Austin named starting center

[tukafan21]

40 minutes ago, kungfoodude said:

Yeah, I am not comfortable really saying any of that until it starts happening on the field. I am hopeful that is the case and it appears we are better there than in 2024 but nothing is ever assured with the Tepper Panthers. We will just have to watch and hope.

I will give them that the team has had so many needs over the last few offseasons that center can get pushed down the priority list. Most of our attempts have ultimately failed there, while we passed on excellent centers in the draft...mostly to draft busts, even worse.

As for the development, yeah, we seem to struggle with it but it's the age old question of is it evaluation OR development? It's not like we have many(if any) examples of guys not working out here and then flourishing elsewhere. I think our evaluation is far more broken than our development.

 

8 minutes ago, Waldo said:

I agree about the evaluations being more broken but then the development hasn't been impressive either IMO.  

 

4 minutes ago, kungfoodude said:

Yeah, it's really hard to know the full equation without insiders basically talking about it.

Either way it tilts, it has to improve if we have any hope of pulling out of this hole.

In many of the cases, it's been an equal split to both for a very specific reason

We clearly spent a number of years following the old Al Davis method of drafting and looking for the unicorn athletes and hope we can coach them up to being great NFL players, and it clearly hasn't worked.

So it was bad evaluating to fall in love with raw physical ability and then it was bad development to turn them into quality players, all around failure.

[kungfoodude]

14 minutes ago, tukafan21 said:

 

 

In many of the cases, it's been an equal split to both for a very specific reason

We clearly spent a number of years following the old Al Davis method of drafting and looking for the unicorn athletes and hope we can coach them up to being great NFL players, and it clearly hasn't worked.

So it was bad evaluating to fall in love with raw physical ability and then it was bad development to turn them into quality players, all around failure.

It's been a mixed bag, we also just straight drafted guys that didn't have the physical abilities to play in the NFL at all. We have been even more scatterbrained in our approach than the vintage Raiders, IMO. 

You knew they were straight up Underwear Olympics Gold Medalists. We have been all over the fuging map.

Rhule was heavy RAS. That's definitely true.

[Waldo]

2 hours ago, kungfoodude said:

It's been a mixed bag, we also just straight drafted guys that didn't have the physical abilities to play in the NFL at all. We have been even more scatterbrained in our approach than the vintage Raiders, IMO. 

You knew they were straight up Underwear Olympics Gold Medalists. We have been all over the fuging map.

Rhule was heavy RAS. That's definitely true.

Mixed bag I can agree on. Rhule was obvious but now it's all over the place. They also injected leaning into PFFs grades this year.