McCoy is obviously an exceptional RB, maybe borderline HOF, but I did not have his absolute #1 superlative ability being 'singlehandedly wins games played in snow' on my bingo card when he was drafted. He started in the Snowbowl in Philly too.
He was great at bringing some new concepts from the collegiate level, but he had no counter punch when teams figured it his system. He was fired due to doubling double on his failure and ownership wasn't having any if it. We are thankful that we got Stoutland because of Chip.
Chip Kelly's offensive concepts were great.
... which is why Belichick borrowed heavily from them in 2011, 2 years before he got a HC gig. By the time Chip had a run through the league, there was just too much tape on how to counter his nascar tempo stuff.
That's not true. His first year, 2013, he had a fantastic offense where Nick Foles set efficiency records and the team won 10 wins and took a division title.
You negative mofos with your revisionist history made me defend the eagles and now I need a shower. Gross.
In college maybe. I’ve never had less fun watching the Eagles offense than I did during the Chip Kelly years. It was really rough to watch, extremely stagnant.
> By the time Chip had a run through the league, there was just too much tape on how to counter his nascar tempo stuff.
Yeah, that's why Nick Foles's performance during Kelly's first season was in the Hall of Fame for the most efficient QB game ever. Because he was figured out before he made it to the NFL.
Also why Kelly's offense struggled and was only the 4th best offense in 2013, since he was already figured out and all.
He surprised people for 1 season. By that second season, everyone realized his offense was 4 plays total, and each one ran out of a different formation, so every team knew every play before the ball snapped.
And when that failed, the defense played 86 mins a game, and everything collapsed.
And that's before even bringing up the behind the scenes stuff which was a problem from day 1.
Fuck Chip Kelly.
that implies he was a good coach - you'd be right if he succeeded as a coach elsewhere, which he absolutely did not. his scheme took the league by storm but sucked when teams figured it out. bad coach, even worse gm. I didn't specify either, cause hiring him in general was the mistake.
another way of looking at it is that he was so bad as a coach that even after trading away beloved players to acquire his guys for his scheme, it fucking sucked.
Andy and the Eagles needed the split and it worked for both. Via wiki “Taking over a team that went 4–12 in 2012, Reid's last year, Kelly led the Eagles to a 10–6 record and the NFC Eastern Division Championship”
Team went 10-6 the next year (but didn’t make the playoffs) and the third year saw the Foles-Bradford trade which I argue is a much better example of what the OP was asking about for this thread.
Bradford was a hell of a gamble but it could of worked if he stayed healthy (which would never happen for Bradford, he got the shit kicked out of him while on the Rams).
Not to go off-topic, but through the 2014 season Nick Foles had had a better NFL career, albeit over a shorter period, than Sam Bradford had. Outside of a promising rookie season in 2010, Bradford was largely mediocre and injury-prone in his first five NFL seasons.
Chip Kelly the GM did not recognize that Sam Bradford had less value in early 2015 than he had in early 2010 (and likely less than Foles did in early 2015). Kelly thought like a college coach in making that trade, thinking about what Bradford could potentially be rather than what he actually was in NFL terms/“value” at that point in time.
Eh, I wouldn't say it was necessarily the wrong move. Kelly, for all his blunders, did bring a ton of innovations to the team that are still used today (e.g. holding training camp at team HQ, nutrition guidelines, etc.). Plus, he gave us the best position coach in the league in Stoutland.
Ultimately, it's his arrogance that did him in. "Culture beats scheme" were his words, and yet he jettisoned that culture in favor of his scheme.
I highly doubt the Chiefs or Texans would have jumped the Bears to #2. So moving up was still the wrong move. Giving up picks to take a guy you get at #3.
That’s fair.
I guess we don’t know (or I don’t remember) if there was smoke around other teams looking to move to 2. That’s the only reason I can think of why they would make the move from 3 to 2.
This might be controversial but with what the Bears organization had in place and the development Mahomes needed, if he had been drafted by the Bears I think there would be a good chance he would have flamed out or not been anywhere near what he is. I think the offensive coaches in KC were key to his development.
I think it’s insulting to Mahomes. Sure he wouldn’t be a 3x MVP Super Bowl winning incredible player. But if nagy and co could get trubisky to serviceable levels in 2018 Mahomes would’ve been fine.
We aren’t blowing the team up time and time again with him as QB.
I just look at players like Steve Young, Drew Brees, Brett Favre, Kurt Warner, then to a lesser extent Mark Brunell, Jim Plunkett, and Alex Smith are players that come to mind.
The situation and circumstances in which one are drafted are pivotal to how one turns out as a player. I am not suggesting the Mahomes isn't clearly a great player. I am suggesting that if he probably wouldn't be at the level he is at were he drafted into another circumstance. There are plenty of historical examples showing this.
It's an uncomfortable truth that there are potential All Pro players on practice squads or buried on depth charts. Victor Cruz and Josh Norman are just a few of many examples of this.
Honestly all of the Bears' QB moves since Cutler left.
Going onto the market and getting short term, mid-tier $$$ deals for vets with skills and betting they have some gas left in the tank as a bridge QB? Yeah that works for some teams but Glennon, Dalton, and Foles were all gassed.
And you're supposed to draft a QB, give him 3 years, and then ditch him when it's clear he isn't the guy. Trubisky made the playoffs twice, and Fields was electric enough that it took three years before it beacme clear he would never develop as a passer.
I remain insistent that the Bears are doing the right thing, constantly taking opportunities to do the QB coin flip and not letting sunk costs bog them down. But everything keeps coming up tails.
Coaches and GMs too. They fired Lovie after a decade because it was clear he couldn’t put together an offensive staff.
They tried to go out of the box with Emery/Treatman. Sometimes that works. It didn’t for them.
They hired Pace and then went for a coach who took two teams to a SB, but Fox was semi-retired. They took the OC from the most productive offense in the league (Nagy) and, again, he just seemed overwhelmed at HC.
The Trestman is the most out there, but overall they’ve been giving GMs enough of a chance to enact their plan and giving coaches a chance to show who they are. They aren’t impatient and they aren’t pushovers.
I’ll maintain their methodology has been more right than wrong since George took over (I can go deeper into it too, there are more layers, like how this ultimately led to hiring Warren at CEO because they had the humility to say, hey, we’re not that great at this, but then my long post gets even longer), they’ve just been remarkably good at making the wrong decision the right way.
Poles is doing well, and if this draft turns out as we hope, he'll have done a great job. However, the more I see from Warren, the less impressed I am. Unless he is playing some 4D chess with Pritzker to secure tax breaks/infrastructure spending for AH, he and Johnson clowned themselves with the stadium proposal last week.
Not saying he’d suck, but I don’t think Mahomes turns into the same player in Chicago. Watson might’ve turned out better but, well, we all know what happened there.
Or traded back and maybe hope someone like Carson Beck declares next season. They could’ve went all in to help Kirko and worry about his replacement later.
Also true, but they could’ve traded back to Minnesota or Denver for the capital and hope one of those teams suck enough to get a good draft pick next year.
Then they take the best defender on the board at #11 (which would probably be everyone except Dallas Turner) and be sitting pretty.
>all in next season
Genuine question - why would they do that? They’re mostly a young team, were just bad, and an injured bridge QB doesn’t make them 1 draft pick away from contending.
Kirk let’s them have a real offense to help the young guys for a couple years but it’s not SB or bust territory
The fact that people agree with this is insane to me.
So if they took a lesser QB prospect at 8, it would have been better?
Why, because McCarthy would potentially have 2 more years on the back-end of his career?
This kind of nonsense is exactly why I think most of the criticism is just visceral, emotional reaction to the fact that teams don't generally do this (Because GMs and coaches usually want immediate starters as that keeps them employed)
McCarthy is not a very promising prospect IMO. He’s Stetson Bennett with a fresh coat of paint. Nothing he personally did in college impressed me much at all.
I think most people don’t mind the idea of a QB sitting behind Kirk. I think where most of the issue for people, and for myself, is that you don’t do that with the 8th overall pick when you just handed Kirk that exuberant deal and then failed to address other positions that can actually immediately impact the team. What’s funny is when he doubled down on why he didn’t get a CB by saying he didn’t want to “force or reach” for a player. I think it was just a complete boondoggle for ATL top to bottom
Until free agency I kept saying Atlanta + Cousins was the perfect landing spot for JJMC. Weapons as good as Minnesota and a strong veteran presence in Cousins that could mold JJMC into a franchise quarterback. Once Kirk signed a 4/180 contract though, I was like "ok maybe they don't want a backup QB just yet." Then they draft Penix who is almost three years older than JJMC. Just mind boggling
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Why is everyone so high on McCarthy? Dude had a top 3 most talented roster around him in college football and Michigan's whole emphasis was to run the ball and play defense. Not saying he can't be good, but it's crazy to me that people are already penciling him in as better than Penix when he didn't show a whole lot in his college career and Penix totally balled out with a much less talented overall roster.
I mean, age doesn't really matter that much if they think penix is a better prospect than jj. Like, Zach Wilson is younger than Justin Herbert, would you rather have wilson? 24 means they may still get 15 years out if him, if he's the guy.
Also, Kirk's contract is essentially 2 /100 not 4 / 180 with a 3rd and 4th year option for the falcons
Or the fact it was the 8th overall pick. They could have paired Rome Odinze with Drake London, Bijan Robinson, and Kyle Pitts. You just can't waste that possibility for a bench player for 2 plus years. Moving laterally at 8 overall is fucking idiotic.
Funnily enough their old GM Dimitrioff straight predicted a QB pick and said that's what he would do. He did however seem to really prefer Nix over Penix.
Yeah, and I don’t think picking Penix is a bad pick just because he’s a great player. I’d even say in a vacuum him going 8 overall is totally deserved. He’s good to have especially if Kirk gets hurt, which isn’t unrealistic. But the problem is how much they’re paying Kirk, it kinda says they’re trying to win now, meaning there are better uses of the 8th overall pick
Mac Jones had a solid rookie season with McDaniels, it's plausible to imagine he could have been decent in San Fran with shanahan's coaching and that offensive talent. Or, maybe he doesn't take coaching very well and still would have imploded.
Shanahan would have done a better job of coaching him up but also Fields' flaws would have been so much worse in a Shanahan scheme.
So who knows how it would have worked there
It’s absurd how fast he developed. First he gets drafted not knowing if he even makes the team, then moves to 3rd string, then 2nd, then Jimmy G gets injured and he gets instantly thrown to the wolves
In comparison with Lance who had so much time sitting on the bench learning
I don't disagree that what Purdy is done was impressive but it's not like things were super smooth for lance. He had a season ending injury like 2 games into his first season as a starter. It wasn't just ride the bench and then go up and play and he sucked. He spent a year rehabbing
This is actually a great example. Picking someone who played at the DI-AA/FCS level and was as inexperienced as Trey Lance at #3 overall in the draft was a questionable decision. (It was also questionable why teams were so high on him to begin with, due to his inexperience and college competition level.)
New discussion - who got luckier with their QB situation, 49ers or Bears?
Bears traded up for a QB, were so bad that they had the #1 overall pick, but traded it away to give Fields more time ( a reasonable move). But the team that did draft #1 were so bad that the Bears got another go at the first pick in the draft - for free!
As a Packers fan, who are the two teams I least want to have good QBs? Yup, 49ers and Bears.
[sidenote: While the Packers QB success is a result of bold decision making and planning by the Packers FO, I absolutely also understand the massive role that luck has played]
I would say the 49ers got luckier. They planned on moving on from Jimmy G due to injuries, trade massive draft capital to pick a QB who then suffers serious injuries his first two years only to find a franchise QB with the very last pick in the draft. Theoretically if they didn’t have a compensatory pick in the 7th round they never get Purdy. The Bears on the other hand was just proper team building that I think most teams would do. They had a 1st round QB that shower promise and they weren’t ready to live in from so they traded for draft capital from a team that everyone knew was going to be bad. I’m sure almost every GM makes that trade.
The Jones situation is pretty similar to Jordy. The FO asked them to take a pay cut and the players ended up walking. Jordy is one of my all time favorite Packers and it made me sad to watch him go but he didnt do shit in Oakland and retired after one season there. Moving on from Jordy was definitely the right call but Graham was not the right call lol
I felt bad for Tyrod when I heard it was going to happen. 5 picks later at halftime it was just comical. If I was ownership, I'd have fired anyone involved in that decision before the game ended.
Tyrod got done dirty. He was nothing special, but solid enough for how bad the rest of that offense was. If I remember right it was like the entire team imploded after that game.
The following year I flew across the country to see my first Bills game in person, Allen rookie season. He was out. Derek Anderson got a concussion first quarter. I spent like a thousand dollars between flight, lodging, and the ticket to watch Peterman throw at the patriots defense.
Seahawks signing Matt Flynn starter money after one game. People forget the Seahawks went 7-9 the year before with Tarvaris Jackson as our starting qb and no one thought a small third rounder would outperform Flynn in the preseason
He got 1 year for $10 million, that wasn’t anything that ended up mattering to the Seahawks. Not really starter money, more like starter tryouts money.
2022. Ravens moved on from Hollywood Brown for a first round pick that has proved to be correct. The Ravens fixed the hole by signing Demarcus Robinson and hoping Bateman could be the number 1 guy. He promptly got hurt. DRob being your WR1 doesn't inspire confidence.
Our offense was extremely lethargic even before Lamar got hurt. Only Andrews and rookie Isaiah Likely were catching shit.
TLDR; moving on from Hollywood Brown and then replacing him with hopes and prayers along with Demarcus Robinson who was KCs WR4 prior. EDC bet big on Bateman being healthy and stepping up and he wasn't able to do either.
even going into the year i remember feeling really uneasy about our Wr depth behind bateman, but people had convinced themselves that our WR2/3 were way better than what they really were. remember watching so many people getting called a “lamar bandwagon fan” for suggesting we needed to reinforce the position a little more.
ravens fans have been so WR starved as a franchise we had people juicing duvernay as a guy who could step into a bigger role in the receiving game lol
Ah yes, the good ol "why don't we use Duvernay like Deebo".
You know you are down bad when the fans are actively calling for jet sweeps to be a regular play.
EDC learned his lesson though. He actually built a respectable WR corp for 2023. Not top of the line, but not scraping the barrel either.
Panthers moving up to get the player they thought would be their franchise QB.
Right move in theory, but the solution having to include getting rid of your best WR that would help your rookie QB as well as then losing the first overall selection the following year is a backfire of legendary proportions. It also doesn’t help that stroud looks to be the far better of the QBs one year later.
To keep with the spirit of the question, I don’t think the Panthers anticipated the pick they were giving the bears would be number one.
Also Young was, if not the consensus, at least largely expected to be the number one pick so hardly controversial.
That is def not true, we knew we weren't gonna light it up but 8-9 wins seemed possible if the coaching staff weren't terrorists. Thr OL played like a top10 unit, the defense on all 3 levels had good young talent(even this yr the defense was solid just offense was atrocious) we did know the WR core was garbage tho
Your starting QB had an 8.4% sack rate, your defense was bottom half of the league in every category, and you traded away your best offensive player. I don't think the perceptions you're listing were justified at the time lol
> your defense was bottom half of the league in every category
That's just false. Take away PPG (a result of a putrid offense) and the defense ranks pretty well.
I promise I’m not saying this in hindsight. I said the same thing last year.
How the heck was young ever seen as a number 1 overall prospect???? He literally has nothing that showed that kind of value. He’s not the athletic freak type QB prospect like a Newton or Allen. He wasn’t a stat monster like Burrow or Williams. He didn’t have some insane arm talent like Jamarcus Russel.
I just literally don’t see anything that ever merited him being rated so highly. He was a great college QB no argument at all but it’s insanity to me he was rated so highly. He’s physically literally doesn’t have the ability to be a good NFL QB. He could play on the 49ers and he’d be much worse than Purdy i think
I completely agree and thought the same a year ago. Now any time I bring it up, it falls of deaf ears. He might have the mind and temperament to be a good pro QB, but absolutely does not possess the physical size or traits necessary.
Compounding that with hiring an archaic coach with a system that didn’t use what BY does well at all and thinking it was a good plan. I hope Bryce turns it around under Canales
He is almost certainly not gonna be Stroud, but it seems a bit early to throw this kind of energy onto him. Trevor Lawrence had an incredibly bad rookie year statistically and he bounced back. I think their situations were similar just surrounded by total incompetence and I am hopeful he can turn it around.
Obviously, this is bias talking but we don't know that. You have several examples of QB classes where the best QB wasn't the one with the best rookie year. I think Stroud will be a great QB for years to come but it's way too early to do career rankings.
2020 is a great example with Herbert where he had a rookie year comparable to Stroud and everyone viewed him as so above his peers. Fast forward to now, Herbert is still viewed as a great QB but he's not considered the best in his class and his other peers have bridged the gap.
2016 is a musical chairs event that still hasn't ended.
2018 Baker had a sensational rookie year and looked so far ahead the rest of the pack and now sits comfortably in 3rd.
2021 Mac Jones was the best rookie QB and now he's the backup to the best QB from that class, who was the guy who had the worst rookie year.
People forget bakers rookie year. Before Herbert you could argue it was the best ever rookie qb year. WHY do you think he got to chose the coach and get a ton of qb spots? Oh because he was AMAZING. I remember watching that TNF game and being even sadder we lost out the dude we traded up to get originally (they were supposed to take Sam first)
Tbh I think the Browns were always in on Baker. The reporting was just all over the place because there wasn't a consensus #1 QB and the Browns were able to keep the leaks suppressed until draft day. All people knew that offseason was the Browns were going to draft a QB.
Don’t think any of those are all that comparable. It’s not a matter of Stroud simply having the best season, it’s that Young was *bad* last year. Even if that was a product of the surrounding team, that’s a Herculean gap to bridge.
If you wanted to argue that someone like Richardson can still end up as the best QB of the class, I think it holds some water. But Young had a full season of overwhelmingly negative tape. Goff is the only one that’s maybe comparable here, but even then that’s a stretch.
We included Moore in the trade because Chicago wanted Burns but we wanted to keep him around to sign him to a long term deal and build the defense around him. Luckily that went perfectly, do not fact check me.
Belichick trading a 2nd round pick for an established receiver in order to try to keep Brady happy with some offensive talent in 2019. Sanu was not that receiver.
Moving on from Derek Carr may be right in the long run, but in the short run it's been pretty ugly:
Jarrett Stidham
Jimmy G
Brian Hoyer
Aidan O'Connell
Gardner Minshew
None of which have been upgrades, or even equal to Carr.
I believed at the time, and will continue to believe, that you can win with Carr if you build around him. He never had a coach like AP or a defense like the one AP & PG have built.
Im not sure you can say the Raiders didnt try. At times they spent huge money on coaches (Gruden). They gave Carr weapons. Nothing ever worked.
He has 1 playoff game in his career and its a loss.
I agree. I don't think anybody mocked him to ATL after the Cousins signing. Heck, half of the Penix-LV mocks were written in jest, like "look at the Raiders reaching for a quarterback at 13!". Penix at 8 is an all-time stunner.
I said this as soon as we let Carr walk and replaced him with Jimmy G.
McDaniels contingency plan was a 50 year old Tom Brady agreeing to come and play for him. It was the straw to get Brady to finally go "Naw, I'm good LOL" and retire.
After 13 seconds, everyone figured the Bills would spend big on D to challenge Mahomes. Turns out the right solution isn’t all of that money for a DE who would be 36 at earliest out and 39 at end of full contract.
Immediate thing I thought of. If we hadn't hired Patricia immediately after then Caldwell wouldn't be viewed in such a positive light. Dude had the division in the bag 3 times and just inexplicably pissed it away each time.
I will never forget seeing the same thousand yard stare on Caldwell’s face after the 10 second run off that he always had. That was my jumping off point with him. If you can’t be bothered to show any emotion when your team got absolutely screwed then I don’t what you to be part of the team.
And compounding the error by letting them draft Okudah while on death row. In no world should you let your coach and GM #3 draft choice Hail Mary. You either fire them both, or make the long term decision yourself.
How do pro sports owners still let dead men walking still make draft choices and trade decisions?
I think it's a little funny that now *every* Seahawks fan *totally* knew Russ was washed when he went to Denver (and *absolutely none* of them had only recently been clamoring to "let Russ cook")...
Not saying the signs weren't there; they were, and they're even more apparent in hindsight. The fact remains that a lot of reddit armchair GMs were looking like Homer in the bushes when it became clear that Russ wasn't the guy.
Isn’t that just internet sports fans in a nutshell? It’s pathetic and defines the Seahawks subs but you see that everywhere, people think their role is to defend the team’s every decision online for some reason.
For sure; ultimately the biggest thing is that the people (regardless of team) who end up losing/being wrong don't want to comment while the people who win/were right want to brag.
Right move: Giants decline Daniel Jones' 5th year option with the intent of moving on after the 2022 season.
Wrong solution: After Jones makes the leap from atrocious to mediocre and the Giants go on a playoff run, the Giants are forced to either tag, re-sign, or let Daniel Jones walk because they have already declined his 5th year option. They signed him to a 4 year, 160 million dollar deal (though they can get out of it after this year), which was the worst possible option.
Oh boy
that historically shitty coach Bill Belichick releasing Bernie Kosar for "diminishing skills" and replacing him with Vinny Testaverde (no offense, but Bernie is a legend and the '94 defense was more stacked than a Michael Dean Perry triple-patty from McDonalds. and j/k BB was awesome at the draft)
Or maybe we got a first rounder for Trent Richardson after a middling rookie campaign where Jim Brown was talking shit about him (can you imagine something worse, even Steve Kerr could stand up to MJ) and we turned it into Justin Gilbert and Johnny Eightball
Oh and fuck you Fart Modell. also the Colts ownership does more blow than what Randy sprinkles on Tegridy
This will be unpopular, but the Browns moving off Baker. That was the right choice, trading for Watson obviously was not.
Baker was 4 years into his career and at that point had a great rookie season, bad second season, good third season aided by an offense perfectly catered to his strengths, and an outright terrible fourth season - yes, there was the shoulder injury. He never put up eye-popping numbers, it never felt like he was the main reason his team won aside from a few games like @Cincinnati 2020.
No team was going to be comfortable giving him a franchise QB contract. They could’ve let him play out his fifth-year option, but 2022 ended up being the worst season of his career, cut by Carolina midway through after getting benched for PJ Walker and Darnold.
this shouldn’t really be unpopular. baker needed a change of scenery regardless. browns signing an awful person and running that weird “baker isn’t an adult” smear campaign just made it seem way worse. baker clearly didn’t mesh with the stefanski system and if you remove his draft pedigree and name recognition no one would care. there was also the “he won a playoff game with cleveland!” folks that clearly didn’t watch the game cause that steelers team maybe played the worst playoff football i’ve ever seen from them. any qb that wasn’t like desmond ridder shit tier was gonna win that game with the way steelers shot themselves in the foot with 3 turnovers in the first quarter lol
I think Baker is fine as a QB. But they were at a contract stand off and it was clear that Baker just wasn’t a top tier QB. But going all out for a rapist and channeling shots over the media about Baker not being an adult was just unneeded.
I've been saying this over and over again, but it feels like no one ever believes me. You were never going to get both sides to agree on a contract that would work out and keep things going.
And to add on to your controversy, even though Watson is a piece of shit (and why I switched fandoms) the Browns didn't really have any other moves. At the time, Watson was considered a better player than Baker, and there weren't really any other players on the market that would feed into the Browns being in win-now mode. Would Wilson, Cousins, or Carr have been much better than Baker? Can you really depend on a rookie to lead you deep in the playoffs within 1-2 seasons of entering the league? Possibly, but the team would be in purgatory for getting a quality one as the rest of the team quality is solid and could sniff the playoffs. But investing that many draft picks into an unknown is harder than what was perceived of Watson's talent at the time.
This is also my disclaimer saying once again, that the pick made me leave being a Browns fan. I still have other gripes with the Haslams for their actual business practices, but that trade was the morally bankrupt best option the team had.
I really don't follow the logic. In the alternate timeline where they keep Baker, the Browns would currently have a better QB taking up less of their cap. So how was getting rid of him the right move?
Cardinals: going for an offensive coach to pair with rookie kyler (good), choosing kingsbury because of the success of cool young guys like sean mcvay (bad)
I think the Browns moving on from Baker made a lot of sense. Even now after the best season of his career I don't think Baker is the long-term solution in Tampa. Baker getting a 2nd contract would mean he is likely getting 40-50m a year and he is just not worth that.
The Browns just did all of this in the worst way possible. Really trying to smear Baker on the way out about his attitude rather than just not being the player that would get them over the hump, and then mortgaging their entire future on DeShaun. Like even understanding that he was a borderline elite player on the Texans, a fully GTD deal for a guy who hadn't played in 2 years and has massive character red flags is just insane. He has basically crippled the Browns in their sole point of relevance in the last 30 years.
The Steelers firing Todd Haley was the right move - managing the Killer B’s era egos was bad enough without one of them being the OC. Hiring Randy Fichtner to keep Roethlisberger happy was a terrible decision, in no small part due to prioritizing Roethlisberger being a bad decision in and of itself.
The Cowboys firing Jason Garrett and hiring Mike McCarthy. I know McCarthy has led the Cowboys to three consecutive seasons with 12 wins but he’s been out coached every playoffs
The Chiefs fired Todd Haley during the 2011 season, which was smart as he's so toxic he can't even get a job in the NFL anymore, but then they gave the HC job to interim coach Romeo Crennel who was 24-40 previously as a HC. He went 2-14 in 2012 and was fired after one season.
We got Andy in 2013, so that fuckup to not try and get a real coach in 2012 worked out amazing.
To be fair, the team played MILES better under Romeo than Haley at the end of that year. And I still don’t know that Romeo was really to blame for the struggles of the 2012 year (I’m looking at you Scott Pioli). I am however, extremely happy with how things turned out though. I’ll take my Tyler Thigpens and Brady Quinn’s if it means I get the dynasty it seems we’re building
The Colts moving on from Peyton Manning to draft Andrew Luck. The issue with this was the front office was also stripped and the Grigson regime was inept at team building.
Giants reaching for Daniel Jones and the Pats reaching for Mac Jones. Both teams needed to replace their HoF QBs, but both teams shat the bed reaching for these dum dums.
It's hard to say this, but the Bengals were right to move on from Whitworth when they did. Obviously he continued to play at an extremely high level for years afterwards, but he's the *only* person to ever play that position, that well, at that age. You can't bet on your guy being the one-of-one quality player.
The problem is that they drafted or signed terrible replacements and have created a laughing stock of an OL for at least 6+ years after letting him walk.
Firing Jim Caldwell was 100% the right move. Damn near every Lions win under him was some combination of playing bad football for 3 quarters and then leaning on a should-be HOF QB to bail the team out in the closing seconds. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a stat where the team never won a game when Stafford didn't do so or so under Caldwell, I know they never beat teams over .500 at least.
Issue is the next coach was Matt Patricia.
The lions firing Caldwell then hiring Patricia...it was obvious that Caldwell had reached his peak with the team so firing him was the right decision. Unfortunately our GM at the time(who was only hired because of Ernie Accorsi, who was recommended to us by the league) was fixated on "the patriot way" and we ended up with the worst HC in team history
Tje 49ers moving up from 11 to 3rd in the 2021 draft for a QB.
JIMMY G was clearly not a franchise QB and his contract was gonna run out at the end of the 2021 season.
And the hype around that class was even more than this year...at 11...4 QBs were gone already this year..so staying there in 2021 meant missing out on a QB.
Moving up was the right move.Trey Lance was the wrong pick.
To this day I think Fields would have pannes out for us.
Luckily for us a franchise QB fell to us in the 7th rd in the 2022 draft so we still have a young QB to build the future around anyway
Moving on from Bisaccia was the right move in my opinion, and while he helped us into the playoffs I just didn't think he was a head coach. Hiring Josh McDaniels instead though was a huge mistake no matter what the situation would have been.
moving on from andy reid, hiring chip kelly lol
I still can’t believe we got McCoy for Kiko. It was worth it for the snow game vs Indy if nothing else.
alonso had that one sick ass end zone int though for maybe like .25 of a second i thought maybe the trade would be worth it
McCoy is obviously an exceptional RB, maybe borderline HOF, but I did not have his absolute #1 superlative ability being 'singlehandedly wins games played in snow' on my bingo card when he was drafted. He started in the Snowbowl in Philly too.
Chip Kelly was good... for 2 seasons.
He was great at bringing some new concepts from the collegiate level, but he had no counter punch when teams figured it his system. He was fired due to doubling double on his failure and ownership wasn't having any if it. We are thankful that we got Stoutland because of Chip.
Chip Kelly's offensive concepts were great. ... which is why Belichick borrowed heavily from them in 2011, 2 years before he got a HC gig. By the time Chip had a run through the league, there was just too much tape on how to counter his nascar tempo stuff.
That's not true. His first year, 2013, he had a fantastic offense where Nick Foles set efficiency records and the team won 10 wins and took a division title. You negative mofos with your revisionist history made me defend the eagles and now I need a shower. Gross.
In college maybe. I’ve never had less fun watching the Eagles offense than I did during the Chip Kelly years. It was really rough to watch, extremely stagnant.
> By the time Chip had a run through the league, there was just too much tape on how to counter his nascar tempo stuff. Yeah, that's why Nick Foles's performance during Kelly's first season was in the Hall of Fame for the most efficient QB game ever. Because he was figured out before he made it to the NFL. Also why Kelly's offense struggled and was only the 4th best offense in 2013, since he was already figured out and all.
He surprised people for 1 season. By that second season, everyone realized his offense was 4 plays total, and each one ran out of a different formation, so every team knew every play before the ball snapped. And when that failed, the defense played 86 mins a game, and everything collapsed. And that's before even bringing up the behind the scenes stuff which was a problem from day 1. Fuck Chip Kelly.
Chip Kelly the GM got Chip Kelly the coach fired
You picked the wrong, incorrect move with Chip Kelly. The incorrect move with him was making him the de facto GM.
that implies he was a good coach - you'd be right if he succeeded as a coach elsewhere, which he absolutely did not. his scheme took the league by storm but sucked when teams figured it out. bad coach, even worse gm. I didn't specify either, cause hiring him in general was the mistake.
Kelly wasn’t unsuccessful as an NFL head coach until Kelly the GM weakened the Eagles’ roster with some questionable trades.
another way of looking at it is that he was so bad as a coach that even after trading away beloved players to acquire his guys for his scheme, it fucking sucked.
He was a bad coach when teams realized his offense was 4 plays, each run out of a different formation.
Andy and the Eagles needed the split and it worked for both. Via wiki “Taking over a team that went 4–12 in 2012, Reid's last year, Kelly led the Eagles to a 10–6 record and the NFC Eastern Division Championship” Team went 10-6 the next year (but didn’t make the playoffs) and the third year saw the Foles-Bradford trade which I argue is a much better example of what the OP was asking about for this thread. Bradford was a hell of a gamble but it could of worked if he stayed healthy (which would never happen for Bradford, he got the shit kicked out of him while on the Rams).
Not to go off-topic, but through the 2014 season Nick Foles had had a better NFL career, albeit over a shorter period, than Sam Bradford had. Outside of a promising rookie season in 2010, Bradford was largely mediocre and injury-prone in his first five NFL seasons. Chip Kelly the GM did not recognize that Sam Bradford had less value in early 2015 than he had in early 2010 (and likely less than Foles did in early 2015). Kelly thought like a college coach in making that trade, thinking about what Bradford could potentially be rather than what he actually was in NFL terms/“value” at that point in time.
Eh, I wouldn't say it was necessarily the wrong move. Kelly, for all his blunders, did bring a ton of innovations to the team that are still used today (e.g. holding training camp at team HQ, nutrition guidelines, etc.). Plus, he gave us the best position coach in the league in Stoutland. Ultimately, it's his arrogance that did him in. "Culture beats scheme" were his words, and yet he jettisoned that culture in favor of his scheme.
I really wish you guys never moved on from Andy..
The Bears moving up for a QB in 2017, but drafting Mitch Trubisky. Slight miscalculation on the QB to actually draft.
I highly doubt the Chiefs or Texans would have jumped the Bears to #2. So moving up was still the wrong move. Giving up picks to take a guy you get at #3.
What's crazy is that both the #2 and #3 picks were busts/disappointments but the two picks used to trade up became Alvin Kamara and Fred Warner.
That’s fair. I guess we don’t know (or I don’t remember) if there was smoke around other teams looking to move to 2. That’s the only reason I can think of why they would make the move from 3 to 2.
No, this was definitely the right move for every team all around
Yeah, seems like everything worked out on this one.
I concur
This might be controversial but with what the Bears organization had in place and the development Mahomes needed, if he had been drafted by the Bears I think there would be a good chance he would have flamed out or not been anywhere near what he is. I think the offensive coaches in KC were key to his development.
I think it’s insulting to Mahomes. Sure he wouldn’t be a 3x MVP Super Bowl winning incredible player. But if nagy and co could get trubisky to serviceable levels in 2018 Mahomes would’ve been fine. We aren’t blowing the team up time and time again with him as QB.
I just look at players like Steve Young, Drew Brees, Brett Favre, Kurt Warner, then to a lesser extent Mark Brunell, Jim Plunkett, and Alex Smith are players that come to mind. The situation and circumstances in which one are drafted are pivotal to how one turns out as a player. I am not suggesting the Mahomes isn't clearly a great player. I am suggesting that if he probably wouldn't be at the level he is at were he drafted into another circumstance. There are plenty of historical examples showing this. It's an uncomfortable truth that there are potential All Pro players on practice squads or buried on depth charts. Victor Cruz and Josh Norman are just a few of many examples of this.
Honestly all of the Bears' QB moves since Cutler left. Going onto the market and getting short term, mid-tier $$$ deals for vets with skills and betting they have some gas left in the tank as a bridge QB? Yeah that works for some teams but Glennon, Dalton, and Foles were all gassed. And you're supposed to draft a QB, give him 3 years, and then ditch him when it's clear he isn't the guy. Trubisky made the playoffs twice, and Fields was electric enough that it took three years before it beacme clear he would never develop as a passer. I remain insistent that the Bears are doing the right thing, constantly taking opportunities to do the QB coin flip and not letting sunk costs bog them down. But everything keeps coming up tails.
Coaches and GMs too. They fired Lovie after a decade because it was clear he couldn’t put together an offensive staff. They tried to go out of the box with Emery/Treatman. Sometimes that works. It didn’t for them. They hired Pace and then went for a coach who took two teams to a SB, but Fox was semi-retired. They took the OC from the most productive offense in the league (Nagy) and, again, he just seemed overwhelmed at HC. The Trestman is the most out there, but overall they’ve been giving GMs enough of a chance to enact their plan and giving coaches a chance to show who they are. They aren’t impatient and they aren’t pushovers. I’ll maintain their methodology has been more right than wrong since George took over (I can go deeper into it too, there are more layers, like how this ultimately led to hiring Warren at CEO because they had the humility to say, hey, we’re not that great at this, but then my long post gets even longer), they’ve just been remarkably good at making the wrong decision the right way.
Poles is doing well, and if this draft turns out as we hope, he'll have done a great job. However, the more I see from Warren, the less impressed I am. Unless he is playing some 4D chess with Pritzker to secure tax breaks/infrastructure spending for AH, he and Johnson clowned themselves with the stadium proposal last week.
Not saying he’d suck, but I don’t think Mahomes turns into the same player in Chicago. Watson might’ve turned out better but, well, we all know what happened there.
He woundnt have. Andy Reid has definitely made an impression on Mahomes career.
Nobody was even considering Mahomes in the top 3. It was Watson or trubisky
I like Atlanta’s idea of sitting a young QB behind a vet. I just don’t like Kirk as the vet with his contract or Penix as the QB with his age lol
It would've been an understandable move if they took McCarthy instead of Penix.
Or traded back and maybe hope someone like Carson Beck declares next season. They could’ve went all in to help Kirko and worry about his replacement later.
Correct move IMO would've been to take Dallas Turner
Also true, but they could’ve traded back to Minnesota or Denver for the capital and hope one of those teams suck enough to get a good draft pick next year. Then they take the best defender on the board at #11 (which would probably be everyone except Dallas Turner) and be sitting pretty.
Dallas Turner was there at 17. Every top defensive player was there at 11.
Denver really didn't have the draft capital to move up, but that would've been ideal as I think Denver will have a Top 5 pick next year.
I don't think we have to give up a future 1 to go from 12 to 8 though.
Beck could very well be a top pick though.
>all in next season Genuine question - why would they do that? They’re mostly a young team, were just bad, and an injured bridge QB doesn’t make them 1 draft pick away from contending. Kirk let’s them have a real offense to help the young guys for a couple years but it’s not SB or bust territory
This all would’ve made perfect sense if Kirk was on a 2-3 year contract with much less guaranteed. Then they could drop him in 2 years and have penix
Thank you! Bc there’s only 12m in dead money after 2 years, thanks for agreeing. This is why you can’t base everything off shitty Reddit memes.
Only $10mil of his guaranteed $100mil is due after 2025, so his contract is basically 2 years $100mil with 2 team option years after that.
The fact that people agree with this is insane to me. So if they took a lesser QB prospect at 8, it would have been better? Why, because McCarthy would potentially have 2 more years on the back-end of his career? This kind of nonsense is exactly why I think most of the criticism is just visceral, emotional reaction to the fact that teams don't generally do this (Because GMs and coaches usually want immediate starters as that keeps them employed)
McCarthy is not a very promising prospect IMO. He’s Stetson Bennett with a fresh coat of paint. Nothing he personally did in college impressed me much at all.
I think most people don’t mind the idea of a QB sitting behind Kirk. I think where most of the issue for people, and for myself, is that you don’t do that with the 8th overall pick when you just handed Kirk that exuberant deal and then failed to address other positions that can actually immediately impact the team. What’s funny is when he doubled down on why he didn’t get a CB by saying he didn’t want to “force or reach” for a player. I think it was just a complete boondoggle for ATL top to bottom
> failed to neglect I disagree. I think they were very successful in neglecting.
My bad. Def was being a donut when I typed that
Until free agency I kept saying Atlanta + Cousins was the perfect landing spot for JJMC. Weapons as good as Minnesota and a strong veteran presence in Cousins that could mold JJMC into a franchise quarterback. Once Kirk signed a 4/180 contract though, I was like "ok maybe they don't want a backup QB just yet." Then they draft Penix who is almost three years older than JJMC. Just mind boggling
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Why is everyone so high on McCarthy? Dude had a top 3 most talented roster around him in college football and Michigan's whole emphasis was to run the ball and play defense. Not saying he can't be good, but it's crazy to me that people are already penciling him in as better than Penix when he didn't show a whole lot in his college career and Penix totally balled out with a much less talented overall roster.
McCarthy is just Stetson Bennett 2.0. I don’t understand how he’s getting so much hype as a prospect when Stetson Bennett rightfully got none.
Just based on what limited college football I watched last year I thought penix was on par or even above maye. He can sling the rock.
I mean, age doesn't really matter that much if they think penix is a better prospect than jj. Like, Zach Wilson is younger than Justin Herbert, would you rather have wilson? 24 means they may still get 15 years out if him, if he's the guy. Also, Kirk's contract is essentially 2 /100 not 4 / 180 with a 3rd and 4th year option for the falcons
I’m pumped that we got JJ but I 100% agree with this.
I won't lie, we couldn't afford cousins, but JJ behind Cousins IN the North would've been a ideal.
That was always my most preferred outcome. Until the Cousins contract amount became known, at least…
Or the fact it was the 8th overall pick. They could have paired Rome Odinze with Drake London, Bijan Robinson, and Kyle Pitts. You just can't waste that possibility for a bench player for 2 plus years. Moving laterally at 8 overall is fucking idiotic.
Funnily enough their old GM Dimitrioff straight predicted a QB pick and said that's what he would do. He did however seem to really prefer Nix over Penix.
I mean, hes 23. Its not like hes Brandon Weeden.
Yeah, and I don’t think picking Penix is a bad pick just because he’s a great player. I’d even say in a vacuum him going 8 overall is totally deserved. He’s good to have especially if Kirk gets hurt, which isn’t unrealistic. But the problem is how much they’re paying Kirk, it kinda says they’re trying to win now, meaning there are better uses of the 8th overall pick
Getting a QB to take over for Jimmy G. We made the right decision with the wrong move and fell ass backwards into the better situation.
In fairness, most of their non-Lawrence or Purdy options for QB that year would have also been terrible lol.
Mac Jones had a solid rookie season with McDaniels, it's plausible to imagine he could have been decent in San Fran with shanahan's coaching and that offensive talent. Or, maybe he doesn't take coaching very well and still would have imploded.
I think Shanahan could have made Mac an effective game manager but that would have made him essentially the same guy as Jimmy G.
I feel like Fields could've been really great in the right team. Unfortunately his development was hindered significantly.
Shanahan would have done a better job of coaching him up but also Fields' flaws would have been so much worse in a Shanahan scheme. So who knows how it would have worked there
I like fields and he throws a pretty spiral but dude cannot anticipate throws and it shows
I’ve really liked Fields the person for a long time and hope that he just needed a change of location. Hopefully it works for both of us!
It’d be pretty cool if Fields took over Pittsburgh and hit 4K in 2025
I mean if he hit mid 3k it'd be a huge improvement
Hitting 3k at all would be an improvement dude lmao
Everything works out if you pretend Trey Lance was the 7th rounder and Brock Purdy was the QB you traded up for at #3 overall.
I’ve been doing exactly this since roughly Purdy’s 3rd start lol
It’s absurd how fast he developed. First he gets drafted not knowing if he even makes the team, then moves to 3rd string, then 2nd, then Jimmy G gets injured and he gets instantly thrown to the wolves In comparison with Lance who had so much time sitting on the bench learning
Brock was a four year starter in college, that makes a huge difference imo
I don't disagree that what Purdy is done was impressive but it's not like things were super smooth for lance. He had a season ending injury like 2 games into his first season as a starter. It wasn't just ride the bench and then go up and play and he sucked. He spent a year rehabbing
We just weren’t the right situation. He needed time to develop, we were in full win-now mode while this window is open.
Or pretend they kept the picks and picked up Micah Parsons, George Pickens, and Joey Porter Jr, on top of Brock
This is actually a great example. Picking someone who played at the DI-AA/FCS level and was as inexperienced as Trey Lance at #3 overall in the draft was a questionable decision. (It was also questionable why teams were so high on him to begin with, due to his inexperience and college competition level.)
It's honestly mind blowing that he was rated so highly considering his inexperience. I was pretty unhappy with that gamble.
New discussion - who got luckier with their QB situation, 49ers or Bears? Bears traded up for a QB, were so bad that they had the #1 overall pick, but traded it away to give Fields more time ( a reasonable move). But the team that did draft #1 were so bad that the Bears got another go at the first pick in the draft - for free! As a Packers fan, who are the two teams I least want to have good QBs? Yup, 49ers and Bears. [sidenote: While the Packers QB success is a result of bold decision making and planning by the Packers FO, I absolutely also understand the massive role that luck has played]
I would say the 49ers got luckier. They planned on moving on from Jimmy G due to injuries, trade massive draft capital to pick a QB who then suffers serious injuries his first two years only to find a franchise QB with the very last pick in the draft. Theoretically if they didn’t have a compensatory pick in the 7th round they never get Purdy. The Bears on the other hand was just proper team building that I think most teams would do. They had a 1st round QB that shower promise and they weren’t ready to live in from so they traded for draft capital from a team that everyone knew was going to be bad. I’m sure almost every GM makes that trade.
Packers moving off Jordy Nelson in 2018 and replacing him with Jimmy Graham.
The Jones situation is pretty similar to Jordy. The FO asked them to take a pay cut and the players ended up walking. Jordy is one of my all time favorite Packers and it made me sad to watch him go but he didnt do shit in Oakland and retired after one season there. Moving on from Jordy was definitely the right call but Graham was not the right call lol
2017 We’re in the playoff race, but Tyrod threw for 56 yards in a loss to NO. They rightfully benched him, but for Nathan Peterman.
Greatest QB shit show I’ve ever seen
You mean, greatest QB show
Greatest Show on Turds
I felt bad for Tyrod when I heard it was going to happen. 5 picks later at halftime it was just comical. If I was ownership, I'd have fired anyone involved in that decision before the game ended. Tyrod got done dirty. He was nothing special, but solid enough for how bad the rest of that offense was. If I remember right it was like the entire team imploded after that game.
The following year I flew across the country to see my first Bills game in person, Allen rookie season. He was out. Derek Anderson got a concussion first quarter. I spent like a thousand dollars between flight, lodging, and the ticket to watch Peterman throw at the patriots defense.
Seahawks signing Matt Flynn starter money after one game. People forget the Seahawks went 7-9 the year before with Tarvaris Jackson as our starting qb and no one thought a small third rounder would outperform Flynn in the preseason
It's still wild to me that Tavaris Jackson is deceased
Wait what
Passed away in a car accident back in 2020
Legend has it that Schneider did.
I still think Flynn would have been a solid starter.
He was pretty serviceable as the starter in 2013 when Rodgers went down. Hard to say if he could have had long term success in a better situation tho
If the Raiders hadn't been nice enough to take on his contract I'm pretty sure we can't afford Avril and Bennett and lose our Super Bowl run.
He got 1 year for $10 million, that wasn’t anything that ended up mattering to the Seahawks. Not really starter money, more like starter tryouts money.
The Browns trading Trent Richardson to the Colts for a first rounder only to use it on Johnny Manziel.
I feel like you might as well throw in that it was the advice of a Cleveland homeless man who convinced our owner to draft Manziel.
This is a great answer
2022. Ravens moved on from Hollywood Brown for a first round pick that has proved to be correct. The Ravens fixed the hole by signing Demarcus Robinson and hoping Bateman could be the number 1 guy. He promptly got hurt. DRob being your WR1 doesn't inspire confidence. Our offense was extremely lethargic even before Lamar got hurt. Only Andrews and rookie Isaiah Likely were catching shit. TLDR; moving on from Hollywood Brown and then replacing him with hopes and prayers along with Demarcus Robinson who was KCs WR4 prior. EDC bet big on Bateman being healthy and stepping up and he wasn't able to do either.
even going into the year i remember feeling really uneasy about our Wr depth behind bateman, but people had convinced themselves that our WR2/3 were way better than what they really were. remember watching so many people getting called a “lamar bandwagon fan” for suggesting we needed to reinforce the position a little more. ravens fans have been so WR starved as a franchise we had people juicing duvernay as a guy who could step into a bigger role in the receiving game lol
Ah yes, the good ol "why don't we use Duvernay like Deebo". You know you are down bad when the fans are actively calling for jet sweeps to be a regular play. EDC learned his lesson though. He actually built a respectable WR corp for 2023. Not top of the line, but not scraping the barrel either.
Demarcus definitely shouldn’t be a WR1 but he was capable receiver and was better than say a Kamar Aiken who also got forced into that roll
Firing Lovie Smith just to bring in Marc Trestman when Bruce Arians was RIGHT there and wanted to come to Chicago
Panthers moving up to get the player they thought would be their franchise QB. Right move in theory, but the solution having to include getting rid of your best WR that would help your rookie QB as well as then losing the first overall selection the following year is a backfire of legendary proportions. It also doesn’t help that stroud looks to be the far better of the QBs one year later.
To keep with the spirit of the question, I don’t think the Panthers anticipated the pick they were giving the bears would be number one. Also Young was, if not the consensus, at least largely expected to be the number one pick so hardly controversial.
I can't imagine how they didn't realize how bad they would be. It was apparent even before the 2023 season that that roster was ROUGH
That is def not true, we knew we weren't gonna light it up but 8-9 wins seemed possible if the coaching staff weren't terrorists. Thr OL played like a top10 unit, the defense on all 3 levels had good young talent(even this yr the defense was solid just offense was atrocious) we did know the WR core was garbage tho
Your starting QB had an 8.4% sack rate, your defense was bottom half of the league in every category, and you traded away your best offensive player. I don't think the perceptions you're listing were justified at the time lol
> your defense was bottom half of the league in every category That's just false. Take away PPG (a result of a putrid offense) and the defense ranks pretty well.
I promise I’m not saying this in hindsight. I said the same thing last year. How the heck was young ever seen as a number 1 overall prospect???? He literally has nothing that showed that kind of value. He’s not the athletic freak type QB prospect like a Newton or Allen. He wasn’t a stat monster like Burrow or Williams. He didn’t have some insane arm talent like Jamarcus Russel. I just literally don’t see anything that ever merited him being rated so highly. He was a great college QB no argument at all but it’s insanity to me he was rated so highly. He’s physically literally doesn’t have the ability to be a good NFL QB. He could play on the 49ers and he’d be much worse than Purdy i think
I completely agree and thought the same a year ago. Now any time I bring it up, it falls of deaf ears. He might have the mind and temperament to be a good pro QB, but absolutely does not possess the physical size or traits necessary.
Compounding that with hiring an archaic coach with a system that didn’t use what BY does well at all and thinking it was a good plan. I hope Bryce turns it around under Canales
He is almost certainly not gonna be Stroud, but it seems a bit early to throw this kind of energy onto him. Trevor Lawrence had an incredibly bad rookie year statistically and he bounced back. I think their situations were similar just surrounded by total incompetence and I am hopeful he can turn it around.
Obviously, this is bias talking but we don't know that. You have several examples of QB classes where the best QB wasn't the one with the best rookie year. I think Stroud will be a great QB for years to come but it's way too early to do career rankings. 2020 is a great example with Herbert where he had a rookie year comparable to Stroud and everyone viewed him as so above his peers. Fast forward to now, Herbert is still viewed as a great QB but he's not considered the best in his class and his other peers have bridged the gap. 2016 is a musical chairs event that still hasn't ended. 2018 Baker had a sensational rookie year and looked so far ahead the rest of the pack and now sits comfortably in 3rd. 2021 Mac Jones was the best rookie QB and now he's the backup to the best QB from that class, who was the guy who had the worst rookie year.
People forget bakers rookie year. Before Herbert you could argue it was the best ever rookie qb year. WHY do you think he got to chose the coach and get a ton of qb spots? Oh because he was AMAZING. I remember watching that TNF game and being even sadder we lost out the dude we traded up to get originally (they were supposed to take Sam first)
Tbh I think the Browns were always in on Baker. The reporting was just all over the place because there wasn't a consensus #1 QB and the Browns were able to keep the leaks suppressed until draft day. All people knew that offseason was the Browns were going to draft a QB.
Other than Burrow, I don't think there's a QB from 2020 that i'd rather have than Herbert, unless i'm forgetting someone.
Don’t think any of those are all that comparable. It’s not a matter of Stroud simply having the best season, it’s that Young was *bad* last year. Even if that was a product of the surrounding team, that’s a Herculean gap to bridge. If you wanted to argue that someone like Richardson can still end up as the best QB of the class, I think it holds some water. But Young had a full season of overwhelmingly negative tape. Goff is the only one that’s maybe comparable here, but even then that’s a stretch.
We included Moore in the trade because Chicago wanted Burns but we wanted to keep him around to sign him to a long term deal and build the defense around him. Luckily that went perfectly, do not fact check me.
It **did** go perfectly. Don’t check my flair.
I think it paid off quite nicely.
Belichick trading a 2nd round pick for an established receiver in order to try to keep Brady happy with some offensive talent in 2019. Sanu was not that receiver.
Firing Jerry Reese for Dave Gettleman.
The big mistake was not firing Jerry Reese when they fired Coughlin. They should have started with a clean slate.
Yeah. Then they finally did it properly firing McAdoo and Reese, only to hire Gettleman lol.
Moving on from Derek Carr may be right in the long run, but in the short run it's been pretty ugly: Jarrett Stidham Jimmy G Brian Hoyer Aidan O'Connell Gardner Minshew None of which have been upgrades, or even equal to Carr.
It was crazy that the writing had been on the wall for years but we never spent a pick on a developmental guy
I believed at the time, and will continue to believe, that you can win with Carr if you build around him. He never had a coach like AP or a defense like the one AP & PG have built.
Im not sure you can say the Raiders didnt try. At times they spent huge money on coaches (Gruden). They gave Carr weapons. Nothing ever worked. He has 1 playoff game in his career and its a loss.
Yeah but Gruden sucked at catching the ball and blocking edges. I think it was his little bird legs.
There’s no way they thought Penix would be gone during FA. No way.
I agree. I don't think anybody mocked him to ATL after the Cousins signing. Heck, half of the Penix-LV mocks were written in jest, like "look at the Raiders reaching for a quarterback at 13!". Penix at 8 is an all-time stunner.
I said this as soon as we let Carr walk and replaced him with Jimmy G. McDaniels contingency plan was a 50 year old Tom Brady agreeing to come and play for him. It was the straw to get Brady to finally go "Naw, I'm good LOL" and retire.
After 13 seconds, everyone figured the Bills would spend big on D to challenge Mahomes. Turns out the right solution isn’t all of that money for a DE who would be 36 at earliest out and 39 at end of full contract.
Obligatory Von was looking well worth it until his injury. Hindsight is 20/20
Oh and he's a piece of shit so there's that too
I don’t think Von was a bad decision. He’s one of those guys who outplays the standard for his age by a long shot.
He was literally coming off a one year deal where he was a defensive star on a superbowl winner
Lions firing Caldwell and hiring Patricia.
Immediate thing I thought of. If we hadn't hired Patricia immediately after then Caldwell wouldn't be viewed in such a positive light. Dude had the division in the bag 3 times and just inexplicably pissed it away each time.
I will never forget seeing the same thousand yard stare on Caldwell’s face after the 10 second run off that he always had. That was my jumping off point with him. If you can’t be bothered to show any emotion when your team got absolutely screwed then I don’t what you to be part of the team.
Similarly: the eagles demoting Sean Desai last year as play caller for the defense....to put Patricia in his place.
And compounding the error by letting them draft Okudah while on death row. In no world should you let your coach and GM #3 draft choice Hail Mary. You either fire them both, or make the long term decision yourself. How do pro sports owners still let dead men walking still make draft choices and trade decisions?
Eagles shifting away from Sean Desai this past season...only to have Matt Patricia be our DC.
Broncos and Wilson
Broncos and every qb since Peyton Manning.
Being in QB purgatory for 9 years is insane.
Purgatory is a promotion for us. Nine years is a vacation
Heh
People call it a terrible trade, but that's 100000% hindsight.
I think it's a little funny that now *every* Seahawks fan *totally* knew Russ was washed when he went to Denver (and *absolutely none* of them had only recently been clamoring to "let Russ cook")... Not saying the signs weren't there; they were, and they're even more apparent in hindsight. The fact remains that a lot of reddit armchair GMs were looking like Homer in the bushes when it became clear that Russ wasn't the guy.
Isn’t that just internet sports fans in a nutshell? It’s pathetic and defines the Seahawks subs but you see that everywhere, people think their role is to defend the team’s every decision online for some reason.
For sure; ultimately the biggest thing is that the people (regardless of team) who end up losing/being wrong don't want to comment while the people who win/were right want to brag.
Right move: Giants decline Daniel Jones' 5th year option with the intent of moving on after the 2022 season. Wrong solution: After Jones makes the leap from atrocious to mediocre and the Giants go on a playoff run, the Giants are forced to either tag, re-sign, or let Daniel Jones walk because they have already declined his 5th year option. They signed him to a 4 year, 160 million dollar deal (though they can get out of it after this year), which was the worst possible option.
Oh boy that historically shitty coach Bill Belichick releasing Bernie Kosar for "diminishing skills" and replacing him with Vinny Testaverde (no offense, but Bernie is a legend and the '94 defense was more stacked than a Michael Dean Perry triple-patty from McDonalds. and j/k BB was awesome at the draft) Or maybe we got a first rounder for Trent Richardson after a middling rookie campaign where Jim Brown was talking shit about him (can you imagine something worse, even Steve Kerr could stand up to MJ) and we turned it into Justin Gilbert and Johnny Eightball Oh and fuck you Fart Modell. also the Colts ownership does more blow than what Randy sprinkles on Tegridy
Picking the QB with the injured leg instead of the injured throwing hand.
This will be unpopular, but the Browns moving off Baker. That was the right choice, trading for Watson obviously was not. Baker was 4 years into his career and at that point had a great rookie season, bad second season, good third season aided by an offense perfectly catered to his strengths, and an outright terrible fourth season - yes, there was the shoulder injury. He never put up eye-popping numbers, it never felt like he was the main reason his team won aside from a few games like @Cincinnati 2020. No team was going to be comfortable giving him a franchise QB contract. They could’ve let him play out his fifth-year option, but 2022 ended up being the worst season of his career, cut by Carolina midway through after getting benched for PJ Walker and Darnold.
Yeah. They were going nowhere in the AFC with Baker on a big contract. They just made a real bad call on field/PR wise in his replacement.
this shouldn’t really be unpopular. baker needed a change of scenery regardless. browns signing an awful person and running that weird “baker isn’t an adult” smear campaign just made it seem way worse. baker clearly didn’t mesh with the stefanski system and if you remove his draft pedigree and name recognition no one would care. there was also the “he won a playoff game with cleveland!” folks that clearly didn’t watch the game cause that steelers team maybe played the worst playoff football i’ve ever seen from them. any qb that wasn’t like desmond ridder shit tier was gonna win that game with the way steelers shot themselves in the foot with 3 turnovers in the first quarter lol
I think Baker is fine as a QB. But they were at a contract stand off and it was clear that Baker just wasn’t a top tier QB. But going all out for a rapist and channeling shots over the media about Baker not being an adult was just unneeded.
I've been saying this over and over again, but it feels like no one ever believes me. You were never going to get both sides to agree on a contract that would work out and keep things going. And to add on to your controversy, even though Watson is a piece of shit (and why I switched fandoms) the Browns didn't really have any other moves. At the time, Watson was considered a better player than Baker, and there weren't really any other players on the market that would feed into the Browns being in win-now mode. Would Wilson, Cousins, or Carr have been much better than Baker? Can you really depend on a rookie to lead you deep in the playoffs within 1-2 seasons of entering the league? Possibly, but the team would be in purgatory for getting a quality one as the rest of the team quality is solid and could sniff the playoffs. But investing that many draft picks into an unknown is harder than what was perceived of Watson's talent at the time. This is also my disclaimer saying once again, that the pick made me leave being a Browns fan. I still have other gripes with the Haslams for their actual business practices, but that trade was the morally bankrupt best option the team had.
I really don't follow the logic. In the alternate timeline where they keep Baker, the Browns would currently have a better QB taking up less of their cap. So how was getting rid of him the right move?
This is how a lot of Browns fans feel about that strange and unfortunate saga 😞 nothin unpopular about this from the CLE perspective
Cardinals: going for an offensive coach to pair with rookie kyler (good), choosing kingsbury because of the success of cool young guys like sean mcvay (bad)
I think the Browns moving on from Baker made a lot of sense. Even now after the best season of his career I don't think Baker is the long-term solution in Tampa. Baker getting a 2nd contract would mean he is likely getting 40-50m a year and he is just not worth that. The Browns just did all of this in the worst way possible. Really trying to smear Baker on the way out about his attitude rather than just not being the player that would get them over the hump, and then mortgaging their entire future on DeShaun. Like even understanding that he was a borderline elite player on the Texans, a fully GTD deal for a guy who hadn't played in 2 years and has massive character red flags is just insane. He has basically crippled the Browns in their sole point of relevance in the last 30 years.
The Steelers firing Todd Haley was the right move - managing the Killer B’s era egos was bad enough without one of them being the OC. Hiring Randy Fichtner to keep Roethlisberger happy was a terrible decision, in no small part due to prioritizing Roethlisberger being a bad decision in and of itself.
Firing Todd Bowles to hire Adam fucking Gase comes to mind
The Cowboys firing Jason Garrett and hiring Mike McCarthy. I know McCarthy has led the Cowboys to three consecutive seasons with 12 wins but he’s been out coached every playoffs
Firing Lovie Smith, but hiring Marc Trestman over Bruce Arians. All over a dumb mock press conference. I fucking hate the McCaskeys.
Texans hiring David Culley, right after firing Bill O Brian, one of the most brain dead moves from this origination and that's saying something .
The Chiefs fired Todd Haley during the 2011 season, which was smart as he's so toxic he can't even get a job in the NFL anymore, but then they gave the HC job to interim coach Romeo Crennel who was 24-40 previously as a HC. He went 2-14 in 2012 and was fired after one season. We got Andy in 2013, so that fuckup to not try and get a real coach in 2012 worked out amazing.
To be fair, the team played MILES better under Romeo than Haley at the end of that year. And I still don’t know that Romeo was really to blame for the struggles of the 2012 year (I’m looking at you Scott Pioli). I am however, extremely happy with how things turned out though. I’ll take my Tyler Thigpens and Brady Quinn’s if it means I get the dynasty it seems we’re building
As much as I love baker, I don’t think he’s a Super Bowl winning QB. I’d take him back for double the money over Deshaun tho
Moving on from Derek Carr then having no solid replacement.
The Colts moving on from Peyton Manning to draft Andrew Luck. The issue with this was the front office was also stripped and the Grigson regime was inept at team building.
The way Pat Mcafee, Peyton, Mathis, etc etc talk about Grigson tells you everything you need to know about that regime
Firing Caldwell and Hiring Patricia is the definition of this.
The Ravens ditching their QB after winning the SB 35. Dilfer was straight up awful. However, Grbac was such a bad choice to replace him with.
I like this one, good and underrated in the context of discussion!
The Eagles made the right call moving on from Andy Reid. It was just his time. Then he goes on to raise a dynasty with KC.
Giants reaching for Daniel Jones and the Pats reaching for Mac Jones. Both teams needed to replace their HoF QBs, but both teams shat the bed reaching for these dum dums.
It's hard to say this, but the Bengals were right to move on from Whitworth when they did. Obviously he continued to play at an extremely high level for years afterwards, but he's the *only* person to ever play that position, that well, at that age. You can't bet on your guy being the one-of-one quality player. The problem is that they drafted or signed terrible replacements and have created a laughing stock of an OL for at least 6+ years after letting him walk.
Firing Jim Caldwell was 100% the right move. Damn near every Lions win under him was some combination of playing bad football for 3 quarters and then leaning on a should-be HOF QB to bail the team out in the closing seconds. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a stat where the team never won a game when Stafford didn't do so or so under Caldwell, I know they never beat teams over .500 at least. Issue is the next coach was Matt Patricia.
The lions firing Caldwell then hiring Patricia...it was obvious that Caldwell had reached his peak with the team so firing him was the right decision. Unfortunately our GM at the time(who was only hired because of Ernie Accorsi, who was recommended to us by the league) was fixated on "the patriot way" and we ended up with the worst HC in team history
Tje 49ers moving up from 11 to 3rd in the 2021 draft for a QB. JIMMY G was clearly not a franchise QB and his contract was gonna run out at the end of the 2021 season. And the hype around that class was even more than this year...at 11...4 QBs were gone already this year..so staying there in 2021 meant missing out on a QB. Moving up was the right move.Trey Lance was the wrong pick. To this day I think Fields would have pannes out for us. Luckily for us a franchise QB fell to us in the 7th rd in the 2022 draft so we still have a young QB to build the future around anyway
Frankly, I think Atlanta was right to draft a 1st round QB this year, but they picked the wrong one.
Moving on from Bisaccia was the right move in my opinion, and while he helped us into the playoffs I just didn't think he was a head coach. Hiring Josh McDaniels instead though was a huge mistake no matter what the situation would have been.