NoSaint

I’ve joked that if you traded McDermott for a top 16 wr that Brady’s offense would look very different I think he’s woefully missing tools of the modern nfl at wr. I also think McDermott leans on him to succeed within whatever parameters of complimentary football, among other things. if you dropped Malik nabers on the roster and told Brady he had no limitations…. Who here thinks the offense looks the same?

Simon forgot to mention this was just around the office, and he still does it. HR tries talking to him.

to be fair, I think most fans would be shocked by how much of a playbook is often variations of like 4 runs and 6 pass concepts out of a bunch of different personal groups and formations you have a couple core man beater concepts, a few zone beater concepts and any given week are installing some wrinkles off of the usual suspects we obviously use mesh a good bit as a man beater. Josh’s legs are usually reliable to force a team out of man - but you’ll notice that athletic ends and linebackers are commonly our kryptonite and where everything breaks down. a lot of man beaters are going to be formation or motion to create winnable matchups… but their nickel is as good or better than any WR we have and Knox isn’t doing anything we built to beat the chiefs and a lot of teams have built to beat us… we need to evolve and that evolution is perimiter talent

cause Gabe’s been known to go a month without a catch as a wr2

without looking - did he ever overlap when Brady was in New Orleans? being a guy that’s moved a lot, have to imagine he will pick things up quickly. Not sure there’s much on the tank but for a thanksgiving free agent you aren’t getting better candidates

fair enough! I’ll say that I’ve been downshifting a bit myself with it too. I will leave it with a comment that rarely do you get to hire with the benefit of hindsight, and almost always have to plunge with a candidate doing it the first time or with question marks from a past run… odds are we don’t get to hire Andy Reid coming directly off a Super Bowl, right? They are available for a reason. Even if McDermott was fired from a rival, we would have questions about hiring him here for 2026. but I think in doing the exercise of “how bad would it really have been” with real names drastically changed my tune in the risk management of a possible move. cheers to a happy thanksgiving, Aug!

yea, I’ve contemplated that before. Just feels like after some number of them, it’s got to be more than coincidence. there are a lot of very good but not great WRs out there, and no one really moving quiet like him and those even remotely close have drama usually I suspect someday it’ll make more sense but if there is stress that follows him, good on him for handling those issues behind closed doors and not on social media

yea but in the thousands of posters you can’t latch onto the Mario for Skelton as serious of the top handful of candidates… I don’t think we collapse with Ben Johnson, Mike vrabel, Kellen Moore or Liam coen off last years list mike Macdonald or Jim harbaugh the year prior? I’d venture even a guy like Dave canales is at worst .500 with us this year sean payton or Shane Steichen? Kevin oconnel? Mike McDaniel? excluding Nate Hackett, who I’d argue was a terribly unreasonable hire, almost any offensive head coach the last 4 seasons is probably in the ballpark of where we finished as long as Josh is healthy I don’t love coen but coen plus the rams brainchild is at least interesting even if potentially a bit volatile I think my overall point is that when you really attack names to it, and not just the great unknown - it really gets a lot less worrisome of what could happen

I may be overstepping but I don’t think gruden is the guy folks are clamoring for as hiring a reasonable selection. The dudes coach 3-4 out of the last 15+ years? I think the fact that you went straight to gruden and Rex may be PTSD from the darker days.

At the start I chalked some of the behind the scenes rumors to Michael Thomas being terrible to work with - as cooks had no such reputation it’s still wild that we haven’t heard more stories/off hand comments from reporters or past teammates though.

if a missed coaching hire drops that to 22nd, but a successful one has a Lombardi… you take that chance every single time, right? How low do you see the floor being if you hire someone generally considered to be a reasonable candidate?

and I’ll keep adding… the risk of making the move is also pretty minor. Odds are even a miss is a relatively middle of the pack guy with little drop off.

I don’t know if you realize this but amongst the millions of fans, not all agree on strategy

I think that’s about the most succinct way to put our situation

it’s almost as if talent matters