tukafan21

Honest question... why? What difference does him running a 4.49 vs a 4.55, in underwear and is largely dependent on your ability to get out of the blocks quickly make compared to watching his tape? You can watch his tape and see his game speed, you can see him take screens or slants and out run defenders to the corner, you can see him just run away from players once he gets going. He's 6'5", he's not a quick twitch speedster in those first few steps off the line like a Jefferson, Chase, Nabers. But once he gets going a bit, he has more than enough speed, you can see it in his film. If people ONLY want a #1 WR in the mold of one of those guys, then no, you're never going to be satisfied by T-Mac's speed or even game, because he's 6'5", not 6' tall. He can't do those things that they do, but they can't do the things he can because of his size, he will be able to make catches they wouldn't have a chance on. Yes we need a speedster WR too, but I think T-Mac as the #1 and finding that elite speed in a small slot WR is the better path. I think he runs sub 4.5 because I've seen his game speed, but with his size if he's slow getting out of the crouch and first few steps, so maybe not. It's why I've never understood people looking at the 40 time so seriously for the draft, there is nothing about it that directly translates to the field unless you're main feature is being that go-route specialist.

All of this is also why I think T-Mac should be the overall #1 player on our board this year. People like to say he doesn't have "take the top off" type of speed, well Bryce doesn't have the arm to take advantage of that type of player either, he can't out throw the defense like that and let the Tyreek type catch up to it. Bryce has the "heave to get it 60 yards for a jump ball" type of arm, exactly the type of pass that is T-Mac's specialty and literally what he is best at as a WR. Bryce doesn't have the zip it into a tight window arm, but he has the touch to put the ball where he wants to. Like when you have a 6'5" WR with a stupid catch radius and vice grips for hands so you put some air under it and put it where only he can reach instead of forcing it into a window. If you want to help Bryce succeed, you draft him if he's there, no matter who else is on the board.

I don't need my QB to have arm talent for me to like them, but I do put a lot of weight to how it can affect that player's max potential when it's as bad as Bryce's is, particularly when combined with his overall size. Even the most ardent Bryce supporters can't honestly deny that Bryce is likely to have the weakest arm of all starting QB's his entire career, maybe some year's he's only in the Bottom 5, but short of pumping steroids, that's never going to change. I'm not a historian of the league on QB's arm strength compared to others, but how many players with that weak of an arm compared to the rest of the league, also was an above average QB for a sustained period of time? I know Brees didn't have a great arm and that's the comparison people like to use for Bryce, but again, he's smaller and weaker armed than even Brees was, and Brees is one of the biggest outliers in NFL history as is. Which is why Bryce was also betting on him becoming THE biggest outlier in league history at the position. Bryce doesn't need to become any certain type of QB for me to like him or to be considered a success. But he does need to become a QB who raises the play of your team, who can drag you to wins when needed, and has you as a contender in more years than not (all teams have down years, but the great QB's have their teams winning playoff games more years than not). It's why I didn't want to draft Bryce, because I just never did, and still don't, think he has that potential in him for a long period of time and at a high level. Can we put the perfect team around him and we get the right schedule in any given year for a player like him to lead us to a high seed and maybe make a run, sure of course. But those teams don't have sustained success because it takes the perfect combination of rookie contracts and lucky picks/signings that all pan out at the right time. They have a great regular season, flame out in the playoffs, and then go back to being that team that either just misses the playoffs or just makes it in to lose in the first round every year. Picking in the 13-20 range every year, always missing out on the true elite talent in the draft but still not contending. Is that who fans want us to become? I know it's better than what we've been for a while, but I want better for my team, I love our Panthers and I want us to win the Super Bowl. Prove me wrong, I want to be wrong, I don't want to be stuck in NFL purgatory, I don't want to need to have to find a new QB in 2 or 3 years because we still can't get into the playoffs. But I am who I am, and I am someone who doesn't keep his team colored glasses on at all times to only looks at the positive, I look at realities and call them how I see them. And I see Bryce as our path to NFL purgatory at best right now and it scares the living hell out of me. Bryce, prove me wrong.

The problem is that A LOT of people here haven't been saying this, they've been saying these last 10 games have proved he's the player the team thought they were drafting and are completely confident that we've found our long term QB solution. I think people pointing to the KC and Eagles games as proof of his play are just sticking their heads in the sand when it comes to elite teams overlooking games that they consider easy wins, like we were to those two legit SB caliber teams. You can not believe that's a thing if you want, and yes, sometimes those great teams blow the doors off the bad teams (like the Lions did a few times this year), but there is a LONG history of those being closer than they should be games because the better team was looking ahead. And again, my biggest fear with Bryce isn't that he'll be a complete bust. It's that he's going to become that 23rd best QB in the league and we get stuck in NFL purgatory for the next decade. To me... THAT is not finding your long term franchise QB, that's just taking shots to your nuts every season and coming back for more.

Again, #1 flaw in your post is you're trying to compare Bryce's last 10 games vs the rest of the league's 17 game averages (for the 2 TD stat). As like I pointed out, Nix falls below your 2 TD a game average number, but over his last 10 games he's actually at 2.5 per game. If you pull the best 10 game stretch for all QB's this year, I'd be quite confident in saying Bryce is NOT in the top 16. You don't want to remove the one (or two) best games from Bryce's averages but you want to include up to the 7 worst games from other QB's you're comparing him to. And the reason I picked Goff was because he was so close to the 2 TD per game number over the course of the season. Hence why I then did his best 10 game stretch to give a better comparison to your Bryce number, which again, he came in at 2.6 TDs per game. If you want to use Bryce's 10 game numbers, you need to do equal comparisons for everyone else as well. It all also again just ignores that this magical 2 TD per game number you like to point out is only the case because of 20% of the games in the stretch you're talking about, if not for that, it's significantly less.

All fair, but also see the post I just made at the same time you did this one. I think people are reading too much into my "anti Bryce" posts as, "he sucks and he's still going to be the worst QB ever." That's not the case, I'm just pushing back on this narrative over the past few weeks of, "we've found our franchise QB" as I still just don't see it. My biggest issue with him is his arm. There are a lot of pretty standard throws that he just can't make, at least not to the level that even an above average NFL QB can make. In particular it's the throws you have to drive into a small window, key word there being "drive" and not "place." As yes, I'll give him credit, he does have some nice touch to get the ball into some smaller windows. But I'm talking about that 20 yard curl route in the seam where you have a safety over the top, linebacker underneath, corner closing on the WR, and he needs to fire it in there before any can step in the path for an INT or just break it up. Or even that 15 yard out route on the opposite hash that he can't loft over there but needs to drive it in there. He just doesn't have THAT kind of arm, and in today's game, with how much better corners are getting, it's something you need to have in your bag if you want to be an above average QB. Especially when you're Bryce with the rest of his physical limitations that the has, such as his deep ball, which is easily the worst amongst starting QB's.

I also need to reiterate that nothing I've said means I'm rooting for him to fail, when he's our starting QB come week 1 next year, I'm 100% rooting for him to have an MVP season and show he can be our franchise QB, as that would be what is best for this franchise. I just don't see it happening Sure, I no longer think he's the biggest bust in NFL history who shouldn't even be on a roster like I did after last year and the start of this one. I'll give him that credit, that he's turned it around and shown me more than enough to say that's no longer the case. But even after his turnaround, I'm now back to, at best, my pre-draft evaluation of him as someone who will end up in that "20-25th best QB in the league" category. Which unfortunately in today's NFL is purgatory, that's someone probably too good for a team to ever let walk in free agency but not good enough to ever truly have you be in SB contention. Honestly, his peak potential for me is probably a Sam Darnold this year, someone who has a beneficial schedule so you put up a good record, but in the end, never really stood a chance at this time of the year. Because in the end, his physical abilities and limitations are always going to be a hinderance for him at this level. It's like I said before we drafted him, Bryce needs to be the literal biggest outlier in the history of the NFL to end up being successful.

Yes, it would be totally fair to remove the best game or two from every player's stats when you want to look at averages, just as it would be fair to remove their worst game or two as well. Average stats do NOT equal average performances. You're basically trying to use Bryce's best (or two best) games of his entire career to skew his overall averages to make it seem like those are his average performances every week. I also think it's funny that you're arguing about removing a game's stats from a player's averages, but yet you only want to look at Bryce's last 10 games and not include the ones before it. Which is exactly why I didn't bother looking up QB's who averaged 2 TD's a game, because if you really want to do that correctly, you need to go through the game logs of every starting QB and only look at their best 10 game stretch this year, and no, I'm not going through that effort. Also, looking at QB TD averages just isn't a fair way to compare QB's performances either. Let me ask you this.... do you think Bryce is even in the same league as Jared Goff right now? Because according to you, Bryce's 2.0 TD average to Goff's 2.17 TD average (on the full season) says they're pretty close to even (less than 3 TDs more over a 17 game season). But if you dig deeper you'll see that Goff's best 10 game stretch this year was 2.6 TDs per game. Dig a little deeper and you'll see that we had 12 rushing TD's this year by players not named Bryce Young, while the Lions had 2 players who EACH had at least 12 rushing TD's for a combined 28, thus taking away A LOT more TD opportunities for Goff than were taken from Bryce. Or how about this one, Bo Nix had 33 TDs this year, 1 TD short of averaging 2 TD's a game over the full season he played. But he had 25 TDs over his final 10 games of the season, averaging a full half TD more per game than Bryce did over that span, or 8.5 TD's over the course of a full season. You're criticizing me for wanting to remove Bryce's best game when looking at his averages, but at the same time want to look at Bryce's 10 game averages against 17 game averages for other players. But as you can see from all this, looking at average stats over the course of a large sample size of games is just an extremely flawed way of judging and comparing players, particularly when one or two games over that stretch drastically skew the averages. And again, no, Bryce is NOT about average when it comes to yards. Because you're trying to compare his final 10 games yards vs the NFL's overall passing yards per game, where a few teams drastically lower than average. But like I pointed out previously, there were 22 QB's to start at least 8 games this year who averaged more yards per game than Bryce did over his last 10. In a league with 32 teams, being the 23rd best QB at something doesn't make you average, it's the literal definition of below average. And again, that's comparing Bryce's best 10 game stretch vs the full season for the rest of the league, if you pull out only their 10 best starts, I'm sure he falls at least a few more spots down in that order.

Not when you consider we're getting Brown back next year and that the bulk of our cap room this offseason should be used to sign the best pass rusher we can get. That's what I've been screaming about for months, everyone thinks we need to use these early draft picks to address the DL. But the DL is the position rookies generally tend to take the longest to get up to speed and be impact players if they're not true blue chip prospects. Address the defense (and in particular the DL) through FA, it's the quickest way to improve our defense.

He had 15 TDs over his last 9 games before the final game where he had 5 TDs Again, one big game skewing averages doesn't tell a full story. He had 4 games with 1 TD, 4 games with 2 TDs, and then 2 games with 8 TDs that then pull a 10 game average up to that 2 TDs per game number. So even then, it's 2 games out of 10 skewing an arbitrary number that you're using to point towards him being a better than average QB. You don't see why that doesn't hold up once you dig into the actual numbers and where they come from? Are you saying you want to disregard his other 26 starts to focus on the 2 that skew his averages to tell the narrative you want to believe?

Fine, remove his "worst" game from the equation then, he still has over a dozen other god awful games, but if you remove his "best" game, he doesn't have another one remotely close to it. And doing team averages really is pointless as the really low ones bring that down, it's about comparing him to other QB's. There were 19 QB's (who started at least 8 games) who averaged over 220 yards passing a game. And that doesn't include Josh Allen or Jalen Hurts. Who if you want to include some rushing TD stats, combined for 26 rushing TDs this year and almost 1,000 yards. Also, Allen would have averaged 233 ypg if he just didn't play week 18 instead of starting to keep his streak but not even attempt a pass before being benched. Over the last 10 games, Bryce averaged 210.4 yards passing per game. There were 22 QB's this year to average more yards per game than that, of which it doesn't include Hurts, Lawrence, or Maye, 3 players I'd trade Bryce for in a heartbeat (contracts aside of course as I wouldn't want Lawrence's or Hurt's contracts right now with the state of our roster)

This couldn't be more wrong Even if he keeps his upward trajectory, he's a LONG way away from being a clear cut franchise QB that would be stupid to trade away. People keep conflating "improvement" with "franchise QB" and they couldn't be further apart. And if he doesn't keep improving but plays equally to how he played these last 10 games, then no, he isn't going to play us into his replacement, he's going to play us into the 13th pick of the draft where we can't draft his replacement and we also still miss out on the other true elite talent. Like I said, NFL purgatory, it's the worst place a franchise can get stuck in, it's the Bengals of the Lewis/Dalton era.

Again, if Bryce's ceiling is as a Top 20-25 QB (which is right were I've said he will end up numerous times), we should be trading him for the best offer this season and going full rebuild, as I've said I wanted to do for a while now. If your QB is the 20-25th best QB in the NFL, you're in NFL purgatory. Never bad enough to have a Top 3-5 pick to get a new elite QB prospect and never good enough to actually be contenders. I want the Panthers to win games, but if the options are blowing it up and going full on rebuild or getting stuck in NFL purgatory, I'm going with the rebuild as it's the better chance at ever getting to and winning a SB. Today's NFL isn't the one where the Bucs and Ravens can win SB's with the likes of Brad Johnson and Trent Dilfer as QBs. That type of game manager just isn't going to get it done unless you have the PERFECT roster built around them. And even if you do get lucky to put that roster around them, you probably only have a 1-2 year window to contend before you can't afford to keep that team together under the cap. Basically, the 49ers with Purdy, except Purdy is better than Bryce and Canales isn't Shannahan. And look at how much of a mess that team is going to be in a couple of years, they had their window to win with Purdy on a rookie deal, but that window might have already closed.

Statistically, Bryce had 191 yards on 55.9% completions with 1 TD, 1 INT, and a 69.6 passer rating in the game. You keep wanting to point to statistics to back up your claims of Bryce being good, but when you actually look at the statistics themselves, they don't show him to be a statistically successful passer. Again, if you want to defend Bryce and his improved play over the final 10 games, feel free to do it. But don't try and point to statistics to back that claim up, because the actual on paper statistics do anything but that.

Don't bring up Week 18 as it's just a single game, and show me these amazing stats he's put up besides that which we're conveniently ignoring? In those 9 games after being benched and before week 18 he had 126, 158, 171, 191, 203, 219, 224, 263, and 298 yards passing with 12 TDs and 6 INTs. In those 9 games he also only had 3 games over 61.5% completions. Even the 298 yard game was only his 6th best YPA game over those final 10 games of the season too, with a 56.5% completion, so it's not like he did it efficiently (and it was against the 4th worst pass defense in the league). I'm not even saying you can't say he showed significant improvement over these final 10 games, because he has and I've admitted as much numerous times. But trying to use stats as the proof isn't the way to go, as statistically he was still below average over those 10 games.

I actually think XL will get better and pan out in the end, but even when we drafted him, I thought his upside was a high end #2. And yes, I've made it very clear my beliefs of how good T-Mac will be. Obviously as an alum who watches every game, I see/know Arizona players better than really any other prospects. There's been a lot of Arizona football (and basketball) players that I was convinced would be all star talent's in the NFL/NBA, including guys that were drafted in the 1st round for football and in the lottery for basketball, and no, they didn't all pan out (I see you Antoine Cason, Ka'Deem Carey, Derrick Williams, and Stanley Johnson in particular). But out of all of them, there's only two that I was a million percent convinced that they would be legitimate all pro and potential HOF type of talents. Rób Gronkowski and T-Mac, that's it. And with Gronk, I was literally telling all my friends back home that he was going to be the next big NFL TE after his very first game as a freshman. And no, it's not being a slave to the moment and saying that. It's hard to explain, but it's just one of those, "you know it when you see it" and from day 1, watching T-Mac just felt different, he's going to be THAT guy.

Because we traded 2 firsts, 2 seconds, and our best offensive player to get him and he's now 1 season away from when franchise QB's get signed to contract extensions. We shouldn't be anointing him as a franchise QB after a couple small moments of positive things at this point in his career, he should be clearly showing that he's the guy, if he's going to be THE guy. 2 years into his career with 28 starts and he has only one 300 yard game, 17 games UNDER 200 yards, 26 passing TDs (yes, he has 6 rushing), and 19 INTs, and only 5 games with a QBR over 61. Yes, he had a BIG game in week 18, but before that, he wasn't lighting defenses up, he was playing serviceably against poor defenses. Showing "huge improvement" like you said isn't quite as impressive when that huge improvement was from looking like legitimately the biggest bust in draft history. In the 10 starts after his benching, the timeframe people are pointing to his turnaround, he had a grand total of 3 games where he had more than 224 yards passing, with 2 of them coming in OT against 2 of the worst pass defenses in the league this year. Not saying you don't ask a valid question, but the above is the valid response to it. While at the same time we can ask the question of.... Why do all the Bryce truthers put so much weight behind his Week 18 game and disregard the previous 27 starts he made? Matt Flynn went 31-44 for 480 yards, 6 TDs, and 1 INT in the final week of the season. One big game in the final week doesn't make for a franchise QB, but on here, people are taking that game as the definitive proof that we found our long term QB solution.

Probably the same with Johnson If T-Mac is there at 8, it means the players already drafted would most likely be Ward, Sanders, Hunter, Johnson, Carter, Graham, and an OT. Realistically outside of the OT's and QB's, I think there is a clear Top 5 players emerging from most of the mock drafts and big boards in Hunter, T-Mac, Johnson, Carter, Graham. If/when the Patriots figure out their LT problem in free agency with all that cap room, that also then likely opens them up to go BPA of a non OT as well. So what we really need to root for is that neither the Patriots or Jets are able to sign OT's in free agency and it all but ensures at least one, if not both, end up taking OT's and letting one of those other 5 players fall to us. If that doesn't happen, I'm trying to trade back to pick up as many extra picks possible and then target either Burden or whoever the best pass rushing prospect is at that point. But if we can't get one of those 5 non QB/OT players, I think getting the extra draft picks would be better than picking someone there at 8.

That's not the point to that post though. If people want to take or pass on T-Mac because of whatever he may or may not be, that's understandable. But if the reason they want to pass on him in the end is because XL is already on the roster and our top draft pick last year, then that's the definition of cutting off your nose to spite your face. The XL pick is a sunk cost, we can't change it, and he still has a lot of potential that he can reach. But he's just not the prospect that T-Mac is, even if you're someone who has some concerns with him, he's still THAT much better of a prospect than XL is that you can't make your decision on him because of XL's presence. Our WR room past this next season is XL and Coker, and even this next season we're only adding Thielen to the room as of right now. That is a bottom 5 WR room in the league right now, so passing on a guy with legit Top 5 WR potential because you have a guy who might be a high end #2 if he reaches his potential would just be asinine. It's also all moot anyways, unless he comes out and runs like a 4.6, he's not falling to 8

It's crazy that like 3 months ago he was looking like he would play his way into a sizable free agent contract this offseason, now he might be near untouchable

Passing on T-Mac because you think he duplicates XL's role would be like saying you don't want great pizza because you already have frozen pizza rolls First, T-Mac is anything but a plodding big man that people seem to think he is because of his sizes. Second, his ceiling is so much higher than XL's that it's not even funny, honestly his floor is probably XL's ceiling.

In his two years at Colorado, they were 0-6 vs ranked teams and only 2-9 vs power conference teams with above .500 records He's just not a great actual coach, he's a glorified cheerleader who is great at social media and generating buzz. I'm sorry, but if you have the Heisman winner who played both sides of the ball and a supposed Top 3 draft pick at QB, you really should have won more/bigger games than they did. Everything about these Colorado teams were smoke and mirrors and it's going to be very apparent in 5 years when we look back and Shedeur is already a backup QB and Hunter is only playing half the games a season because his body has taken a decade's worth of hits in half the time.

Sure, but they had the #2 pick and aren't in that division with those QB's and HC's

Dak to the Jets for Rodgers and #8. #8 and #12 (and whatever else they'd need to include) to the Browns to take Shedeur. Rodgers gets 1 season to make a SB run while he mentors Shedeur for the season and then Shedeur takes over in year 2. Honestly, it wouldn't be the worst scenario since I don't think Shedeur is going to be a great QB anyways, might as well give him a redshirt year learning from one of the best to ever do it. And if I'm the Jets, I'm definitely doing that as I think Dak is still a good QB who likely can handle the NY media and will allow you to contend for the playoffs right away. They're not finding a better QB solution this offseason than Dak would be.

The problem with it is if Glenn, a legitimate HC candidate, was praised for turning them down to interview because he knew they were just doing it for the rule because they wanted Vrabel. Then what are they supposed to do except bring in guys who know they aren't getting the job just to satisfy the rule so they can make their hire? Vrabel is as legitimate a HC candidate imaginable, he shouldn't have been fired by the Titans in the first place, and there is a clear connection between the two of them. I get the point of the rule, but at the same time, there are situations like this where the rule was going to make any interview a non legitimate one because everyone knew who they were hiring.