WhoKnows

@Mr. Scot See this post? That’s what I’m talking about. One more good draft and we’re a SB contender? Good to go means that. I’m optimistic that we can win the division, if we can beat NO but I am not optimistic that one more good draft (not one draft since 2018 is that good) gets us to a SB contender.

Lol. Sorry man, I was 100% right that you missed the point. I’m actually expecting us to win because I think we should beat NO and it seems like Tampa is in a huge rut and we’ll be at home. That’s why I bought tickets for the Tampa game. Not wanting to praise our front office/HC and act like the team is built <> being optimistic about winning the division. This place has a tendency to laud GMs and/or coaches way too early and often act like they had an amazing draft. Remember how much you liked Fitterer? I do.

I’m sorry man, but I have no idea what you are talking about. I think you missed my point.

If we beat NO and beat Tampa on the 21st, that’s it. No 2 up with 2 games to go, we are done. The loss to Atlanta and a win at NO means that if we split with Tampa, we get the tiebreaker with a better division record. That’s why we have to beat NO. We do that and we have a home game to clinch the division.

Read my post above. I’ve got my tickets for Tampa so I’m hopeful we win. I hate lauding threads that are way premature. They scream bad luck.

You don’t get what I’m saying. Optimistic in this case was due to a praising thread like we’ve reached the top. I’m having fun this season and I’m optimistic that we can take the division. I’m not heaping praise on our front office and HC yet. We aren’t close to done and we’ve (including you) had a bad habit of putting the cart before the horse since 2017. When Rhule went 3-0, we had all kinds of talk about how we get the 1 seed. How about we cheer and root for the team and hope we beat NO first before we laud our front office for getting us to 7-6 in the worst division in the NFL. When we start throwing around praise, we’ve come up short for 8 straight years. I’ve walked this street before and if we had prime Cam, CMC, Olsen, Luke, Short and TD, I wouldn’t bat an eye, but this team has been a bit of an abusive relationship lately.

Lol. I know. We’ve got a whole thread about the ups and downs. We still have a chance at the playoffs if we can stop losing after every win. I just hate the heaps of praise on our front office when we’ve still got a ton of real holes even with some really good wins.

I really hate when we get this optimistic and act like this team is right at the cusp. We beat the Rams by 3 even though we had a pick 6, forced another 3 turnovers, had no turnovers and scored two long TDs on 4th down. All that and we still needed Brown to strip Stafford to keep them from forcing OT. I’m all in and will be at next week’s game but we aren’t anything like some of our past playoff teams that were legitimate SB contenders. We’re just the only team above .500 (by a half game) in the worst division. There is still a lot of work to be done and we still need good drafts. Tet’s been great but Scourton and Princely aren’t blowing up. A lot of playing time but man we still need more top players. One or two injuries to our stars and we suck.

Yea and they did. They won the titles in 2002, 2014 and 2024, but the games were all played in January of the NFL year we went to the SB. OSU championship happens first and then the NFL year starts with us playing Jax week 1 and then we go to the SB.

This is fun now. We have to beat NO, have to! I’m surprising my youngest, who’s my only huge fan, with tickets to the Tampa game. That will be fun to watch if it’s win and in.

Yes, we are.

Man, watching the Jimmy V basketball tourney and it makes me mad to see that wonderful guy speaking while knowing he might not make it to the next ESPY show. Mad about the douches at ND trying to justify why they can’t play in a bowl game and talking about suing because they weren’t voted into the playoffs. Such a damn shame what college sports have turned into now.

Wow, what a bunch of babies. They set their schedule to have any hard games early so they can go on a run. Complain about Alabama losing 3, because they made the SEC championship but look at the last 5 games: Georgia, Auburn, Eastern IL, Oklahoma and LSU Here’s the hero’s last 5 games that contributed to ND’s great run: Stanford, Syracuse, Pittsburgh (Miami beat Pitt by more), Navy and Boston College If ND is going to keep scheduling cupcakes at the back end, they don’t deserve poo. They turned down a bowl game because they don’t want to take any risk and lose. Not when they can force rule changes to ensure they make the playoffs.

I agree. Their schedule had two top teams and they lost both games. The crying about it has reached ridiculous levels. ND is just so use to getting their way and forcing inclusion based on ratings. They (fans) even had the gall to complain about Miami losing to SMU and Louisville even though both spent time in the top 25 (not just preseason) as if they were horrible teams yet ND made it last year losing to a legitimately bad team in Northern Illinois. I laugh at people like Vic Lombardi saying it’s wonderful that ND called a wambulance to announce they’d skip a bowl game as if that should earn them respect. They just did that to avoid a potential embarrassing loss after all the crying.

Might as well put the source in your post: https://catcrave.com/panthers-addition-making-an-under-the-radar-push-that-changes-everything That article came out yesterday as well. I read that so instantly thought of it and your post on the same day.

Rams are still #2 seed. We turned them from #1 to #2, but they beat the Seahawks so they are first in the west.

Honestly, we don’t even need to worry about it anymore. The 5th year isn’t expensive because he just hit the playing time tier so he’s still cheap for the next two years. Personally, I still hope we go after anyone we think could be great value in 2026. This was supposed to be a loaded QB class and some new folks stepped up and some preseason studs didn’t do as well. Day 2 could have some solid potential if not too many decide to stick around college for another year.

We have 4 games left, 2 against Tampa and 1 more division game. Pretty much every week is going to be huge for the playoffs. If Tampa wins while we are off, we will be 1 game back and pretty much be in must win mode all 4 games.

You are correct as of right now. I believed the value shown in the search but that’s if you make 1 or more than one pro bowl. If somehow Bryce makes the pro bowl, his option value is $40M. Making it as an alternate doesn’t count so I’m pretty certain we are safe here. He cannot make more than one this year so he can’t get $46M.

Wouldn’t surprise me at all. I still don’t think he’ll ever get us to the show, but we might be stuck with a large contract. The 5th year tier 1 QB option is already over $40M. I’m worried we won’t ever try to draft a QB with a high pick and get elite level physical talent. I do like the 2026 QB draft because there have been a lot of underachieving QBs that were highly touted. Good draft to get a potential great value. I’m going to enjoy the ride we’ve had so far this year but I don’t like the idea of extending knowing we are basically doing what Arizona did with Murray knowing he’s just OK and not going to lead you to the SB.

Me too, but at least I’ve had a good history of picking good games, even with Young in 2023.

Why do you post this now? We still have 4 games left and have a shot at this division. We got up like this before the NO game. We lose out Tampa, no one is going to remember that we beat the Rams. The other not for all the “it’s a given”, Bryce was the first pick. His 5th year will be $40M+. That's not some cheap year.

I’m going to the Tampa game with my youngest. Christmas gift to him, hopefully it plays out well. Love that we have this late bye to get refreshed and healthy.

Who said it was bad? Just adding some realism that you can’t count on 3-4 turnovers a week. We played two playoff teams and we had like a +6 turnover ratio and we lost by 11 and won by 3 with a pick 6 as well. It’s ok to realize we’ve still got holes and can lose to someone like NO. It’s ok to still realize that Bryce isn’t our long term answer but enjoy winning some games. If McVay sticks to the run a bit more in the red zone, it’s not a stretch to think we are down 27-10 to 35-10 at the half. We are still that kind of team. We absolutely need a team effort and when we get behind enough that Bryce has to win the game in a heroic effort like Allen or Mahomes, etc., we can’t. Listen, I like the Panthers and I was screaming when we had the end of the game plays. Doesn’t mean that my brain thinks we’d beat a mistake free Rams.

Well, we are the same team that NO beat up a few weeks ago. Look at today. Our D had a great game but they only punted 1 time. Turnovers including a pick 6 were the difference. We weren’t stopping them without turnovers. Bryce makes some throws and played big mistake free but we still needed Brown to make a huge play to win. Young isn’t the guy to win a SB but this could be a fun year if we can beat Tampa.