Where Are We Really -- One Season and 7 Games Into It...

[SetfreexX]

TL;DR -- We are on schedule

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The 3-0 start had us all hype, happy, excited, and to me that is what has made the last 4 games more painful than they should be. However, most seasoned and realistic fans could see in the off-season / post Darnold trade / post draft that we were probably a 6-9 win team. We were coming off a 5-11 year and had just traded for a HUGE question mark at QB.

With that in mind let's look at some changes considering we are 1 season and 7 games into the rebuild...more so on the offense...

QB - 

Teddy Bridgewater >>> Sam Darnold -- This is a net negative IMO, Darnold has more talent, but he's a worse QB (TBF and I'm not a TB fan / apologist -- we probably beat PHI / MIN / NYG with Teddy - Darnold has proven to be inept at reading coverage)

HB - 

CMC & Mike Davis >>> CMC is on IR, Chuba is not matching Davis' production but I can give him a bit of a pass as a 4th round rookie behind a bad OL who has still flashed on occasion; he just needs to work on his brick hands at the moment, as big as Freeman is, his pass pro is lacking but he is a competent runner.

FB - 

Alex Armah >>> Giovanni Ricci -- Armah is the better pure blocker, Ricci is more versatile -- We should have kept Armah

WR - 

DJ, Robbie, Curtis >>> DJ, Robbie - DJ has been for the most part what we were expecting, Robbie is ''trying'' too hard to live up to the money by pressing to make plays, and Darnold's terribly inconsistent accuracy isn't helping his receivers. TMJ due to Darnold's ineptitude has been limited & recently concussed, and Shi Smith just played his first 2 games of the season in weeks 6 & 7.

TE - 

Ian Thomas, Chris Manhertz >>> Ian Thomas, Tommy Tremble -- I think we're clearly better here, Tommy already has a couple TD's on his young resume, his athleticism shows regularly. To me Joe Brady needs to call more plays to get them involved with CMC absent, and the attention on DJ / Robbie. Darnold needs to look to them more. 

OL - 

Okung (Trent Scott), Schofield (Chris Sneed) >> With Erving, & Elflein you could almost call it a wash due to how many games Okung missed, with Elflein out guys like Daley have been exposed so much so that we are down to the 3rd stringer in Jordan, Miller seems worse than last year as most of us were okay with his return. Paradis, and Moton are the only consistency we have, Christensen is a rookie and learning, and Brown is now on IR. Overall I think in time this will come together, we just have to improve the Guard play on both sides. 

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I think it is safe to say the defense is much better, a complete turnaround, gone is the 3-3-5 and in comes a more traditional 3-4 alignment from our base, and most of the guys from last year remain (Burns / Brown / Gross-Matos / Shaq / Jackson / Chinn / Burris)

FA Additions:

DaQuan Jones, Morgan Fox, Haason Reddick

Trade acquisitions:

Stephon Gilmore, C.J. Henderson

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I know this 4 game skid, and potentially one longer than that are beyond frustrating and take most of us back to 2007 - 2010, where we faltered around a bit back as we attempted to replace Delhomme -- Moore, Clausen, Pike, St. Pierre to now attempting to replace Cam with Bridgewater, and Darnold to date. 

I write this to say, honestly what was been done with the defense through a season was / is impressive, and with an active body at GM, it is likely we will continue to improve the roster as free agency and cap space for the first time in a long time will afford us some opportunities to upgrade the offensive line in free agency with more proven targets.

I know a lot of you are concerned with our draft capitol, but we still have:

1st / 4th (HOU) / 5th (JAX) / 5th / 6th / 6th (LVR) / 7th (TEN)

That is still 7 total picks, it is still to be determined if we stand pat with our first or look to trade down (my money is on trading down), if so we will make up for missing picks, but do not forget that ''we ADDED 11 rookies this past draft'', so we are not hurting in the youth / depth departments aside from a couple positions, the likely-hood of a rookie 2nd or 3rd rounder starting is low; they're usually contributors year one aside from the gems that fall (like Chinn). 

Point is, we have options, and we have a GM that seems capable, this was never supposed to be ''our season / time''. The expectation was always some steady improvement in S1 / S2 of the rebuild with us being in position to make some credible noise in S3. 

I do believe we are on pace for that, so keep your heads up, and #KeepPounding 

[4Corners]

[Wanderlai]

[Carl Spackler]

Appreciate the optimism. We are indeed on schedule for the No. 1 overall pick.

[Harbingers]

Who thinks we are actually gonna trot PJ out as the starter vs. the falcons. 

[Waldo]

If the second year is worse than the first you have to question if there should be a third.

I just can't see how this crew turns it around at this point. To many questionable personal decisions and coaching decisions. Maybe of course, I just can't see it.

[4Corners]

7 minutes ago, Harbingers said:

Who thinks we are actually gonna trot PJ out as the starter vs. the falcons. 

Yep. Won’t be announced until it has to be 

[TLGPanthersFan]

It is pretty obvious that Rhule is in over his head. His terrible personal decisions over the past 2 seasons have left a lot to be desired. 
Only coach I like is Snow. But Darnold is another bust and Brady may of been too inexperienced to give an OC job. 
As of right now I think the is coaching staff needs to be shown the door if we keep falling. 

[kungfoodude]

We've built an impressive defense and still have talent on offense. I like our roster quite a bit better than 2020. The biggest concern is that we made our biggest weaknesses so much weaker(QB, OL). 

Run defense is still a concern, as it has not improved much. I think maybe some tinkering with scheme could be in order there or just simply improvements in personnel. 

Sadly, I don't see a lot of help coming in 2022 because we gutted our draft capital so much. It's likely we only see a single player with day one capability with our current picks. So, they are really going to have to scramble in free agency to make 2022 better than 2021 appears to be going. 

I have a great deal of concern that we end up overspending in free agency in 2022 and show signs of panic. 

[LinvilleGorge]

Tom Petty wrote a song about it. 

 

[SetfreexX]

I will fault them for the QB decisions, I think that is obvious; IMO they tried to skip the develop franchise QB part using rookie QB success rates long term as the catalyst (50% bust rate). 

However with that same logic they should have known where Darnold stood, the NFL isn't ''another man's trash, is another man's treasure league''. 

People forget, Tannehill was good before Gase and even earned the extension, he regressed with Gase, too many people made the assumption Sam was the same, Sam was really never good. 

The OL acquisitions, well when you look at the OL FA landscape this past off-season it was BARREN. I can only hold them accountable so much in that regard given the lack of available quality guys. They chased traits thinking they could coach it up, same with Darnold. It hasn't worked. 

[SmokinwithWilly]

The way Darnolds been handled is the strangest part of all of this. If we're going to treat him like a rookie, and expect him to perform like one, then having PJ as a backup makes no sense. Darnold would need to sit and learn behind someone or from coaches, which he supposedly lacked with the Jets. 

You don't go and extend him for 18m as a "rookie". It's like paying bloated contracts to QBs 15 years ago because they were the first pick. That's essentially what we did. 

If it's possible with all the VR tech out there now, I'm putting Sam in a simulation constantly making him learn to see defenses from the field over and over again. There's only so much you can work on in practices. 

In some areas we're better than we were, in others well, we know. Coaching players up only goes so far in the NFL. These are all higher end players already and you can only bring them so far. They either have it or they don't. 

[BrianS]

1 hour ago, kungfoodude said:

Sadly, I don't see a lot of help coming in 2022 because we gutted our draft capital so much. It's likely we only see a single player with day one capability with our current picks. So, they are really going to have to scramble in free agency to make 2022 better than 2021 appears to be going. 

If you're looking for a silver lining, 2022 free agency may be it.  We have a TON of dead money coming off the books this spring so we should be in a much better position to pick up quality players.

Next year our dead cap is 7 million or so.

[kungfoodude]

24 minutes ago, BrianS said:

If you're looking for a silver lining, 2022 free agency may be it.  We have a TON of dead money coming off the books this spring so we should be in a much better position to pick up quality players.

Next year our dead cap is 7 million or so.

Yeah, I just don't want to see some panic signings for too much money. They have already invested way too much in bad players in Teddy, Darnold, Erving and Elflein. 

It's odd because they have generally made solid financial decisions.