5M to whoever would be. But, the problem is not simply overall wealth (which for Davis may look big to us, even though he is relatively low on the NFL totem pole), but cash flow. How much of his non-liquid wealth is he willing to convert to liquid wealth in order to get rid of yet another coach he should not have hired in the first place? It saved Davis money to let Carr go, while at the same time it would cost a bundle to let the HC go. Even if he winds up paying the same money he would have paid Carr to others on the roster, it is still neutral. Given McDipstick's history and antics as a HC, anybody suggesting having him in that position creates stability is fooling themselves. But, believe what and who you will.

I remember seeing McGahee's injury and it put a knot in my stomach. Theismann's injury gave me that same feeling.

I just hope they don't break the bank going for the vet, and I agree with that plan. Carr sounds great, but probably not at a cost Carr will want or get. Brissett is probably more along the lines of what we should be looking to invest, unless they think Carr is "the guy." Some balance between patience and impatience is prudent. Impatience got us Darnold. Patience got us an extra partial year of The Process. There was an annual publication about the NFL years back (like in the 70's), maybe by the Sporting News, that carried an article about new coaches and how to build a team. The title was "Patience is a Virtue, Just Don't Wait Too Long." That still applies after all these years. The thing I see about the coaching staff we are assembling is that beyond the seasoned vets, there are young guys who may be poached, but also could be the line of succession if they do produce a winner. Especially with an older HC, knowing his replacement is probably in house is a huge plus.

We had people insisting those three premium picks were going to be at or toward the end of their respective rounds. They did not respond to the question of when they last saw the Rams. I think most of us realized those were going to be top third, if not top quarter, of their respective rounds at least for this year and next. I get it, when you are trading the player you want to convince the other team their picks will be 28-32 of each round. That's true whether the team is the 49ers, Rams, or Texans. But internally, you have to understand (and act on) the most likely scenario. Given not only the results but the reasons for the results and the likely trend of the respective teams, the 49ers were almost certainly offering end of round picks where the Rams were middle of the pack at best, and likely much lower. Back to the original question, we have too many other needs to be thinking about drafting a RB in the first round. I hope we get good enough everywhere else that picking a RB in the first round would be a reasonable thing to do.

I share your concern. As fans, the natural tendency is to see a budding dynasty at the first sign of progress, especially when signs of progress have been few and far between in the recent past (or even beyond). It's not a seven-year process, but it is also not a seven-day process (or seven-week or even month). If we turn it into one of those by jumping the gun chasing quick fixes, we are going to go down the same path as we did under The Process and Hurney before him. Anybody that watched Sunday's Owl and did not walk away realizing the gap between those two teams and us was sizeable is fooling themselves. We need a QB and improvement in other positions to close that gap. The question is how we go about filling those needs. I have a lot of hope/faith this coaching staff recognizes that for what it is. I also have some hope our owner has learned from past mistakes. He got carried away early in the reign of terror of Rhule and we tried to run before we were ready to walk. Predictably, we ended up on our faces, although that was admittedly a combination of not being ready to run and a brain that had no idea how to run.....or walk for that matter.

I'm more worried about his overall frame than his height. Not for nothing, but I hear his arms are too short, too.

If we can't agree on the definition, then we have nothing more to discuss on this.

We probably need to define terms. My definition of a bridge QB is somebody who is starting under center until the next guy is ready. The progress of the next guy dictates when that transition occurs. By that definition, while Smith was not designed to be a bridge QB when KC acquired him, he became one the minute they drafted Mahomes. As opposed to Favre handing the reins (albeit somewhat unwillingly) to Rodgers back in the day. Favre controlled when that transition took place even though Rodgers was the heir apparent. Had Favre not announced his retirement (the first time), he may have become a bridge QB in that last year in GB. As for Teddy, when they signed him it was advertised to be as a bridge QB with the possibility of being the answer. His contract structure supported that, with the decision point being after year two with a bigger salary in year three and small dead money. Then we effed that up when we figured out he was not the answer in year one. Had they been patient and stuck to the original plan, would they have drafted a QB in 2021? It was going to be either that or sign another bridge, with our without any thought they could be the answer. But one would like to think they would have thought harder about Fields (or Jones) than they did after their love affair with Darnold took hold.

What hot seat? He had seven years to turn things around.

I guess one huge difference is illustrated by the search for a "rock star" OC resulting in McAdoo. I remember people thinking higher profile candidates didn't want to work for Tepper, but it was more likely they did not want to be part of amateur hour in Charlotte. The point is that quality NFL coaches didn't want to be part of the Rhule circus unless they had no other options (or maybe the pot was sweetened a little if that speculation Wilks was told he would be first in line in the inevitability The Process was canned came true is correct). That does not seem to be a problem with Reich.

This. That was the allegedly the plan when we signed Bridgewater, unless he magically showed us he was the man. When he didn't show that, we got into a battle of public words and effed up any chance of drafting his replacement in 2021 and staying the course for a year. Just because our thin-skinned coaching staff at the time effed that up (with help from the owner) does not mean it can't be done right. Kansas City managed to pull off that impossible feat with Alex Smith to Mahomes over the course of a season. Unless people think Reich is as short-sighted as The Process. If that is true, we are screwed, anyway.