woahfraze

Absolutely not. That’s too much for replacement level player. Bryce may be that. Or he may turn into something more. If you can’t see the flashes, you’re willfully blind. There’s more bad than good right now, but there’s less bad than there was earlier in his career. He’s only 24 and he’s showing signs of improvement. He may never become consistent enough to justify a long term contract, but he’s shown enough to roll the dice on what effectively will turn into a 2 year, $30MM contract for the next two years to see if he can earn something longer. Sure, in his one season starting, Howell managed to throw for 3,946 yards and toss 21 TDs, but it took throwing the ball an astounding 612 times. He also threw 21 INTs (for a particularly egregious 3.4 INT%). For all the talk of him being a deep ball thrower, he still only averaged 6.4 YPA, with an average air yards of 5.6 yards per attempt. And for all the excuses of Washington’s line giving him no protection (65 sacks taken that year), he was only pressured on 22.7% of his dropbacks, which is a few percentage points lower than what Bryce has had to deal with each year (24.2, 26.7, and 24.0%). These are all numbers that are at best roughly equivalent to Bryce’s production the past two years. It’s wild to me people can claim so confidently that he’s a better QB.

This is a partially bad take. Willis is the only guy mentioned here that can reasonably be expected to perform at a level higher than Bryce. Winston and Minshew is washed, and Howell was not good in Washington as a starter and didn’t field a single snap this past year. I swear the only reason people are obsessed over him is that he went to UNC. You’re not going to have better success, or even potential for success with those guys as your QB as you would with Bryce. Now, if you want to argue this thing from a production per dollars perspective, that it’d be better to roll with one of them instead because we could allocate the savings elsewhere on the roster, that’d be a better argument IMO. I’d disagree with it; relying on a QB making less they $5MM/year that isn’t on a rookie contract is not a winning strategy. But I could see the argument that it’s possibly a viable alternative to Bryce on a $25MM/year contract. But no, none of those QBs are better than Bryce.

There’s been online/fan talk of moving Moton to LT for years. I’m sure those conversations were also had internally and it never happened. So that’s not a realistic path forward.

Nijman wasn’t terrible. But I wouldn’t describe his play as good either. I think he’s still best suited as a swing tackle off the bench. And unfortunately Brady Christiansen cannot be relied on given h injuries as well We should resign Nijman, but we need to bring in someone else either in free agency or the draft to give us an alternative in the event he doesn’t perform. Free agent options are pretty bad unless there are some surprise cuts, so the draft is probably our better option. With our overall needs, would be nice to shore up the defense in Round 1, but if the value that’s there is in a LT, I think you have to seriously consider that. If Ickey returns and can still be effective, I think you can move him or the new LT over to RT since Moton will likely be retiring in the next couple years.

Absolutely the 49ers. They of course are a good team, and it’s incredible what they’ve done through all the injuries they’ve had. And Kyle Shanahan is a great coach and offensive mastermind. But I want no part of the Rams and Sean McVay. They and he are basically a better version of the 49ers and Shanahan. Also, it’s very hard to beat a team twice in one year. I don’t think we could do that to the Rams. Am I confident we could beat the 49ers? No. But they didn’t blow us out of the water with better talent or impose their will on us when we played in Week 12. We came out with a bad game plan and executed poorly. That game was winnable. I think the 49ers will be better prepared, but I feel more comfortable matching up with them than the Rams.

He was fighting a jam 2 yards from the line of scrimmage. Absolutely not OPI.

I think if you look at Cam Newton’s rushing totals, there is an argument he should be in the HOF. I wrote a post many years ago comparing his TD total to those of great RBs of yesteryear’s past. Unfortunately I cannot find that post, and I don’t recall the specifics, but the takeaway was that players above a certain total rushing TD were all in the HOF. And those players were all RBs that I was comparing Cam to. At the time, Cam may not quite have been there yet, but if you projected forward, he was on pace to easily clear the hurdle. I have no idea if he ended up doing that since his career was cut short. That being said, even if he did make it to whatever that threshold was, I think he was too polarizing a player, with too short a peak, for voters to put him in the HOF.

Ickey barely shoved him. Shouldn’t have been a flag. But it was even more egregious than that. The flag csme out before Ickey shoved. Ref was reaching for it right as Ickey was grabbing Jordan’s jersey near the chest plate before there really was any forceful contact. Laughable it was thrown and laughable they didn’t pick that up after it was.

Part of the success in the 2nd half was that the offense kept the ball for 13:10 of the 3rd quarter. Credit to the defense for forcing a 3 and out on the Rams’ only possession of that quarter, but when the other team only has the ball for 1:50 of a quarter, of course the points scored for the half is going to be limited. But yes, further credit to the defense for in the 4th quarter, standing up and forcing their 2nd turnover in the red zone to prevent the Rams from taking the lead after having gotten gashed both through the air and on the ground on the prior possession.

You absolutely can start someone over him with the level of performance he’s shown over a large sample size. Doesn’t matter what his pedigree is. I think the locker room really does like him, but they like winning more. If there’s another QB on the roster that can beat him out for starter, it won’t be a problem. The issue is, as bad as he’s been, I’m not sure there is a QB that can so definitely beat him out in that fashion. A rookie is going to struggle because the 2026 class is pretty poor and just in general, the transition to pro QB is more difficult now than it has been in the past because the college game doesn’t require QBs to play under center or attack the areas of the field a pro style offense does. And the retreads are always a gamble. For every Darnold or Daniel Jones that finally puts it together after 5-6 years, there’s a dozen other busts who can’t.

As a general optimist who tries to be even handed, I was in the “I have hope” but it’s now gone category. I acknowledged that the bad games were more frequent than the OK ones which were in turn more frequent than the good ones. I just held out hope that he could put things together and more consistently perform at those mid and higher levels. But I’m off that train now. I think he can probably improve his consistency a bit from where he is, but it’ll never be good enough. He’s on the roster next year because he’s under contract, but I don’t think we should pick up his 5th year option and definitely not extend him. He may start next year too because there genuinely are not as many competent QBs as there are starting spots in the league, so the alternatives are all trash. But we’ve got to get fresh blood in the QB room and find our next starter.

Bryce is…a problem. And plenty of other blame to go around execution wise (Tet drops, offensive line holds or sacks given up to derail drives, XL stepping out of bounds to negate a catch). But WTF is Dave Canales doing? 13 carries at 5.3 yards a pop in a game that wasn’t totally out of hand. And lining up in shotgun and passing from the 1 on that 2 pt conversion? Maybe Bryce and the passing game could be a bit more effective in we leaned into that running game.

Oh absolutely. If we choose the extend him, it has to be for something more in the $15-$25MM range, and that’s assuming he demonstrates more consistent play. It’d be for compensation greater than the true journeymen of the league but less than the upper half of starters. His current play doesn’t support anything remotely close to what other QBs have gotten on the first extension. I believe the 5th year option would be for a bit more than this range, but that’d maybe be OK since it’d only be a one year commitment. What’s key is that the franchise doesn’t financially strap themselves by overpaying for their QB play. Honestly, if Bryce can be a ln average QB who is clutch on occasion, paying less money for that level of performance and having more resources to build the rest of the roster may not be a terrible place to be. Sort of a “lite” version of the benefit from having your starter on a rookie QB contract.

100% on the same page on context, and whether trading up made sense, and if your were going to, should it have been Bryce. I was a CJ guy heading into the draft, but I didn’t hate the Bryce pick at the time. But we have to make decisions for moving forward based on that context. The trade up and what we have up, regrettable as it is given that context, is a sunk cost. We have to decide whether the chance Bryce can develop further into a functional QB is greater or less than the chance you can find a retread or drafted QB that will perform better than him. I don’t know the answer to that question. It sounds like you do have an answer in mind, and it’s that the chance of Bryce being better than the alternative isn’t likely. Gun to my head, I’d say I probably agree with that take. But I’m not confident in it.

Yes to some degree, but the whole point of the video was that that applies to almost all QBs coming out of college. It’s not a Bryce specific problem. And those retreads you’re talking about may not have learned how to take those snaps from center yet either. They’re all growing/going through that process. Bryce absolutely was part of the problem his rookie year (and continues to be part of the problem) but Frank Reich and company committed coaching malpractice. It truly was a lost year. So really the question now is do you give him more time to learn or do you think there’s a better option out there. Maybe there is a retread that would be better for us, and maybe there’s a unicorn college QB that won’t have the same issues. But maybe there’s not. I have no problem having Bryce on the roster next year or the following on his 5th year option if we don’t think there’s a better alternative. Hopefully bring in some competition of course, but give it a bit more time to see if he can improve.

I’m not necessarily advocating sticking with Bryce. His highs show the ability is there, but there’s enough bad film out there to doubt that he can consistently enough play at a high enough level. But this video from Brett Kollman is a pretty good argument to give it a bit more time, whether that be rolling with Bryce just next year or picking up his 5th year option (not extending him). The gist is that the structural (wider hashes) and rule (3 yd vs 1 yd thresholds for intelligible offensive lineman downfield penalties) differences in the college and NFL have led to wildly different play calling and scheme diets in college. There is much more shotgun and RPO calls in college and screen/quick throws. This simply doesn’t set up young QBs to be able to play under center, which is more preferred in the NFL due to RBs being able to more effectively run out of that formation. They don’t know how to do it and have to learn. Yes, the NFL has trended more toward college style offense in the last decade or so, but it isn’t that pronounced and is more out of necessity than desire. And on top of all that, they ask the young QBs to do all this learning with coaching and other personnel churn going on around them. Bad results lead to coaches getting fired and new ones with different ideas on scheme and footwork and different terminology and playbooks coming in. It makes it harder on those young QBs to learn. So we may drop Bryce for a young QB starter in the draft and be in a similar situation. With a QB who is going to take years to learn how to operate in an NFL style offense and will struggle along the way. So you have to weigh whether the struggles we see from Bryce are more due to this learning process vs solely physical limitations on his part. It’s almost undoubtedly a bit of both, but the answer to that question I think dictates your strategy at QB over the next few years. And of course, you have to consider what the alternatives available are. I’m neither a Bryce hater or a Bryce Stan and I don’t have an answer to that question. But I do fear that if we move on from him, unless it’s for an established player, we’re just in for continued frustration on the QB front because it’s going to take a few years for a college QB to develop (Drake Maye’s don’t grow on trees).

I have not read the rest of this thread, so I’m probably stating something someone else has already stated, so forgive me. Gosh it just sucks to see this sort of potential from Bryce. Obviously you want the ability to be there than completely absent. But it just makes you wonder why the hell he can’t conjure it more often. We don’t need him to play like he did yesterday all the time in order to win. But why can’t we get 50 to 75% of that on a consistent basis as his standard of play? How can the John’s be this high and the lows be as low (and as consistent) as they are. Just baffling and makes the consistent poor play all the more frustrating.

Bryce hasn’t played well enough to justify that sort of extension. If the organization wants to roll with him at QB moving forward, any extension they offer should be commensurate with his play. For “passable” QB play (however you want to define that…I use the term generally to mean that he’s a game manager that you can win with if you build the rest of the team right but that he’s going to limit your ceiling and potentially lose you some games here and there; I do not think he‘s “the guy.”), the going rate is going to be a lot lower. Something more in the 3 years 45 million range. And if Young thinks he can get more elsewhere, then he’s free to try to do so. Whether that would be an OK decision depends entirely on the answer to the premise of this thread. Do you think you can meaningfully improve on Young? If the answer is no, whether yet be due to lack of attractive options in the draft or free agency and no one willing to trade a good QB for a decent price, then I don’t have a problem with rolling with Bryce (sans 5th year extension and/or with a reasonable contract) and taking some late in the draft flyers and exploring worse options (but better than Dalton) in free agency. Paying less for a QB does allow for the flexibility to build strength elsewhere on the roster, and then you hope you can upgrade from Bryce later.

I think this stat is based on where the lines open. And the first lines for that game had the Jets as +1.5 point favorites. Betters looked at that line and said: “that’s stupid, the Panthers are a better team.” Based on the early money that was bet on the Panthers, Vegas adjusted the line to the Panthers favored by +1.5 to get more money going on the Jets and have closer to a 50:50 split on money to both sides (which is how Vegas makes their money).

What in the world? White wasn’t signed even to a practice squad this far into the season for a reason. He’s a bum. We didn’t pick him up to backup Dalton since Bryce is out. We picked him up to provide insight into the Bills’ scheme and locker room, since he was on their team last year.

C’mon man. I’m probably more of a Bryce apologist than most on this board, but he’s a massive part of the problem right now. Is the supporting cast great or even good? No. Are the coaches preparing the team and putting that cast in the right situations to succeed? No. Have injuries depleted and disrupted continuity along the interior offensive line? Yes. Is it his fault that the front office traded away his most reliable WR, selected an athlete who can’t play WR in Round 1 last year, and his second most reliable non rookie WR is injured? No. But Bryce is simply not performing well enough. He’s not the worst QB to ever step on the field like some paint him. But he’s not playing confidently, he’s not executing, and because of that, he’s not mitigating his personal physical limitations. And those are limiting what the offense can do. He’s certainly not solely to blame and all of these things feedback into one another and reinforce one another. But he has got to shoulder a lot of the blame.

While it certainly is a gamble to take a guy with injury concerns, if that player is at a critical position (moreso in terms of positional value, not roster need), then it’s not necessarily an unforgivable sin to take that player if your medical staff thinks the player will make a full recovery. But RB isn’t a position that carries a ton of value. It’s not a QB, edge rusher or left tackle. So not a great look for Morgan when ignoring the context of the roster. When you add that in, the fact that we’ve got a player I think you could fairly characterize as “at worst serviceable,” and honestly more fairly describe as “median starting RB in the league” in Chuba Hubbard already in the backfield, and the decision to not just draft, but trade up for Brooks, becomes inexcusable.

I think Morgan has had the right general idea. The problem has been in execution. Bryce year 1, there were myriad issues from roster talent to coaching and scheme, but the offensive line was particularly glaring. So they went out and fixed the o-line by signing Hunt and Lewis. That fix actually seems to have been at least moderately successful. Last year, pass rush was a major issue. So they invested along the defensive line and at edge. The problem is, they either expended too many resources over correcting—partially because in free agency, when you’re a shitty franchise, you have to overpay to get talent in the door—or they didn’t make the right picks. It’s probably too early to pass judgment on the free agent class or draft picks as it’s only been one game. So we’ve got a small sample size and rookie edges may take time to develop. But if game 1 is any indication, they didn’t solve the problem.

It may not be entirely fair, as I think Morgan has not done a terrible job and Canales is trying to make chicken salad out of chicken poo, but I think everyone has to go. Morgan has had to build a roster while trying to clean up the disaster left by Fitterer, who routinely lost tons of value with the trades he made. He oversaw incorrect talent evaluations and made poor draft selections. And then he compounded these issues by mismanaging the salary cap with extensions, free agency signing, and other contractual decisions. I can’t imagine a poorer job of GMing. You’d think he’d have succeeded in at least 1 of these 3 areas. But the end result is a roster very talent poor across the board. With Tillis in the fold, Morgan has done a decent job on getting our salary cap in better shape such that we won’t be dealing with the same dead money hell a year from now that we’ve had the past 5 years. He seems to have whiffed on Leggette. But I think he’s done decently in the draft thus far. In free agency, it’s more of a mixed bag, but it’s hard to attract free agents to play for us without spending a lot of money given how dysfunctional the team is. So all in all, I think he’s been OK. What it really comes down to is how much of a hand he had in drafting Bryce Young. If he really was a dissenting voice in the room, then I might be inclined to give him more runway. If not, he’s got to go. We cannot know they. Only Tepper and the others in the organization know. As an outsider, I didn’t like the idea of promoting from within when the front office had done such a poor job. So without being able to know the answer to that question, I think he should get the axe in the name of creating organizational alignment with a new coach. Because…. Canales is not it. Yes he’s hindered by a limited roster, Bryce Young included. And this is coming from someone who probably falls middle of the spectrum between Bryce apologists and Bryce haters. I think with the right coach—one who opens up the playbook, one who runs tempo, one who lets Bryce rip it, and most importantly one who has the team prepared—that Bryce could be a serviceable starter. Basically, I could see us getting the Bryce we got at the end of last year on a consistent basis, rather than getting that for a few games here and there and then losing QB play the other 2/3 to 3/4 of the time. But Canales is not the coach that can make that happen. And while don’t want to make personnel decisions based off the sunk cost they is the trade and the number 1 pick, we should aim for a higher ceiling then that. With such a young and limited roster with so much turnover, you can’t punt the preseason. These guys need reps together. And you have to have the team more prepared. I know the coaches can’t make the plays for the players. It’s not Canales’ fault that Leggette can’t make an easy toe drag late in the 1st half and then Bryce fumbling on a scramble, which together derailed a drive that could have kept the game close. But it’s clear that he doesn’t get the most out of his players, in terms of their execution, and he certainly does not put them in the best position to win with his play calling. The 4th and goal call and preceding plays are probably the best example of this form yesterday. I don’t want to overreact from Week 1, but it’s really a gut punch after coming into the season actually having some hope. Not of the playoffs because I expected the defense to be pretty bad still, but to see such sloppiness and regression from the offense. I really was hopeful to see an offense similar to and building off what we had last season. So put me in the burn it all down camp. Hire a new GM, let him hire a coach whose football philosophies align with their own. Hire that coach from a winning organization/that’s demonstrated success. I know it’s not that simple. The Ben Johnson’s of the world don’t want to come here apparently. But Tepper’s got the money. Find the right philosophy in order to identify the right individual. And then throw the bag at them. Do whatever it takes. Unfortunately, I don’t know if there’s enough money in the world to make that happen. The franchise seems like career poison at this point.

I like what Morgan has done, but let’s not ignore the full context. Having your roster contain this percentage of contributors from the past 2 drafts also speaks to how talent poor we are overall. If our roster were already better, you wouldn’t see this many young players make the roster or if they did, be relied on to contribute in this way.