tukafan21

We very well may start 0-6 (although the Vikings at home is a winnable game) but as long as the team doesn't lose the fight in them because of it, there are a lot of winnable games after that. I'm obviously not saying we'll win all of them, but I think we'll have every chance to win any of these games.... Tampa x2, Atlanta, Saints, this division is still going to be average at best on the season, all games we'll be in. Texans, Colts, Bears all are bottom 10 teams at best and will be winnable games, and the Titans certainly don't look like world beaters either. That's 8 games I think we'll have a chance to win and we need to win 5 of them, any worse and this season will be an abject failure once that pick goes to the Bears. If we can go 5-3 in those games with Bryce as the QB, then I'll probably be able to halfway accept this season. Bryce's development and the pick we hand over to the Bears will be how I judge this season, please just don't be Top 5 (not that Top 10 will feel much better, but at this point I feel like that much is a given).

lol Ben Johnson turned us down last offseason, do you think us getting worse and not having our own draft pick is going to make us more attractive to him?

I'm kinda surprised to see everyone losing it right now, especially given how down on the team I was after last week. But I think this game was a huge step forward for us compared to how bad we looked in the first two games. If we didn't look so bad the first two games, I don't think people would be all that upset right now. Seattle in the rain is about the hardest place to play in this league and sure, not everything was great, but we still put up 27 points on them and our defense kept them in check for most of the game. It's not surprising that a playoff team from last year with a HOF coach was able to wear us down and figure out how to put up points in the second half, this was always an expected loss coming into the season. The false start penalties are absolutely frustrating, but in that environment and the way many of them happened, it was clear that it was communication problems and not just bad mental errors, they'll work on it and I'm not concerned moving forward. The most concerning thing to me was how much better the offense looked with Dalton in there than Bryce, especially with him losing Mingo as well. He just looked "NFL competent" out there, something Bryce didn't and scares me moving forward with him, but that's not the point of this thread. The other thing that has me worried is health though, our guys are dropping like flies out there, not good.

Assuming Caleb Williams keeps playing like he has been, it’s going to be very interesting to see what NFL teams do in the final month of the season if they’re in contention for the top pick.

He seemed like the obvious choice to me, his biggest negative was that past OSU QBs hadn’t been successful, what a terrible reason to pass him up to take a high school sized kid.

I actually think we might have a decent passing game. Seattle isn’t good against the pass to begin with and then they are having injury issues too, could be without their top corner and both safeties.

1% And that 1% was solely Fitterer and Reich asking if he was good with the pick and him saying yes. I think he is 99% responsible for forcing the issue and making them trade up to draft a QB, but I think at that point, he stepped aside and let the football people do their thing and make the choice. The guy just wants to win and he's not Snyder, he knows he doesn't know as much as these guys on the football side, I really do think he's letting them make all the football decisions.

Is this a serious question? If you're a real fan, you watch every game that you're able to, no question about it, regardless of your feelings about the team at that moment.

This year? Short answer: no Long answer: lol no

I don't know if Shanahan can fix him either at this point, it will be tougher to do after another bad coaching stint the Darnold had here. But I think if Darnold went to someone like Shanahan right after the Jets, we'd be talking about him as at worst an above average starter, if not better.

Maybe I should have clarified lol With the coaching staff we had, it was a god awful trade, because they clearly were NOT the right ones to fix him. But for a QB needy team like we were at the time, with players like CMC and Moore, I don't think giving up a 2nd round pick for someone who has the physical tools that Darnold has is a bad trade, in a vacuum. With the proper coaching, I think that would have been a really good offensive squad.

Completely false, I was very much on board with going after Darnold even before we knew the team wanted him, and I'm still not convinced the trade was a bad one. He's a player with all the physical tools you could want in a QB in today's game, his problem has always been in his head. Darnold had the worst imaginable coaching possible with the Jets and then somehow got equally bad coaching here. If he started his career with a coach like Shannahan, there's a chance we're talking about Darnold as an elite QB in this league. The fact that Shannahan was willing to dump Lance and all they had invested in him to go with Darnold instead, actually tells me that he's likely better than he showed in New York or here, and it was the coaching that ruined him.

If we're so bad this year that it would get Reich fired, it could be hard to attract a quality HC who would then be saddled with Bryce, who subsequently would have likely had a really bad season. I also think Tepper knows the analytics say it's best to hire a GM and HC at the same time and he's supposedly an analytics guy who hasn't followed that one yet. I think Reich and Fitterer are both tied here for at least this season and the next, but if we're not contending for the playoffs at the end of next year, they're both fired and replaced by a new combo. Although I could also see him firing Fitterer after this season and giving Morgan the job and 2 years to make something happen next to Reich for 3 full seasons to prove Bryce was the right guy. If it's not working by then, you blow it all up and start completely fresh in 2026.

Again, the team tanking is the wrong way to look at it because the players and coaches would never do it, closest is for a GM to purposefully put together a crap team, like the Cardinals have done this year. It's really about fans wanting the team to lose and being okay or even happy when they do, because you know it's for the best for the franchise long term.

Bryce is the wrong QB for that kind of offense. He's supposed to be the mental savant, you want an offense that is passing based so he can do his thing, particularly pre-snap. That's something you wouldn't get with a run based offense. That would have been a scary team with AR though, takes pressure off him and add his running ability to the mix, could lead the league in rushing.

I'm not for purposefully tanking, that isn't good for team morale, but I've always said that as a fan, I have no problem rooting for us to lose during seasons like that, I know it is what's best for franchise long term. I can stomach a really bad year or two if I know it's getting us the draft picks needed to turn things around, particularly if it's for a QB. I almost enjoyed the 2010 season, no, not early in the season, but after maybe 6 or 7 games, I was happier with each loss than I normally am from wins. At the time it was because I thought it would get us Luck, but getting Cam in the end was totally worth it of course. I personally wanted us to keep Rhule for the season because I felt like it would have ended up having a Top 3 pick, which then yea, we take our QB while keeping Moore and the rest of the picks, which would make this season feel just fine right now. I've never understood why you want to root for your team to win meaningless late season games in lost seasons, you feel good for a day or so but can significantly hurt your draft positioning. In seasons you're actively building up your team and you're just getting there, like the Lions last year, then it's different, then you want to win them to help build towards the next year, that wasn't us last year.

We gave up 2 firsts, 2 seconds, and Moore to get Bryce If we make that trade for Burns and get 2 firsts and a second, that means we'd still have a first rounder this upcoming here, maybe even our own and then still have two firsts in 2025 as opposed to right now, only having 1 first in 2025. So basically the same situation we're in right now where people want to trade Burns for 2 firsts. Or, we'd have given one of those firsts to the Bears and kept Moore, either way, I'd rather be in that situation right now, having that first rounder next year would make this season easier to be okay with how it's going. Especially if it was our own, and with how ours and the Rams seasons ended, there's a chance the Bears would have preferred to have their pick over ours.

I will call this out every time I see someone say we should have taken Parsons. Parsons was viewed by every team as a MLB, the last thing we needed at that time was to spend a top 10 pick on a MLB. The only reason Parsons has become maybe the premier pass rusher in the league is because the Cowboys had such injury issues that they started using him to rush the passer and he was too good at it to not move him there permanently. People can be upset about taking Horn over a number of players, but Parsons just shouldn't be one of them

More power to you lol I'm in Detroit and already told my friends the other day that I'm not going to pay what its gonna cost to go to the game here in a few weeks just to get abused by the Detroit fans while watching us get beat. I'll go and watch it at someone's house with them, but just not able to drag myself through the rest to watch in person.

I'm not too concerned yet because so many teams want offensive minded HC's these days, much harder for the DC's to get the jobs. Plus he's probably at least 2nd in line for DC's to get a HC job, gotta think teams will go hard after Quinn again this year if they want to go the defensive minded route. We also badly need him to stay one more year before getting a HC job so that we get those two 3rd round picks for him, need to re-stock our draft pick shelves

There is also the 4th camp that I fall into I'm certainly not in the "this is fine" camp and I'm not in the "we don't know what this is yet" camp either. I wouldn't consider myself in the "this is a dumpster fire" camp either, because I expected struggles this year. I'm in the "depressed that my pre-draft fears are coming true and the trade was a terrible value for the risk but know Bryce can still always turn it around" camp. I still see potential in Bryce, you'd have to be blind/dumb not to, but my initial fears of him just not being big/strong enough to be elite in this league have come back with a vengance. You can't trade what we gave up to get him and he not be an elite QB, even a pretty good one isn't worth what we gave up. Again, we traded CMC, Moore, two 1sts, and one 2nd for Bryce, DJ Johnson, and a 5th. Until/unless Bryce leads us to a SB (or at least perennial contenders with him being the reason why) then I'll never be okay with the value we gave up for the risk on Bryce. And right now, with how the season started, it just has me frustrated, maybe with myself, because I let all the Bryce hype/talk push my initial concerns with him out of my mind for a few months only for them to come flooding back really quickly.

Yea... I hate this argument regardless of the player/position. The "well they did this against NFL level players in the SEC" is the most flawed argument ever. The SEC had 62 players drafted this year. From that, 20 of them came from Alabama and Georgia (10 each) with another 12 coming from Florida and LSU (6 each), with Auburn, Tennessee, and South Carolina having 5 each. I'm not going to go through each team and count out how many players were defensive, but obviously you can assume about half the players drafted were on offense, give or take. Then consider that there are a few more players who aren't NFL draft eligible yet and are already that good, plus others who will be good enough in a few years but aren't there yet. So realistically, outside of 2 or maybe a 3rd team in the SEC each season, most teams have either none or at most 1-3 NFL quality level players on their defense in a given season, and even then, it's what, maybe a 25% chance that they're even a player who would be a pass rusher? (when talking about Bryce "escaping tackles from NFL level players in college") Yes, the SEC is by far and away the best conference in college football and yes, it prepares you for the NFL better than others. But the "they did this against NFL level players in the SEC" is just a fallacy as they really aren't performing against NFL level players most of the time, just really good college players.

Well first, I can guarantee I'm not one of those people who only now hate the trade, I'm not going to bother trying to search for old posts of mine, but I guarantee you won't find a single post I ever made about being happy with it, I despised it from day 1. I can only think of one throw off the top of my head of his that really impressed me, it was the one this week where he was rolling out to his left near our own end zone and then quickly flipped his hips open to throw around the defender to the open WR, it was a really nice throw on the move and it stood out right away. I don't hate the kid or think he's a garbage player, I just never saw him as a high level NFL QB with today's game and where it's continuing to move towards. Everything keeps getting bigger, faster, stronger, which in itself does allow for more QB's like Bryce to come into the league, smaller mobile QB's who can make things happen outside the pocket. My issue with him has always been his size/strength as the smaller QB's who have been successful in this league are just built entirely different than Young. Guys like Brees, Wilson, Kyler, Hurts, etc, are all thick, stocky, strong, well built players, particularly their lower body, while Bryce just isn't built that way, he's just small. But all of that is why I hated the trade so much then and am just angrier now after my pre-draft Bryce concerns are showing, because I always felt the cost vs risk was so horrible and now that risk is looking even riskier.

I think what it is, is that a lot of people didn't want Bryce to begin with (let alone the trade). We have then been told by every coach, player, "expert", and fan that he has this super brain and was the most pro ready QB in the bunch and that he's exceeded all expectations. Then we see this........ So for people like myself, it's a flooding back of all our concerns over him in the first place, the things we've tried our best to ignore and get excited about Bryce ever since the pick was official, since he was then our QB and we want him to do well. Which is why I keep hammering home that I'm less upset about Bryce the player right now than I am about just getting re-pissed off about the trade, which is still so much worse than the Bryce pick because of the value vs risk being off the charts against us here.

His height has nothing to do with it, him and tons of other QB's his height have been just fine throughout the history of college football, and the linemen in the NFL aren't any taller than those in college, they're just better football players. When you're just talking about the ability to see his WRs due to his height vs the linemen height, the quality of the players in front of you makes no difference, so it's no different for him. I was never concerned about his height and I'm still not, it was always about his frame and overall strength