DougDew

Dislike for him? I think the contract is fine. I never said otherwise. He's a guy who handles the ball frequently and can make plays so $14m isn't out of the question. But there is a theory that RBs get hurt a lot and that any one of them is unreliable. Seems to be holding true...and these have just been sort of stupid minor things....not like getting a knee blown up.

LOL.

If I were to remake the TE room, I'd start with Ogletree as the in-line TE and Mallory as the move TE. And we typically carry 4. Cox and Granson can seek roster competition. Woods needs to show me that he can stay healthy or fix whatever he's got going on off-field (his injury situation seems odd)

And from a FoxNews article on the firing. Panthers team owner David Tepper reportedly urged the team to pick Young over Stroud. It depends upon the definition of "reportedly". The author could be just cutting and pasting somebody else's sloppy reporting.

The financial aspect of small market vs large market is nonsense, IMO. There are more endorsements from local car dealerships in NYC than Indy? So what. Andy Reid and Pat Mahomes are doing commercials for State Farm insurance, and they play for KC. From a financial aspect, I'd say that avoiding a high state income tax rate on your NFL contract would be a greater financial incentive than the income generated by local endorsements.

What destroys a locker room is seeing players getting paid more for not performing any better than the next guy in his spot. Those players have to either play to their level of pay or be held accountable and cut. JMO.

A former DT of the Colts, Ellis Johnson, was a competitive bass fishing tournament contestant. Had the boat, rods and reels, equipment, to be very good and actually turned pro after he retired from the Colts, IIRC. I'd wager that a good portion of NFL players come from small towns/small markets and are not interested in the places the media thinks cool people want to live. Can't speak to Irsay, but he does seem to have some of that trendy coolness take on things so he might in fact think that the lack of FAs is because of the Indy culture lifestyle. Sounds like an excuse though.

For the discussion about who wanted Young....Reich or Tepper...check out WalterFootball's "firing grade" for Reich. (The site is a PITA to load so I'll let y'all find it yourselves). He says "The coaching staff wanted Stroud but Tepper picked Young". WF could be simply spreading the logical inference many have made, but reading his site over the years tells me that he does have a decent level of inside contacts into NFL teams and their scouting world.

Thinking about this a bit. Rhule got hired away from Baylor...not fired. Rhule was not really a free agent coach to be free to sign anywhere. Rhule was fired from CAR, so was sort of a free agent to be hired by any college. I can see Rhule's side where on one hand he was hired away by CAR, so they would pay Baylor's contract, but the other he was fired by CAR, so NEB would not be responsible for CAR contract. CAR would be wrong to blend the salaries as a calculation. I would think that in most situations, the college coach gets hired away by the NFL coach, and not the other direction. I guess Saban moved onto to Alabama, but probably had to resign from MIA to do it. Seems a very lawyerly issue. You may be right. Just pointing out a difference in the two situations.

@rockywoj, @RollerColt BTW, hedging is when your normal business profit is based upon a set of conditions, and you "hedge" the business to protect it from those conditions changing. A proper hedge has to have a profitable business line underpinning. If the hedge itself is the source of profit...that's when it looks like gambling or funny money. Farmers might have a situation where they have input costs at, say, $4,00 per bushel and output sale crop prices are $6.00 per bushel at the time of their input. They "hedge" the crop prices as to lock in their $2.00/bushel profit....in case by the time they sell the crop prices haven't declined to $5.00/ bushel or less. Of course, the hedge eliminates the possibility they gain a windfall if prices rise to $7.00/bushel by the time they sell. They use a hedge to lock in the margin created by their main line of work. They are not hedging (speculating) on crop prices as their main driver of income/wealth. There is a difference. Now back to football.....

I would point out that our oline is probably the best its been in 3 years, because we have the best LT we've had in three years. I would say that Shane's Minshew/Raimann/Downs/Pittman/Moss, is as good as anything Frank worked with since Luck. But I'm not comparing Shane to Reich. I'm comparing CAR's talent to the talent Reich had here. Frank deserves to be fired both times. Just pointing out the similarities of the weaknesses in the talent.

However you criticize it, we still scored a lot of points under Reich/Wentz with basically the same players we have now but lower quality LT. Scored a lot more than CAR is scoring. The big difference is that CAR doesn't have JT, but I don't see that as a complete account.

We scored a lot of points during the Wentz year, without a great oline and the same if not worse WRs. Last season was just bad everywhere. Just saying that the criticisms of the CAR talent pool look a lot like the weaknesses around here over the past three seasons now. Frank has been dealing with the same issues with two different teams. I think he should have done better, just pointing it out. It would be interesting to see where CAR would have been if they had Moore, CMC, and Levis. Not a juggernaut but probably 5 wins by now?

Don't these rules apply when a fired coach gets hired by another team within the NFL? Nebraska contract wouldn't have an impact on CARs NFL contract. Heck, Rhule could get hired as the CEO of Home Depot and it shouldn't affect the terms of the CAR contract? I don't see the Reich/Colts/CAR situation being the same as Rhule/ CAR/ NEB.

And the NFC South has been pretty weak. They'd probably be leading/contending for the division even if Levis was the QB.

Have they squandered the capital gained from the McCaffrey trade? That trade is looking like a waste at the moment.

Tells you that they were a bad team going into the draft, then gave up draft picks and a good weapon for a young QB to have to then take the worst young QB of the 4 in contention. JMO.

Funny thing, his offense looks that same as it did here. But he also suffers from having the same bad WRs and Oline problems, not to mention questions at QB.

JTs price is built on him breaking off some long runs for TDs. That's what made him an NFL name. He needs to do that several times in a season to earn that level of money, IMO. The stuff he has been doing since his return is very good, but not really elite.

11/26 Young: 18/31 194 yds, 0TDs, 0INTs, Longest 25 yds, 4 Sacks, Rating 76.5 Stroud: 26/36 304 yds 2TDs, 0INTs, Longest 34, Sacks 4, Rating 116 AR: N/A Levis: 18/28 185 yds, 0TDs, 0INTs, Longest 25, Sacks 1, Rating 83.2 Bonus: (4th round) Aiden O'Connell, LVR: 23/33 248 yds, 1TD, 0INT, Longest 33 yds, Sack 1, Rating 101.2 I'd say that Levis and Young look like rookie QBs, who also have bad weapons/offenses to manage. Stroud looks like a top 16 QB already. And O'Connell has been playing better than Young and Levis, IMO eye test, despite being a 4th round rookie on his 2nd HC (which may be an improvement from the 1st)

Bowers played last week, probably 20 snaps. I get a lot of UGA games. They said he had surgery for a high ankle sprain and recovered in about half of the predicted time. So he might be a tough guy/quick healer type. The last WalterFootball mock draft I saw had him going to the Colts at 13. He probably would be BPA if he was there at 13.

I agree about the guarantee. I said that a few pages ago, just didn't repeat it in the recent string of comments. Getting better for the playoffs and improving the roster could simply come in the form of giving the other (and better?) LBers Leonard's playing time. Maybe go with more safeties, and Leonard was seen as the odd man out. I'm no fan of Cox, but I see him as at least doing one thing better than the other TEs, blocking, so I don't think he is as easy to replace as Leonard. I also think the Team Captain designation had already seemed like a nod to Leonard's stature. I mean, the guy has hardly played in two years so its kind of hard for him to have actually earn that status in 2023. And with his comments being less than the company-line many times, I don't think he really had much stature with the FO anymore. Just a guess.

Maybe they would have by now if Woods was ready to play. I think its cuts are usually about roster spots and upgrading with replacements, ultimately. With investment in the future a consideration.

I think it would be a bit weird to have a Team Captain inactive the rest of the year because of bad play. Usually the captains are the star players. I don't think Leonard ever said anything out of line, but everything he did say seemed to conflict with the decision makers decisions...for a number of years now. Style can mask substance for only so long. But I doubt there was any real concern over him being a locker room issue. Again, they probably just wanted to free up a roster spot to see if they can find better coverage guys/combos.

Thanks, I forgot they already did. Ballard is always trying to improve the team by churning the bottom of the roster. Fans are confused because they think Leonard was something better than that. And a bottom tier guy who vocally wanted starter playing time....well...that math doesn't compute.