Was Chark a mistake?

[tukafan21]

4 minutes ago, panthers320 said:

So who should we have signed as a free agent instead?

Being honest, I don't remember who the FA's were this offseason off the top of my head, but I remember there being a few other players I'd have rather given even a few more million to than him, because of his injury history.

Also, my #1 option from the start was never to sign him (or anyone else), but it was to go after Hopkins to be our #1 on the outside, play TMJ/Mingo on the other outside, with Thielen in the slot.

[Jon Snow]

Just now, tukafan21 said:

Totally fair and I agree with you in a vacuum.

My issue with him has never been signing him or the contract we gave him, but the opportunity cost of having that depth chart spot and money available for someone else, like Hopkins once he was available.

Hopkins is not coming here. Get that thought out of your head. We will be drafting our guys unless it's an injury situation that forces us to.  Then it will be someone you've never heard of.

[tukafan21]

13 minutes ago, CRA said:

Chark wasn't a mistake.  He was a great add given his cost.  He should be a role-player given his health history.  We ideally should of built a better overall skill group for Young.   

I mean, you can look at recent high-end QB prospects that didn't meet expectations as a rookie and generally it's the weak supporting cast largely talked about.  Got to help rookie QBs out.  Give them some bailout options. Trevor.  Fields.  Even a Wilson.   As rookies, they were throwing to committees of bland WRs. 

I actually think we have really good bail out options for Bryce this year.

Thielen is pretty much what you'd create in a lab for a bailout option for a rookie QB.  A guy who made his career out of being someone who does the little things right as opposed to relies on his natural talent.

Hurst will also be a nice safety valve option, and I think Mingo and Shenault will be good in those roles as well, as guys Bryce can check it down to and hope they break tackles to pick up yards.

It's the outside WR position that concerns me this year

[CRA]

1 minute ago, Jmac said:

True. His bailout options if Sanders goes down are nil at running back. Chubba has proven that....can't catch a cold.

PFF deemed Sanders the worst receiving RB in the entire NFL last year.  Not volume but play.

He ranked near the worst of all RBs as a receiver two years before that.  His sophomore year that he also was paired with Duce. 

Sanders isn't proven to be a bailout option for a QB the last several years in the pass game.  To date, he had a rookie season that never matched up with the rest of his career. 

[LinvilleGorge]

Hindsight will tell us. I do think we had to make moves at WR. You couldn't go into this season with TMJ and Shenault penciled in as your starting WRs. Thielen made sense. Steady vet on the decline but he'll be a security blanket for Bryce. Chark honestly made sense too. He's shown the ability to produce in the NFL injuries have just gotten in his way and the contract reflects those injury concerns. So now we have two solid vets as our starting WRs with plenty of snaps still available for guys like TMJ and Shenault.

[tukafan21]

2 minutes ago, Jon Snow said:

Hopkins is not coming here. Get that thought out of your head. We will be drafting our guys unless it's an injury situation that forces us to.  Then it will be someone you've never heard of.

I've been saying Hopkins wasn't coming here from the second we signed Chark and then drafted Mingo.

That post was about what I'd have done from the start, which would have been targeting Hopkins instead of Chark, totally different.

[Aussie Tank]

We did what we could after trading away Moore. Rome wasn’t built in a day 

[tukafan21]

3 minutes ago, CamWhoaaCam said:

Maybe put me on ignore and you don't have to follow my post?

 

I said what I said about Hopkins. Deal with it my mind is not changing. Stop stalking people post bro. These are just opinions.

 

 

If someone is posting dumb post I simply put them on my ignore list. It's the adult thing to do. Enjoy the rest of your day.

stalking?

You joined into a thread that I was already posting in, in what way is me then responding to you stalking you?

And it's not about opinions, if you wanted to sign player B instead of player A, that's an option.  It's that you've for some reason refused to accept that once we signed Chark and drafted Mingo, there was no longer the money or roster space for going after Hopkins in any way shape or form.

And that's not an opinion, it's just a fact that you've refused to accept or understand.

[Jon Snow]

Just now, tukafan21 said:

I've been saying Hopkins wasn't coming here from the second we signed Chark and then drafted Mingo.

That post was about what I'd have done from the start, which would have been targeting Hopkins instead of Chark, totally different.

It doesn't matter if you target him, he has to want to come here. Besides, you cannot run your offense that way. You cannot tie up a chunk of cap in an aging receiver that you will have to focus your offense on. That doesn't help Youngs development at all. That's backwards thinking. 

[Seltzer]

10 minutes ago, Jon Snow said:

He's a good receiver. Nothing wrong with his play. His contract is an indication of his health concerns.  We signed him thinking that he may not be available all season.  I see no problem here.

I don't know what more there is to add.  Chark is electric when he's healthy and has the ability to put up WR1 numbers.  The health has been and is the issue.  

You're not getting a WR with Chark's playmaking ability for $5M who doesn't have risk.

That's the reason they also signed Theilen and drafted Mingo.

You can't make everything perfect after trading away a WR1 like DJ Moore in one offseason, but long-term Bryce was definitely worth it.

And all we can do is hope Chark can stay mostly healthy.  He's fun to watch when he is, and if he can stay healthy (which is obviously a massive question mark), he's an incredible addition to this team.

It certainly wasn't a mistake from a risk/reward standpoint

[Ricky Prickles]

9 minutes ago, CRA said:

PFF deemed Sanders the worst receiving RB in the entire NFL last year.  Not volume but play.

He ranked near the worst of all RBs as a receiver two years before that.  His sophomore year that he also was paired with Duce. 

Sanders isn't proven to be a bailout option for a QB the last several years in the pass game.  To date, he had a rookie season that never matched up with the rest of his career. 

I thought that is the whole reason we signed him instead of just signing back Foreman? I saw others on here say he would be so much better in the receiving game than Foreman. 

[tukafan21]

2 minutes ago, Jon Snow said:

It doesn't matter if you target him, he has to want to come here. Besides, you cannot run your offense that way. You cannot tie up a chunk of cap in an aging receiver that you will have to focus your offense on. That doesn't help Youngs development at all. That's backwards thinking. 

The contract Hopkins signed with the Titans has him as less than $4 towards the cap this year, that's not a big chunk of cap, in fact, it's less cap this season than Chark is costing us.  Yes, I understand the future cap implications, particularly in year #2 (15 million cap hit), but that could have been rectified by using a little more cap this year instead.

I also don't think we'd have needed to focus on Hopkins to the point that it would be a detriment to Bryce's development, he's not a diva in the way a Diggs or Tyreek is.  Yes, he was visibly upset last year with their young QB's after Kyler went down, but it was because they were throwing garbage passes his way, something Bryce wouldn't be doing.

[CRA]

4 minutes ago, tukafan21 said:

I actually think we have really good bail out options for Bryce this year.

Thielen is pretty much what you'd create in a lab for a bailout option for a rookie QB.  A guy who made his career out of being someone who does the little things right as opposed to relies on his natural talent.

Hurst will also be a nice safety valve option, and I think Mingo and Shenault will be good in those roles as well, as guys Bryce can check it down to and hope they break tackles to pick up yards.

It's the outside WR position that concerns me this year

Theilen is a reliable vet on the backside of his career.  I'd equate him more to the Panthers bringing in Jeremy Shockey for Cam.   

It's probably poor language.  But I'm talking about a stud that can it happen for them.  Not require the perfect throws.  That was 89 for Cam.  Cam could be imperfect and 89 could make up the difference. 

and you pretty much have to scheme up Shenault.  I would imagine that would largely be true early in Mingo's time too.  He is more athlete than polished WR coming in and probably won't be ultra reliable to do what he is supposed to do. 

I'm not overly worried about the outside factor if Chark is healthy.  He can get vertical.  I do worry about if he can't suit up.  Think opposing defenses will really clamp down on us.  No one else is scary going vertical and I would think defenses would really have an easy time making life hard on a rookie QB. 

[ForJimmy]

29 minutes ago, tukafan21 said:

Unless Mingo absolutely breaks out for a 1k type of rookie season, then yes, that would make it a disastrous deal because of the other side of the equation.

As I've said, in a vacuum, the contract we gave Chark wasn't a bad one.  The problem is that the money and roster/depth chart spot would have been better spent on someone more likely to play in more games.

If this was year 3 or 4 of Bryce, it's a totally different story, but this year has 1 goal above all others, and it's the development of Bryce.  To do that, he needs his weapons on the field, and we already have a questionable WR room, to have the top depth chart guy be someone with his injury history was never a good idea.

If we had our 2nd round rookie WR have a breakout year then the Chark deal is "disastrous"?  I'm so confused.  Like you said Bryce needs weapons on the field, if Mingo plays great then Chark can simply been another weapon for as many games as he can give us.  Same for TMJ, Theilen and any other WR/weapon on the team.  We lost DJ Moore and our staff has tried to bring on as many weapons as possible for Young to have.  The flip side to your argument is what if Mingo needs more time to develop (he wasn't getting great separation on Friday).  Isn't it nice to have a nice vet who is capable of getting separation for Young to throw to until Mingo gets more comfortable playing in the NFL?