LinvilleGorge

If Darnold flops and Fields hits... oh wee mayne. The rumors that Tepper was pushing for Fields had better not be true. When you go against what your boss wants, you better be damn sure that you're gonna be right.

I feel pretty good about our edge rushers and DL as a whole. I'm definitely not terrified about our secondary but I'm also not sure how good they're going to be THIS year.

Though I do think that Arnold will become a higher priority in the red zone.

This thread isn't aging well.

Yeah, don't get me wrong. Like I said, I'm not expecting Greg Olsen. But I do think they're going to be good enough to at least not be a weakness. We saw Ian Thomas wasn't getting it don't so we signed a mid-level FA who is primarily a receiver and we drafted a mid-round rookie who is primarily a blocker. Cool. Hopefully Arnold will improve as a blocker and hopefully Tremble will develop as a receiver. Maybe they can each help the other out in those departments.

I'm confident that our WRs are very good. If they're held back by the QB and/or OL, that's not on them. All they can do is run their routs and catch the balls that come their direction and I'm confident in them doing a good job of that.

Honestly, yeah. There's been enough positive reports about Arnold and Tremble that I feel pretty good about TE. Are they gonna re-create prime Greg Olsen? Highly doubtful but I think we're decent there. It's the weakest link of our non-QB skill positions, but IMO that's more about our strength at WR and RB than it is a glaring weakness at TE.

Confident: non-QB offensive skill positions Terrified: OL

This is the way to handle it. If you want to create a personal echo chamber, the ignore function allows you to pretty much do that.

Disagreement isn't toxic. Cordial conversations isn't toxic. Taking football disagreement personally and lashing out creates the toxic environment.

Agreed. My concern is that we seem to be falling into the habit of overpaying hoping that we're right and everyone else is wrong. If it works, you're brilliant. If it doesn't, it's not gonna be pretty. We'll see how it works out. Gettleman did some brilliant dumpster diving early on in his tenure. As time went on, it worked out less and less.

For me it's about three straight losing seasons. It's about having a massive need at OL and trying to patchwork it together with low level vet FAs who by most opinions we significantly overpaid to acquire based on their past performance and/or injury history. I get it, you can't fix every problem in two off-season and every NFL roster is going to have weak spots due to a hard cap league, but it really is starting to feel like Panthers as usual with the lack of focus on building the OL. Ultimately, we'll see how it works out but what else is there to talk about right now? It would be boring if this was just an echo chamber of same thoughts. As long as discussion remains cordial, disagreement is a good thing and actually fuels conversation.

It isn't about "heat". It's about derailing threads with emotion and personal attacks. Please stop doing it.

It's their strategy, we'll have to see if it works out. They've focused on versatility all off-season on the OL. Personally, I think it will prove to be a mistake. It's okay to disagree. Please don't start acting like that other guy.

Everyone was cordially talking football whether they agreed or not before you came in emotional and attacking per usual. You have to stop doing this. This is happening in thread after thread. People are going to disagree. That's quite alright. It's not alright for you to take it personal and start with your attacks.

You really have to stop taking difference of opinion personally. Stop feeling personally attacked by difference of opinion.

I hope we have. Now I hope we'll let them start playing together and gelling. By all reports it's been constant musical chairs all camp long.

I expected the OL to look bad. In part because we lack talent. Also in part because we haven't identified our starters yet and given them time to work together and gel. That's what I'm saying. If we don't identify our five and let them gel into a cohesive unit then they're not going to play up to their ability, even if that ability is subpar. We gotta identify our five and let them start working on becoming the best unit that they can be. More than any other unit on the field, an OL has to be a cohesive unit.

Where did I say that? My concern is very specific. And it's the opposite of what you seem to be interpreting.

This is the NFL. Not every team is coaches by Rivera and Shula. The rest of the league is going to show you different wrinkles week in and week out. OLs need time to gel to understand each other, to work well together, to understand each individual assignment and how to communicate in order to handle the types of exotic blitzes they're going to see. Trust and believe, if you show an inability to handle the blitz you're going to see a LOT of blitzes.

That's why you practice. Picking up exotic blitzes is why OLs need time to gel. Meanwhile, we're still playing musical chairs because we're realizing that we may simply not have the talent necessary and we're desperately trying to find out what our best bad option might be. We gotta find our five and let them start gelling. Playing musical chairs on the OL isn't a recipe for success.

We're gonna scream "No fair! You gotta wait til three Mississippi!"

Sadly, you might be right.

Rhule said we protected well. Seems like virtually every other observer saw something very different. Coaches say what they think needs to be said in the moment. He may see these guys giving all they have and knows bashing them isn't going to do anything positive. Talking them up and giving them as much confidence and support might be the best option right now. We'll see. There's a lot more talent in the secondary and receiving corps so if those guys aren't playing up to their ability they're gonna hear about it and Rhule will be a lot more likely to say so publicly.

Not worst case scenario, just pointing out the hypocrisy. Can't put our money on Darnold only sucking because of an adverse situation in NY while at the same time thinking our backup needs to go through a similar adverse situation to get battle hardened.