Wasting My Time...

[Ghostnote]

21 hours ago, aceinthehouse said:

Was never crazy about the Rivera or Del Rio hire.

In fact, this team has done very little to inspire me or give me confidence that they will change, be great or even be competitive with the exception of a couple decisions since the Rivera hire 3 years ago.

1)I think they have drafted pretty well.

2)I think Carson Wentz was the right choice for this team, considering the options available & the price in assets it would cost to get them. 

I'm still on board & confident for now. I predicted a 12-5 season & won't jump off the ship until the 6th loss. So I'll stay on board as long as they keep it at 5 losses, or less.

But they better get their act together. Their line is gonna get Wentz hurt & their Defense is not playing up to expectations.

They really need Chase Young & Brian Robinson back, bad. Is it gonna help? Who knows?

But they better figure out something & right this ship, cause it's starting to take on water.

If they can beat Dallas next week & go to 2-2?

Maybe they can start a run, plus get back Young, Robinson & others for that run.

But their starting to lose the fans, who's patience wasn't high to begin with.

That offense is not going to beat Dallas. 

[Ghostnote]

12 hours ago, taylor made said:

This team looks a lot different if they drafted Tua. You are dreaming if you think Ron is a good drafter. 

Tua needs a lot of help and he is still not proving to be that stellar QB he was at Alabama. No Alabama QB is going to be what they were in college. 

[Thaiphoon]

I'll put it this way. I just talked to a friend of mine. Two things I said:

"This team should change their motto from TAKE COMMAND to WE HAVE NO PLAN"

My second thought was this:

"I've grown up with this team and know what it's like to root for a perennial winner. I LOVE this team. I just don't LIKE it right now. And I HATE who is running it."

[aceinthehouse]

Dallas almost becomes a must win now, if we want to stay in the race early.

Otherwise, we're going to be playing catch-up if we drop to 1-3.

It would be nice to get a win vs Dallas & go 2-2. Then start getting guys back from injury like Chase Young & Brian Robinson.

But this team likes to do things the hard way.

[e16bball]

This is a weird thing for me to have fixated on (I do that at times), but the point when I sort of decided things were broken was when they canned Dustin Hopkins and went with Blewitt. 

The timing made no sense, as Hopkins had clearly struggled in the middle of the previous year (when he was injured), but he’d gotten things mostly back on track. Had they cut him loose back when he was struggling, or during the offseason, sure. Makes sense. But they pulled the plug on him out of nowhere. Felt 100% like a scapegoating, as people had been calling for his head for a while, and they finally “gave the people what they want.”

Unsurprisingly, back to health, Hopkins has continued to be a pretty good kicker. He’s made 21/24 for LAC (who picked him up immediately when he became available), with his only misses from 49, 51, and 52 yards. 

We, on the other hand, went with Chris Blewitt. Seemed like a nice local kid. Not great at kicking a football though. It went…poorly. Bordering on disastrous, in fact. 

The really concerning part of all this was that there was clearly no plan. If they wanted to move on from Hopkins, why not in the offseason? And if you’re going to can your kicker of 7 years, shouldn’t you have a replacement lined up? How do you go from a guy who’s #3 in franchise history with 163 FGM in your uniform to Chris F. Blewitt?? 

And, of course, the icing on the cake is that it very predictably ended up with yet another former Panther getting stuffed into the job. Slye has actually been decent for us, but we’re still talking about literally the worst XP kicker (apologies to Sam Ficken) in the modern era of kicking. But of course he had a home here in Washington.

[taylor made]

9 hours ago, lavar703 said:

If we drafted Tua he'd probably be backing someone up right now. He's been pretty rough save for the start of this season. I mean, Miami was actively looking to replace him in the off-season. 

Oh come on man, Tua is a legit top 10 QB right now

[taylor made]

7 hours ago, Ghostnote said:

Tua needs a lot of help and he is still not proving to be that stellar QB he was at Alabama. No Alabama QB is going to be what they were in college. 

Quick, name me the Dolphins starting RB. 

[lavar703]

2 minutes ago, taylor made said:

Oh come on man, Tua is a legit top 10 QB right now

I mean, I’m not sure I agree with that. He had one game where he threw 6 TDs. The other two games he had a combined 2 TD passes. The one game against Baltimore seems like a total outlier and the other two match up with the rest of his career. Not saying it’s not possible that he’s developing. He still is very young but I don’t see top 10 QB currently. 

[lavar703]

4 minutes ago, taylor made said:

Quick, name me the Dolphins starting RB. 

Don’t they have Gaskins and Mostert? I saw Chase Edmonds scored a TD for them on red zone. It’s not like they have a backfield of nobodies. Not the greatest ever but still known backs. 

[Thaiphoon]

3 hours ago, lavar703 said:

Don’t they have Gaskins and Mostert? I saw Chase Edmonds scored a TD for them on red zone. It’s not like they have a backfield of nobodies. Not the greatest ever but still known backs. 

Didn't know Gaskins, but I knew Mostert and Edmonds. Both are on a RBBC type of rotation

[Thaiphoon]

8 hours ago, e16bball said:

This is a weird thing for me to have fixated on (I do that at times), but the point when I sort of decided things were broken was when they canned Dustin Hopkins and went with Blewitt. 

The timing made no sense, as Hopkins had clearly struggled in the middle of the previous year (when he was injured), but he’d gotten things mostly back on track. Had they cut him loose back when he was struggling, or during the offseason, sure. Makes sense. But they pulled the plug on him out of nowhere. Felt 100% like a scapegoating, as people had been calling for his head for a while, and they finally “gave the people what they want.”

Unsurprisingly, back to health, Hopkins has continued to be a pretty good kicker. He’s made 21/24 for LAC (who picked him up immediately when he became available), with his only misses from 49, 51, and 52 yards. 

We, on the other hand, went with Chris Blewitt. Seemed like a nice local kid. Not great at kicking a football though. It went…poorly. Bordering on disastrous, in fact. 

The really concerning part of all this was that there was clearly no plan. If they wanted to move on from Hopkins, why not in the offseason? And if you’re going to can your kicker of 7 years, shouldn’t you have a replacement lined up? How do you go from a guy who’s #3 in franchise history with 163 FGM in your uniform to Chris F. Blewitt?? 

And, of course, the icing on the cake is that it very predictably ended up with yet another former Panther getting stuffed into the job. Slye has actually been decent for us, but we’re still talking about literally the worst XP kicker (apologies to Sam Ficken) in the modern era of kicking. But of course he had a home here in Washington.

This dovetails to my post above yours. They should change it from TAKE COMMAND to WE HAVE NO PLAN

[mar29020]

one big problem i have with Rivera is his nepotism and loyalty to a fault. He Hires so many former panthers and wont change them out when they suck. At this point it is hurting the team and makes me think he cant scout talent very well and would rather sign his boys over players that are better out there. 

[lavar703]

8 hours ago, mar29020 said:

one big problem i have with Rivera is his nepotism and loyalty to a fault. He Hires so many former panthers and wont change them out when they suck. At this point it is hurting the team and makes me think he cant scout talent very well and would rather sign his boys over players that are better out there. 

This has been hurting the team the whole time. 

[e16bball]

13 hours ago, Thaiphoon said:

This dovetails to my post above yours. They should change it from TAKE COMMAND to WE HAVE NO PLAN

This is it. The Hopkins thing is when I realized that they don’t really operate according to any overarching plan, they just kinda…do stuff. 

Like when they let Darby walk so they could pay Jackson to play in a defense he’s particularly ill-suited for. Like when they refused to move Collins to LB, then moved him, then watched him excel, then cut him for cap space, then chose not to bring him back at less cost. Like when they let Scherff walk and cut Flowers for cap space and all they could come up with as a replacement was the 2017 Carolina OG duo. Like when they decimated the interior DL by letting Settle walk and cutting Ioannidis and making clear they don’t intend to resign Payne. And like when Jimmy Garoppolo was apparently their target for the QB spot, and then he was hurt, so they just instantly pivoted to Indianapolis and dumped a huge offer on them for a guy they were possibly about to release. And then chose not to restructure his $28M cap hit, triggering several of the above moves.

It’s all just moves in a vacuum. It’s like a novice chess player, who makes moves to get himself out of whatever situation he finds himself in on that turn — rather than thinking steps ahead to avoid putting himself in these “situations” in the first place. 

They were dealt some bad cards, for absolute certain. The worst one was probably the Haskins pick (RIP), which predated them but absolutely tied their hands. Maybe if that doesn’t happen, they come into 2020 with the chance to take Tua or Herbert (and have their 2nd round pick back to take the great Pittman, who your humble writer insisted was a dude), and they set a completely different tone here. That was, unfortunately, an obstacle they’ve never overcome.

But the biggest issue they have, and will probably continue to have, is that they just don’t know who they are. Where they are. Or, probably more accurately, they just can’t fully commit to their determination of where they are. They’re stuck in-between. They want to win — but they’re not all-in on winning. They want to develop — but they’re not all-in on developing. This has been the case since the latter part of the 2020 season, when the timeline got sped up because the rest of the NFCE happened to suck at the same time. They’re trying to do both, to win while building a long-term core, but that makes the margin for error extraordinarily thin. Especially when you’re starting from scratch — unlike a team like the Ravens or Patriots, who can do that because they have a decades-long foundation already in place. We can’t do all the same things they do, at least not right now, and our efforts to be a cheap knock-off version are predictably failing. 

Edited September 28, 2022 by e16bball

[lavar703]

52 minutes ago, e16bball said:

This is it. The Hopkins thing is when I realized that they don’t really operate according to any overarching plan, they just kinda…do stuff. 

Like when they let Darby walk so they could pay Jackson to play in a defense he’s particularly ill-suited for. Like when they refused to move Collins to LB, then moved him, then watched him excel, then cut him for cap space, then chose not to bring him back at less cost. Like when they let Scherff walk and cut Flowers for cap space and all they could come up with as a replacement was the 2017 Carolina OG duo. Like when they decimated the interior DL by letting Settle walk and cutting Ioannidis and making clear they don’t intend to resign Payne. And like when Jimmy Garoppolo was apparently their target for the QB spot, and then he was hurt, so they just instantly pivoted to Indianapolis and dumped a huge offer on them for a guy they were possibly about to release. And then chose not to restructure his $28M cap hit, triggering several of the above moves.

It’s all just moves in a vacuum. It’s like a novice chess player, who makes moves to get himself out of whatever situation he finds himself in on that turn — rather than thinking steps ahead to avoid putting himself in these “situations” in the first place. 

They were dealt some bad cards, for absolute certain. The worst one was probably the Haskins pick (RIP), which predated them but absolutely tied their hands. Maybe if that doesn’t happen, they come into 2020 with the chance to take Tua or Herbert (and have their 2nd round pick back to take the great Pittman, who your humble writer insisted was a dude), and they set a completely different tone here. That was, unfortunately, an obstacle they’ve never overcome.

But the biggest issue they have, and will probably continue to have, is that they just don’t know who they are. Where they are. Or, probably more accurately, they just can’t fully commit to their determination of where they are. They’re stuck in-between. They want to win — but they’re not all-in on winning. They want to develop — but they’re not all-in on developing. This has been the case since the latter part of the 2020 season, when the timeline got sped up because the rest of the NFCE happened to suck at the same time. They’re trying to do both, to win while building a long-term core, but that makes the margin for error extraordinarily thin. Especially when you’re starting from scratch — unlike a team like the Ravens or Patriots, who can do that because they have a decades-long foundation already in place. We can’t do all the same things they do, at least not right now, and our efforts to be a cheap knock-off version are predictably failing. 

When we get Christian McCaffrey for the 3rd pick in the draft next year that's when things will really take off....