LinvilleGorge

Possibly. But I doubt we 're #1 overall if we'd just played Andy Dalton all season. Probably not top 3. Maybe not top 5. I wouldn't trade Stroud for any rookie this year. Not after seeing what he did on an NFL field. I bet the Texans wouldn't either.

Bad teams are never just a QB away but you don't get to pick and choose when you can land a franchise QB. When the opportunity arises you jump. You don't draft a guy for his rookie year, you draft him hoping he's the answer for a decade plus. We had an opportunity and we shot our shot. We just missed.

Due diligence. The trade wasn't the mistake that we made, it was the pick. Well, it should've been Burns in the trade not Moore. That was a mistake.

I'd rather let Burns slam than pay him $30M per but with the bump in cap I'd tag and trade him.

Firing Rivera mid-season left a bad taste in the mouths of NFL lifers. Yeah, Rivera deserved to be fired but he didn't deserve to be fired mid-season. That's kinda whatever because no one would've ultimately cared if he got the replacement hire right. But he didn't. He went out and hired a college coach of a third tier program whose philosophy of riding good D with serviceable offense doesn't really translate on the modern NFL. He paired that with a hot shot college OC who had never actually called plays before then scapegoats that guy when he clearly wasn't the issue. That's when the red flags started flying for me. Oh, Tepper will scapegoat folks to protect the guy he went all in on. Then he knee jerk fires Rhule mere weeks into the season when everyone thought he should've been fired at the end of the previous season, plugging in a seasoned DC and former NFL HC in Wilks to "audition". Wilks rights the ship and we end up being average down the stretch but he's not retained and Tepper hires a retread offensive guy to pair with the QB he's gonna draft. The QB looks like a total flop and the coach doesn't make it through the season. There's that scapegoating again. It's a mess and it all points back to David Tepper.

It's stems from Tepper's incompetence and perceived heavy meddling. Rhule is a symptom not the disease.

No one with other potential NFL HC options was taking this job. That's the sad reality. Our candidate pool started with the options no one else was interested in.

Meanwhile, Brian Burns defending the run

I mean, it's fitting. If you're gonna run a circus you need a circus tent.

Pretty much agree with all of that.

It would definitely be a good landing spot for Fields. I'd like to find out if he's legit and being held back by the Bears or if that's just who he is - extremely talented but wildly inconsistent.

I like Fields so I'd prefer him stay out of the division. I like Mayfield too so it already sucks having him in the division.

That sucks but I honestly don't blame you. I get it, at some point it's gotta really start feeling like throwing good money after bad.

Their play in 2022.

Bryce was probably the best QB in college in 2021. He wasn't top 5 in 2022. Caleb Williams was better. Drake Maye was better. C.J. Stroud was better. Hell, Max Duggan, Bo Nix, Penix, even Sam Hartman were better. This is why that laughable talking point that Bryce was having to carry inferior talent at ALABAMA of all places started popping up.

Yeah, I'll believe we've fixed this mess when we start actually winning games. I've heard too much about all the big plans and analytics and new approaches and blah, blah, blah. I'm done buying any of it. Show me you can win NFL football games, period.

I think he was exactly what we hoped he'd be. It's just that everyone else was a lot less than what we hoped they'd be.

Stop. Hanging the hat on Bryce in HS and college has to stop. This isn't college and it sure as hell isn't HS. Sports history is chock full of guys who were great at one level and failed to translate at the next level. 5 star college recruits bust. 1st round NFL draft picks bust. It happens. It's really damn hard projecting talent to a higher level of competition.

Yep. That's just the reality of where we are. We went from talking about having a Drew Brees to just hoping he's salvageable.

I mean, what's he supposed to say right now though? He knows the organization isn't moving on from this guy one year removed from that trade up and spending #1 overall on him. He knows Bryce isn't gonna carry his offense and he's going to have to try to scheme around his shortcomings. I mean, it is what it is. It seems to me like trying to manage expectations and downplaying the QB position is probably his best bet right now. I'm just hoping that they use this year to determine if they can make it work and if not they suck it up and move on. Not from another coaching staff but from Bryce.

I knew Bryce's arm strength wasn't a plus from watching him in college. My hope was that it would be NFL average but fully expected it could prove to be below average. I honestly didn't see it being bottom of the barrel but that's what we ultimately saw. His accuracy did surprisee though. I thought he'd probably be one of the most accurate passers in the NFL right out of the gate and that would help make up for his lack of arm strength. It just didn't play out that way. His short to medium accuracy was pretty average and his deep accuracy was just flat out bad. I keep seeing people act like it's not a Bryce problem but a surrounding talent and system problem. It's all of the above. Bryce absolutely played a big role in our offensive struggles last year.

Maybe if he'd clean up his footwork it would help with his velocity. He's never going to have a cannon but maybe his arm could at least be run of the mill below average if he worked on his mechanics. I'm still in shock that seemingly everyone in the football world just completely overlooked all these red flags that a lot of us talked about here leading up to the draft last year.

When you have a noodle with average accuracy, "NFL open" isn't open. If you're gonna make it in the NFL with a subpar arm your anticipation and accuracy have to be ELITE. Bryce has to clean up his footwork to have a chance. His feet aren't ready to throw because he's standing square to the LOS. He has to identify his target, then get his feet set, then deliver a ball with JV HS velocity. It's all too slow. He has to bring his feet and hips with his eyes.

I'm hard pressed to name a QB who took to an NFL field last year who didn't. That's the sad truth.

He might. We'll see. But he's shown a lot more promise than Bryce.