Sgt Schultz

Yep, I'm that old.

It makes perfect sense. The Dallas Cowboys and their cross-town rivals, the Ft. Worth Foreskins.

That could be just the "rebranding" that the Commanders need!

I don't think it was tanking, I think it was somewhere between being lost, losing perspective, and stupidity. The truth is, you can look at our 2020 draft class last year and wonder what happened. Just the odds of almost everybody regressing independently are pretty small. I don't think we learned anything about that class in 2021, which for them raises questions that we should not have. Yet, here we sit: not really knowing if our roster full of young decent to extremely good talent, or have we spun our wheels? As of the end of last year, my own belief was the talent was better than our ability to put it in a position to succeed. Hopefully, with some new coaches that will change this year. We might see minor details like whether the guy we drafted to be a LT can really play LT in the NFL, rather than playing him at every OL position but LT to see if he is versatile.

One of my frustrations with last year is that we walked out of it not knowing nearly enough about our draft class. There was some potential there heading into the year, and we did very little in most cases to see how much or whether it would materialize. It's not like we were 9-8 and contending for a playoff spot. Maybe it's me, but I feel like the only guy we really got a look at was Hubbard. The rest we got either glimpses of or almost nothing at all.

So, let's look at the 2-ton gorilla in the room: what city would be in the fiscal position and have a political climate that would allow this kind of expenditure to happen? No place in California. They can barely get privately-funded stadiums built. And San Jose is locked up by the Niners. Not Portland. At this point, they are bleeding tax base. Not St. Louis. Their last-ditch effort to build a riverfront stadium was woefully underfunded. Earlier, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, and Oklahoma City. I can't speak to the fiscal situation of any of them, nor the political climate as it comes to building an NFL stadium. Generally, cities that have the fiscal means to build stadiums got that way by not going down paths like this. It is a bad time to try and pull off something like that. Cities may say they will do it, but saying it and being able to do it are two different things.

In his defense, Thomas played his college ball at Indiana, not Temple or Baylor. But, yeah. I thought Thomas would come into his own in 2020 and then maybe again in 2021. Nope.

Give me the Icky and Corral. Is Watson a better QB right now? Based on what we know, absolutely. But his cost in terms of a trade and salary cap was too rich for our blood right now and into the future. I don't think Corral is Watson, but I am also not sure if Watson will be Watson moving forward, either. Would a veteran LT be better than Icky? Who knows? Given our history acquiring veteran OL, Icky is at least as good a bet or better than a vet. Teams do not let LTs go that are serviceable to great unless they have the replacement waiting to step in, and that is pretty rare. Dominant LTs are about as rare as dominant QBs, so there is a lot of fool's gold in FA. All signs point back to the two picks.

Untrue. What Snow said was they needed to get a new tackling dummy.

Teams in need of a QB may have had Corral graded fairly high compared to other QBs and may have been willing to spring for him in the first round. But, here comes the IF. This QB class was weak enough that it depended on what other positions are seeing a run in the first round. If a team was in dire need of OL help (like us), the fact QBs were not flying off the shelf would funnel them in a different direction. Why use a first round pick on your #1 or #2 choice in a weak QB draft and wind up with your #7 OT choice in the second? It was pretty obvious somewhere around picks 10 and 12 that there was not going to be a run on QBs. I was a little surprised to see only one was taken in the first two rounds, but that created a decent opportunity for us and may have better reflected the general assessment of the QB class than seeing three or four of them drafted in the first round. The Steelers might have grabbed Corral in the first round IF somebody had taken Pickett earlier, but I don't know that anybody else was going to. To kungfoodude's point, teams below the Steelers had the chance to take him in the first round and passed. Teams above them that had second round picks also had the chance and also passed, meaning they probably weren't likely to grab him higher in the first round even had Pickett gone earlier. I'm not down on Corral at all, and I think he was a great value in the third round. I've seen some articles refer to him as a steal in that position. But I am not going to delude myself or set my expectations on him being first-round talent or readiness. That is setting him up for failure, even if he turns out to be the best QB in our QB room the day he walks in.

You summed up my problem with this past year: it left us pretty much where we were at this time last year. In fact, we may have more unanswered questions. And as somebody said, we were entertaining in 2020, which gave hope. We were like a bad movie in 2021. And Rhule looked completely lost. I don't know if Rhule has learned anything or not, because I have no idea who made the decisions we have seen since late in the season. Was it Rhule, Tepper, Tepper at the behest of Fitts, Rhule after being schooled by Fitts, or the janitor. People do change and learn, but they tend to do it very slowly and then only after some major event, like being canned, divorced, nearly meeting their maker, etc. All that said, if he divests himself of all non-HC duties and is successful in that role, I am good with it. I think he will be the first HC I have ever seen grab "total control," come to the conclusion it was more than they could handle, and give it up (on their own or under duress) with the same organization. If Rhule made/makes that decision on his own and it works, it takes somebody with a rare combination of the best human qualities. That is why it is extremely rare. My bar is the same as yours SCO96. If we can walk out of 2022 having reached the improvement we should have seen in 2021, I'll be happy. I'd have be happy with 8 or 9 wins, overall competitiveness, and a feeling that our roster is pretty solid in most areas.

Just tell Corral to watch what Darnold does very closely, then work diligently on doing the opposite. He'll learn plenty.

There are some good (and reasonable) points in the OP, but a lot of assumptions. We have no evidence that Rhule decided to hire experienced assistants versus being told by either Fitts or Tepper to do so. We have no evidence he gave up any of his roster control voluntarily. We have no real evidence any of the draft was his doing. We simply do not know, and we may never know. The covid situation made things difficult for him. Pretty much a complete roster makeover, save a few parts, paring down salary cap mistakes from the previous brain trust, having to bring in a new staff. All those things were made much more difficult. But did he bring in “the old buddies” because of that, or did he do it because that is what he does? He would not be the first coach/manager in any organization who surrounded himself with familiar faces. I agree with some of the Tepper analysis. People tend to assume successful business leaders and executives all walk around screaming and looking for heads to roll. That is a fallacy. Tepper seems to be more of the line that give people every chance to succeed before giving up. He did that with Rivera, he did it again with Hurney, and he is doing it now with Rhule. It is not necessarily fear nor avoiding owning up to a mistake. It may well be concern over discarding talent too soon that could have/should have/perhaps will succeed. I’m not at all sold that Rhule is that guy. My problem is he exhibited every quality of a 6-foot man in 13-feet of water last year. He mishandled almost every situation he touched. And I am not one of those who thinks a coach should only have two years. But there should be evidence of improvement, whether it shows up in wins or just a generally look that things are coming together. Quite the opposite happened here last year. He's the Panthers’ coach, and because of that I hope he pulls it together and puts and end to all this. I’m just not at all optimistic about that happening.

After sleeping on it, I came to the same conclusion I had last night: I don’t have a problem with the move. Teams have 2 or 3 QB slots on their roster. Before tonight, we had 2. One is filled by a guy who is right now a marginal backup, at best, the other is filled by a guy who should not be on an NFL roster. Maybe both fall into the latter category. Neither of them is under contract after 2022 (luckily). We just filled one slot. I don’t know if Corral is the answer as an eventual starter, but I also have my doubts that any QB in this year’s draft is the answer to that, at least without a lot of work and luck. That makes me happy they did this late in the third round instead of trying to do it earlier and selling the farm. The fourth would have been better, but the fact that QBs were starting to disappear and the fact that waited until round three provided the opportunity. I get the point that we should put the kibosh on trying to paint over the self-inflicted wounds of trading our entire day two slate of picks and just eat the poison pill we created. Philosophically, I agree. But that would have left the door further open for something stupid to happen with Mayfield or some other vet. It is still not closed, but it is not as wide-open as it was. As for Rhule, he probably is salty at the idea of drafting a QB instead of trading for somebody who has NFL experience. I’m not convinced his seat is as hot as the Huddle collectively thinks (only Tepper knows), but it is hard to paper over his past mistakes when he can’t take his third swing at a vet and “instant success” in three years.

Sorry I was gone for a bit. I just came back to. The last thing I remember was hearing the pick announced, and it did not start with "Ken....." Now if they beat into Rhule he's a tackle, you idiot, not a guard who is versatile.

If they eff this up, I could fire Rhule.....with a cannon.

Please, do not eff this up.

Had they acted like adults when Teddy criticized the coaching staff for not getting plays in fast enough, that would have been an option. Teddy was not going to be the answer, but his contract was set up for him to keep the seat warm for two seasons. They torpedoed that when they had to publicly fire back at him, because heaven forbid the coaching staff would have any flaws. And we saw every evidence that Teddy had a point with his specific complaint. Teddy or the coaching staff having issues was never an either/or situation. So, we spent a 2nd round pick (I'll accept the loss of the others) and $18.5M because we could not take a breath and not fire back in a way that made keeping Teddy around for another year impossible. Who knows, had they smiled and nodded, they may have even raised the priority of drafting his replacement last year. That would have probably been Fields (maybe Jones), and I don't know if he would have been the answer or not. But the odds of Fields being the answer are greater than the odds of Darnold channeling his inner Elway and being the answer. Plus, we would be $18.5M and a pretty valuable 2nd round pick better off. We may still have been looking for a seat-warmer, but without the cap drag of Darnold.

Hey, dreams are pretty much all we have......both with the team or with some of the interesting characters we have on this board.

I don't suppose you would like to place a small wager on that?

My problem last year was we showed no real progress from the year before, and probably took a step backwards. I don't necessarily think that is across the roster, but it was certainly at OL, QB, and probably WR. We chose to move players out of position and not look at some of the players we drafted when it was obvious the season was toast. Even if it wasn't, the guys we apparently thought were in front of them on the depth chart weren't producing (especially on the OL). That is all coaching. As for Darnold, unless we can grab somebody late that can take over the #2 spot (and who knows, possibly work into being a contender for the starter, but that is a longer shot), we should roll with him and PJ. Given the options I see, use our resources to fill other pressing needs is our best bet. Darnold has spent four NFL seasons in some of the worst environments for a QB one can imagine. If he is shell-shocked by being constantly under siege, I can get that. Even the argument the he looks bad or worse when he has time is hurt by that, because the clock in his head that is based on experience and is going off whether the pocket is clean or not. The 2-ton gorilla in the room is after four years of that, can the effects on him be broken? Can the mental clock be reset. At this point, I seriously doubt it. But, we got ourselves into this mess when we exercised the 5th year. Almost $19M is not bad for a starting QB, but right now it is probably 3-6 times what he has proven to be worth, based on comparing him to what I see in a QB 2022 earnings sort on Spotrac. My expectations for 2022 are not high and should not be hard for them to surpass. Basically, we are in the same place entering 2022 we were entering 2021. Our roster is probably better on paper, but there are just as many unknowns and gaping holes. The whole thing could come together, or the rest of the team could come together and look good despite our QB room. Or we may have a lot more work to do. The problem is we provided no answers or clues in 2021. The jury is out, and neither the prosecution nor the defense has any idea what that jury is thinking.

Here I thought I was about to read that we are in love with a long snapper or some guy who can play 4 of the 5 OL positions, but none of them well.

Ekwonu gets my seal of approval. For once in our lifetimes can we solidify the LT position?

Well, that clinches it. Superb Owl here we come.

Yeah, I don't see anybody taking Darnold at this point. He's ours this year, whether anybody likes it or not. Roughly $18.5M reasons. Luckily, unless we do something epically stupid, it is one year. While PT Barnum was correct (and probably an optimist), it is going to take a day's worth of suckers to find one big enough for Darnold's salary.