Mango

Off the top of my head, I don’t know. Pettine is in the booth tonight

You have these guys 8-10 hours per day 5-7 days per week. If they can’t produce for 3 hours without you by their side, you’re messing something up the rest of the week/year. Not to mention, isn’t that what positional coaches and contact with your HC is for?

No we didn’t. We got Jordan Matthews. Gaines was the Sammy trade. Jordan Matthews is a dud. Is he even on a roster currently? Seriously? I have been harsh on some of the moves by the FO. The Sammy trade was worth it I think. We weren’t going to re-sign. Gaines was extremely helpful (when healthy) in the secondary. I am not a big fan of the idea of “scheme fit”. When you favor scheme over talented athletes/players, you’re going to have a bad time more times than not. Is there another sport/athletic endeavor where coaches/teams forego talent over scheme and regularly find success? Can’t really think of one. The entire concept is only applicable to middling or lower tier portions of your depth chart. Where you find a guy who only does one thing well, and you only use them for depth or situationally. Scheme should not be priority for most starters because they are talented enough players to still be better than the next guy.

So we didn’t have issues rushing the passer? Harry is not a back up? Vontae is good? Edmunds is ready to play starting MLB in the NFL? Star isn’t a space eater? Star is also good?

We had issues rushing the passer last year. Phillips is a back up and isn’t ready. Star is just there to eat space. He’s also not terribly good. Tremeaine Edmunds isn’t ready Vontae is bad.

But the other sentences don’t?

Drafting similar, with a HC, with intel he acquired from his previous year is DRASTICALLY different than saying Beane helped Buffalo and McD with the draft. Seems like we are walking back a bit?

Have not seen this reported. Not to be snarky, but source? This is is a much further leap than anything I’ve seen is all.

There is NO WAY Beane helped McDermott with the draft. It’s career suicide and it should be. He was employed by the Panthers and working on their draft. IF it is true, nobody should have touched him with a 10 foot pole. Serious lack of integrity in that move to help another team with their draft, hoping you get a jibe a month or two later. Dudes like that in any profession go from “almost there” to “never was” over night.

Who have we drafted/ picked up in FA that fits a similar profile. Mediocre/Decent Pro’s that fit well into what we’re doing since that draft? Whaley might not have been the best ever, but Potter and Hyde for right into what his strong attribute is. And there is nothing about White or Dawkins that says anything that doesn’t fit that either. If anything 2018 is a drastically different draft than 2017. And 2017 fits the mood of the prior 3. Find guys that fit your HC through the draft, and guys through the bottom night not be the best l, but they’re ready to go. Right now we are waiting on Allen (which is fair, QB is different) and Edmunds. Who is probably better right now at OLB, playing out of position on day 1, and not ready to go. There is almost nothing similar in player selection between the 2017 and 2018 draft or FA. Sorry.

Real question. With our lack of CB behind Tre, lack of pass rush, and bad LB corp. What will you think of the defense takes a step back after our “focus” on it this year?

Thats not true. Dareus had a buy out option next year that would have drastically reduced the dead money to 2 mil or so. All we had to do was wait another season. Right now we are paying 23 mil in salary and dead cap for his lesser replacement and a 6th. Whaley. Bean was employed by the Panthers at the time.

Broken collar bone...

Not a McCarron Guy, but the dude just broke his collarbone a few weeks ago.

Increasing the size of the practice squads would help that. Maybe as a revenue builder the teams practice squads play eachother before the game. Or maybe a skills competition?

Am I the only one who kinda feels bad for the guy?

This is actually super fair and good perspective. It is really good middle ground. As much as the “trust the process” guys aren’t always saying Beane is the greatest. The “the roster is $&@?!$& worse” guys (myself admittedly) aren’t saying Beane is the worst. Thanks for the level headedness

I actually agree with you on all of this. I just think we could get to the same spot, in say, year 3 of the regime, other than the way we went about it. Preston Brown. Never let of the long term plan, by for 4 mil, would make or LB’s better. And help Edmunds splitting time Dareus. Bad contract. Agreed. Cheaper to hold onto him for 2018 and he makes us better. Still have Harry. Glenn. This is tough. I don’t like the trade but I also totally get it. Unsure of future cap ramifications in moving him a year later. But he is currently being paid pretty similar the the OG in NE. It wasn’t a bad contract. Darby. This is fully self inflicted. Also I believe in McD with being able to coach a secondary. It just wasn’t necessary. Tre was supposed to replace Gilmore. But instead we are right where we started before the 2017 draft. I’d prefer our current roster plus the above, and saved cap space this year (and next), while addressing the other existing holes with said free money. All were dudes who are average or well above average starters in the league. I’m a huge proponent of don’t get rid of talent unless you have a viable replacement. We don’t/didn’t. Probably wasn’t clear enough about that in the OP. Cheers.

Going off memory here. i can’t think of a franchise that went from playoffs, to terrible, to consistently good (barring injury), under the same regime. Maybe Carolina? Indy, but Andrew Luck and Payton went down. I guess we’ll watch the Giants this year, but new regime.

Agreed on Starr. Waiting for real bullets to ply, but right now looks more of the same, just not living up to the hype. Correct, salary issues not a big deal moving forward, but we have more holes to fill. It’s just very frustrating from my perspective. Feels like we have WAY more than a single off seasons void of talent in 2018. I mean literally almost an entire OL. Either a major upgrade at RDE or DT (pass rush or run stop). WR1, 2/3 (wherever Zay doesn’t fit if not both) One of SLW or WLB (I have moments where I like Dimarco a lot, but possibly both). CB 2 and 3, we’ve got nobody here. Plus depth at basically every single position. Feels vary daunting.

Can we admit there were major flaws in the Hackett/Marrone offense, that made it slightly more difficult to accurately grade EJ. While also saying that’s EJ was not a good QB? It doesn’t need to be a pie, it’s not mutually exclusive. Just because EJ was 80% terrible, doesn’t mean that Hacket & co. Were only 20% terrible on that side of the ball.

In the NFL, I don’t think these things are mutually exclusive. A GM and coach can come in, see pieces in place, and build around it, while letting others phase out, without creating holes. I think (in general terms, there are exceptions) 8-8 teams are 4-6 win teams with good coaching and not enough talent or 10 win teams with bad coaching. Obviously there are things like injuries, but I do think coaching and roster quality are relatively binary. Especially in a complicated game like football. If you’re literally average at every single position, with good coaching, you should win more than you lose.

Dareus is better than Starr. Sorry, it’s true. We had an out after this season in his contract that would have dropped dead cap space to around 3 mil. Instead we are paying Starr 10 and 13 in dead space for Dareus, to DOWNGRADE the position. Darby is better than Vontae and probable EJ Gaines. And he was incredibly cheap. We took on dead cap and created a hole for a few games of Jordan Matthews? Preston Brown signed a 4 year deal and led the league in tackles. While not great, he’s average or slightly better than average. Currently he’s a better LB than Edmunds. We could have both considering Preston’s contract is a whopping 4 million dollars. Our line one is better with Glenn than without. Dawkins was drafted to play RT. Glenn counts 9.6 million in dead cap space. Most of our cap issues re:dead cap space is self created. As of today, if the season started tomorrow, we are worse or the same at virtually every single position on the roster. If Edmunds and Allen pan out, ok, but that’s where we are today. It’s an incredibly dangerous move from the FO. I fully agree, build through the draft, but you don’t just go create problems for yourself just because. We aren’t cutting/trading anybody nearly as bad vs. highly paid as Dockery or Walker. These are dudes playing on good teams. The topic is, “what areas of the roster did Beane improve?” I’m still waiting for your answer. There were good football players on this team, that are currently still hampering our cap. We spent our draft on a QB and MLB, neither of which have made an immediate impact. (Which is OK, but doesn’t make it any less true). Where on the roster are we better than we were 365 years ago, today? Not 3 years from now, today. We can heavily invest in these two guys and still get better SOMEWHERE. But we didn’t. It’s a valid criticism, and worthy of concern moving forward, especially in terms of trusting the talent evaluation of the FO. They traded a bunch of decent to good NFL players for two maybes, and brought nobody else in. If it works out they win, and I openly put my tail between my legs.

I would say that experience is at the very least, somewhat meaningful. In regards to Allen and his experience, “you don’t know what you don’t know”.

My larger gripe is that we also didn’t fix anything else. We got Allen. The dude has skills, but also a lot of question marks. Getting your QB shouldn’t mean you don’t get better literally ANYWHERE ELSE. Fine, we get Alllen. Ignore the offensive side of the ball. Better make a huge improvement on the defensive side then, and we didn’t. We stepped back everywhere. Of allen turns out to be the guy for 15 years. I was wrong. I’ll gladly admit it (cough EJ cough). Right now it’s a tough pill to swallow if you look at the roster as a whole.