Bear Hands

This is a super deep RB draft. Getting one that is BPA on our board in the mid to late rounds isn’t out of the question. Sanders will/should be gone. Brooks on extended IR. Need Hubbard insurance. 4th to 7th rounds - sure why not.

ASU is no slouch. They’ve shown some grit today

That's an apt comparison with Samuel given how we've tried to use XL. His desired ceiling is some sort of amalgamation of DK & Deebo but it may take time to get consistent results. As a prospect, it was clear he is ideally an X, frame wise. But he still needed route running refinement and to work better against zone. And the lack of short area quickness led him to being more of a guy you trickle into that role and can use him in more gimmicky fashion where he's in motion and gaining speed pre-snap. Funny thing is he caught on quicker with playing outside early on, but he's still stiff and awkward. He's just in need of way more development than you want to see at that age - that's why I personally pegged him in the 3rd. I distinctly remember Brugler saying some teams had him as low as #70ish overall and a 3rd/4th rounder, but others had him as high as WR6. We were obviously one of those all about him. To note, we've played XL 25% slot, 75% wide. On the flipside, Ladd had the flexibility to play outside but it's due to his top tier route running and separation ability. But he's not the guy you isolate out there to play against man coverage. He's played slot 70% and out wide 30% of his snaps this season. And it's been a perfect blend. This is close to AT's allocation 70/30. The guy I was a BIG fan of that the 49ers pounced on was Pearsall, mainly because he had similar strengths to Ladd, but was a bit more of a frame to play man out wide. Some pegged him more slot, but funny enough, Shanahan has played him only 40% slot, 60% out wide. He's been showing off now that he's getting folded in more. You want the position flexibility with all your receivers these days, which is why I don't see redundancy with AT. We could've figured it out. You simply get a field stretcher to pull the faster CBs away from AT.

If you separate defensive playcalling vs personnel, it’s a bit hard to tell IMO because the talent has been so depleted. But he’s did get a lot of his guys (Jackson, Fuller, Hill, Robinson, Jewell, etc) And the lack of pass rushers is one of the worst d situations in the league the past 5 years easy. I will say, he was advertised as a Fangio disciple but blitz heavy with simulated pressures all over the place, and he originally lived up to that. Now, I don’t know if he’s changing unknowingly or failing to prescribe what works with our crap talent. But it’s not quite working. Honestly, this could be a defensive Joe Brady situation but I do think we’d be better suited to have Canales identify what he wants to build.

You can’t deny he’s been better. buuut— you can still spot the things he’s having a hard time overcoming at this level. Regardless, he’s been making smarter decisions and more clutch throws. So we’ve got Bryce for 2025 and we’ll see what happens.

Hehe I see things

Bythenumbers it doesn’t look good but this is a bit baity.

Yeah same here on the draft. We had complete tunnel vision on XL regardless of who else was available. Still miffed we didn’t get one of the guys that were more obviously going to transition easily. DeJean, Ladd, Sainristil, Frazier…there was legit talent right there and we reached on a guy we oversold ourselves on with marginal college experience.

You had the right balance of haterade and koolaid.

Oof I was way too high on the defense lol

I imagine it will start 0-0 and go from there. It is what it is.

Not necessarily. Happens with QB classes because people dissect these guys so much until they dislike them all, but this is arguably the least top heavy draft since like 2013.

We had a completely green Joe Brady under Matt Rhule for Darnold who managed to look good for a minute, starting off 3-0. If we could've set that up with a better coaching situation, I think he'd still be our QB. For Baker, we gave him a hot seated Matt Rhule testing out McAdoo as his first refuge outside of Cleveland. Complete disaster of an environment. All stems back to the Matt Rhule hiring...

It's a very good combination of factors. O'Connell is proving to be one of the best coaches in the league, JJ and Addison the best duo, and Darnold is starting to avoid the dummy throws. It's coming together there.

Yes, at the end of the day, once players are on the field, they're playing and showing up. NFL is difficult to orchestrate an intentional losing effort from 25ish guys getting the snaps. But poorly coached teams aren't suddenly better than the best teams backups. They still suck.

General thing to consider for the tanking teams playing resting playoff locks: The backups want to look good/boost their stock/potential new/FA contracts. The sh*tty teams are still sh*t and want the high picks. This is why I see most bad teams still losing next week. We're probably at 5 or 6.

I think the Bills backups could still roll NE lol.

1 is going to be hard to lose for NE. TEN now on track to 2 playing HOU. 3 CLE who lose the tiebreaker to NYG. Realistically, we’re looking at 5-7. Tmac, Graham, Johnson and the LTs are very much still in play. Maybe even Starks.

Yeah I’m really disappointed. I thought he would show some strides to negate the slippage we saw but he has just continued to regress and this is besides strong interior play. And Njiman has performed badly too. Can’t rely on swing linemen like BC either. LT is a need that could align in R1-3. Or maybe we identify a vet this offseason.

Icky is just a huge liability. Really dislike what I’ve seen this year.

The AFS had the Cincy beat guy on the other week and were talking how the Bengals can actually afford him and Chase. They have like nothing allocated defensively and Burrow wants him back. That entire team has no one to pay outside Burrow and Chase. Logan Wilson? There’s no one. And the Pats will be going hard after him with an ungodly amount of cap.

Random takeaways: McCord is solid. He’s not some sure fire 1st but if Derek Carr and Kirk Cousins can carve out careers, I think he could too. Not on the stat sheet tonight, but Pena is really good for Cuse. This Arkansas kid Taylen Green is someone to watch the next few years if he develops well.

EDGE is definitely deep, not so much high end talent you want to see annually, but a good amount of talent overall. A lot of guys that could be in that JJ Jr, Byron Young, Tuli, Bonitto bracket that could blossom pretty quickly. A lot of interesting R2-3 targets - Jack Sawyer, Donavon Ez, Mike Green. Bradyn Swinson is a mid to late rounder that intrigues me too.