SameDamnThing

yes. they should have. and the roughing the passer personal foul was nonsense. but you remember your first year here when we would lose every game by poor clock management? that our offense would be moving the ball effectively in a 2 min. drill situation and we would inexplicably attempt to settle for a field goal after driving the length of the field? THAT is the real problem. your players are on the field executing. they're focused and they're moving the chains and then the play call is 3 straight dives and dumping in a field goal. there's no trust from the coach to the players. he cut them off at the knees. we could have buried them for good with one more first down. we left them way too much time for only choosing to secure 3 points. he lost games like this all through his first two years.

here's the thing about being imperfect. you can have a complicated past, have been an asshole, but also still be redeemable as a person. I think baker came into the league like a hotshot. he was the 1st overall pick. he acted like it. especially after his first season and during his first season. he rubbed people the wrong way. you can get away with that when you're dotting people up like tom brady, but you start to look human and everyone wants to put it back in your face. all those times you talked poo about the defense. every time you got frustrated with your WR unit. baker got some humility, but it didn't kill him or his career. his attitude has been visibly better and more sincere. he understands that his mouth can get him in more trouble than his arm can get him out of and he has adjusted. there's probably a lot of bad relationships back in cleveland but those dudes aren't in our room and the baker they know is this baker. the one that has shown maturity and realizes that a bad bounce on the QB carousel can put you on the bench for a couple seasons having to prove your worth to start again. we don't need to defend anything he did in cleveland because he's here now and what he does here is what counts for us.

it's very often said that teams don't like putting tape out there of how the offense is going to look in the regular season and I think the first team offense ran the way they'd run it with CMC in there. they sent a lot through hubbard last night that would have gone to CMC, obviously. I think the understanding is that they wanted to give foreman enough touches to figure out our blocking schemes in real time. hubbard is the highest player up the depth chart we can use but can survive without. from a scheme standpoint, he was never competing with foreman. he was competing against the guys behind him. I think one of the ways they plan to try to keep CMC healthy is to give him the ball in space on pitches and sweeps and have foreman be the short yardage hammer. hubbard will be the 3rd back and will take the plays that are left when we need to give CMC a rest and it's the wrong down and distance for foreman.

he probably deserves to be, but they'll trot robbie the crybaby out there in front of him and maybe even try to develop terrace marshall at his expense. probably going to be relegated to 4 WR sets and special teams.

we needed him right after we lost greg and he didn't sign here. that was his opportunity. I wouldn't be mad if we gave it a shot, but it's not like he's been dying to play here.

he's a schoolyard quarterback. these inarticulate routes and improv are perfect for his style. the running ability was impressive, but probably not a long term strength in his game. he'll lose some of that with typical league wear and tear. he's jumpy in the pocket partially because he's a little undersized and needs to be rolled out a little more than most guys to get clean looks. I like Sam, but when you're his size you almost have to be perfectly efficient and that is going to be a huge challenge. ball placement, timing, etc. he's def a prospect and better than where he was drafted, but I think you can say that about a lot of this QB class. guys really free fell down the board.

the interesting thing is that he's not a game manager by definition. he has risk built into his game and some days its going to help you and some days not so much, but he's a difference maker. he's the guy. it's clear from all factors that he's going to be a 1 no matter what. the approach with darnold has been near genius, and I say that with the critics in mind. they've elevated his stock to going from a guy you couldn't unload for free to someone now who a team might give you an asset for based on how competitive he's been in competition with baker. the TD throw was a dot with guys draped all over him. it's asset management that people aren't understanding, but might when we declare baker the winner and flip sam to a QB needy team that didn't make it out of preseason healthy at the position. the competition pushes mayfield to absorb as much of the playbook as he can, to perform on a daily basis in practice, and to take his reps seriously now that he has a serious challenger even if you've already determined him to be the winner. I think rhule feels like he owes PJ Walker something and I can't figure out what it is. he's been getting NFL checks a few years and that's awesome for him, but NFL quarterback he is not.

those poor kids were literally watching when this happened. that's heartbreaking to hear. those are big boy charges as they should be. the thing is that he's a first time offender and the jails are overcrowded. here's hoping that he gets a year or two to think about it, but part of me thinks his money will get him out of this as far as keeping his freedom goes. what will happen is that he will have to go play in europe for a few years if he wants to make it back to the NBA and even then it's not a guarantee. these aren't weapons charges or drugs. this is too radioactive for any team to justify using to get better. he threw it all away and even worse, lost his family for it. I am livid at Lamelo for being immature enough to rock with him after this came out and hope somebody gets to that kid.

bro reading your posts is painful. you have no clue about basketball. williams will likely start and his best attributes are his rim protection ability and his high efficiency scoring. early candidate for DPOY just based on role and usage.

ngl those pictures were far worse than I expected. he broke her nose and beat her from head to toe. awful. that's his wife and the mother of his children and you know that wasn't the first time. real sad. don't know how to cheer for the man anymore after seeing that.

Not trying to be positive polly over here, but there's some reason for optimism compared to years prior. if you want to project that lamelo will want to go elsewhere, how often does that happen on the first extension when the home team is offering max? sincerely, I really don't know the answer to that but it doesn't seem to happen much with franchise centerpieces. the team had obvious holes last year and they got inadequately filled. we got a big now that can at least do his part in rebounding and rim protecting and for a big part of the year we were the highest scoring team in basketball last year. with the way JB played him last year, Bouknight might as well be a rookie too. as sad as the situation with miles is, y'all know it probably means he's coming back here tail between his legs and the only max he's getting is a supermax with protective custody.

Duran can't make his own, which was probably the reason we didn't keep him. Williams has better hands in the post and if you're playing small ball he's going to hurt you at the rim offensively. Williams has a standing reach of 9 feet. You're just not going to be able to put a 6-8 wing on him and expect to win there. I think a lot of the hesitance regarding Bridges on a max type deal is that he's been our rim finisher and he's undersized for it despite having the vertical to make it work somewhat so they went and got a real big. That's no knock against Miles because he can play, but without Lamelo is he really a max guy or is he getting a lot of box score help from the attention Lamelo draws when he drives? Miles isn't the typical long and athletic wing who can drive the basket and create like a max player. He does a lot of things decent offensively. He's okay from 3. He's decent at the line. He has explosive hops and insane strength around the basket but he can't really get there by himself because he's not agile and explosive enough to make up for the length he gives up despite moving well for a bigger guy. So there's a little bit of an identity crisis there when you talk about what you need when assembling a team. I think he can start on a playoff team for sure, but people throwing out phrases like "budding star" and all that might need to pump the brakes. I don't think Miles gets a ton better from where he is today, and that's not embarrassing because he can ball. It's just that being able to play and being a max player aren't the same. Williams is going to make us better as a guarantee. I promise that much. Because the difference he's going to make as a shot disrupter and rim protector is going to tighten up this defense by a lot. He's got the lateral mobility, feet, length, and speed to be a Top 5 center defensively. Great anticipation. Great instincts. He can play up high around the free throw line and defend the pick and roll regardless of who gets free. He can take guards to the rim because he moves his feet and that wing span is going to make it tough to beat him to the basket. If the big pops free he has the size and athleticism to handle that, too. The question of his upside is going to be his ability/inability to face up and create offense and how effectively he can run the floor in a high pace offense. Lamelo has to love this pick because there's no such thing as overthrowing a lob anymore. Williams has sticky hands and ferocity around the rim. He's going to get 10 or 12 a game just on that. If he can make 3 or 4 buckets per game on his own you're talking about a 20-12 type guy who is disruptive defensively. Contesting without fouling is going to be important for him as a young player because he wants to get into every shot, but the upside to be elite defensively is there.