adam

Also, I love when random charts come out of nowhere. This one shows that if you are in the bottom left quadrant, you should be avoided as a QB (Hi Mitch!). Not a single guy from that group has done anything. To me the upper left and bottom right are a mixed bag, but there are a few names that seem like the outliers (Mahomes, Allen, Purdy, and Rattler?). The top 4 names are Rattler, Maye, Tua, and Mayfield.

Take it for what it's worth, but this guy has graded almost every throw of the top QBs in the draft. He comes away saying that Maye is the clearcut choice as the best QB, and it really isn't that close. He has individual pages that give his comps for each QB. He said Maye is a more aggressive Justin Herbert. Williams is a taller Kyler with a worse deep ball. Daniels is a much weaker Justin Fields, lol.

Where did Sam Darnold play in college? Hmmmm, interesting timing. and Purdy and the 2022 draft. He makes it before Pickett, Howell, Ridder, Zappe, Thompson, and Willis!

Grizz, for the 4th down calls, I don't know if the predictability matters that much in terms of catching a team by surprise to gain an advantage. I know Campbell is old school, and that is fine, but going for it on every 4th down is anything but old school lol. I was just saying you have to understand the game situation. That is totally different than passing 100% of the time on 3rd Down, that predictability will put the defense in a more favorable position. For the 4th Down calls, if you are within a 50 yard FG range with favorable conditions, and you are down 3 or less, you take the points. Beyond 50 yards, fine. Inside the 10, fine. The first time he did it, I had no issues, they were up and trying to put the game away. Then down 3 and he does it again? Someone made a good analogy about it. He was a gambler who was up big at the table playing with the house's money the first time, so he could bet big, but then later, he had to borrow money to make the bet, and lost again. What is interesting to me. Why doesn't Detroit treat 2-pt conversions the same way? They can double their points on that play, and it is only 2 yards?

They also played a 4th place schedule last year, a 2nd place schedule this year, and now get a 1st place schedule next year. To me, it's like 3 tiers of schedules: 1st place, 2nd/3rd place, and 4th place. This same Detroit team is going to lose at least 2 more next year just by the schedule difficulty alone. Now if the OC was that big of a bump for their offense, then they may lose 3-4 more than they did this year. So from 12-5 to as low as 9-8 or 8-9.

I was going off the full year assessment so I didn't have recency bias because he did end the year strong, same with Stevenson. However, the first quarter of the season was pretty bad. If he continues to play at or above the level he did in the last half, then we are good to go.

Exactly, lol. That is over 10 spots on the 53-man that can be upgraded from the bottom up.

He is everywhere right now. NFL Network, ESPN, Fox, etc. They have made Campbell out to be the second coming. I am just saying he is getting a lot of praise for taking a very good roster to the NFCC. A lot of coaches would be able to have similar results with that roster and Ben Johnson at OC. The history of a team beyond 5 years is irrelevant to the current team's performance. I always find that funny when they say a team has gone XX long either doing something or not doing something. Who cares? Honestly, what does the 1978 Lions have to do with the 2023 Lions? Do any of those previous teams impact the outcome of any play or game in the 2023 season? The experience is definitely important, but that was on the coaches. If it was a low scoring game, or if there was more time left, sure go for it, but not down 3 with 4 minutes left in a high scoring game.

OK, a Lord Poles tattoo!

Good point. His slow start really didn't help because it made those first 4 games even worse.

Basically, but most of that was to Edmunds. Edwards really equals it out. Btw, they need to extend Edwards now.

Flus is fine for a CEO type head coach. I would say the play callers on both sides of the ball are more important than the HC. Baltimore didn't win or lose because of Harbaugh. For a team like KC, Reid is important because he is the playcaller on the offense. Same for Shanahan. It's not because they are good HCs. That's also why they have prominent DCs in Spags and Wilks. Flus is actually above average as a Defensive play caller. Does he get a little passive with soft zone at times, sure, but maybe it's because he knows Jackson is no longer EJack on there. The Bears need to get the Offensive Playcaller pipeline stocked. The only issue with a defensive HC or CEO type HC is you will lose your primary offensive play caller every few years (see Baltimore, watch Detroit).

Yeah, if you think about it, the last 4 teams, they all had those type of TEs, Kittle, LaPorta, Andrews, and Taylor Swift's boyfriend. If Poles can get 6 picks in the top 50, you would have to get a King Poles tattoo!

The combine is going to be critical, with the 1v1 interviews and the measurables. If he comes in under 6'1", that is going to be a huge red flag. If I am him, I am getting botox injections on the top of my head a few days prior.

The Detroit loss shows coaching matters. SF scored 27 unanswered pts in the 2nd half. You want to talk about epic collapses, that one was one for the ages. Both sides of the ball turtled. Why are they throwing the ball to Reynolds in key situations when you have LaPorta, St. Brown, and Gibbs? Why is Vildor asked to cover Aiyuk that deep without a Safety over the top? Why did Campbell go for it on 4th and 3 down only 3 pts when a FG ties the game? I didn't mind the earlier one as you had a lead, but when you are trailing by 3 or less, you kick the FG. Especially with the time left on the clock. If you look at that roster, Holmes did a great job, how hard is it to have a winning record with that squad? I really feel like Campbell is a little overrated, and everyone likes him because he is like that old school high school football coach that is always hooting and hollering.

I think Edmunds is fine, and still young enough to get better. However, I think Poles overpaid for him, which may not matter in the long run, but we don't know if there were other players not signed because of a couple of million. Edmunds started out slow and improved as the season wore on. I just thought his size in the middle would clog up more throwing lanes than it did. I guess I had Urlacher memories stuck in there.

Monty's 2-yard loss run under a minute basically sealed the loss. Terrible call and run lol.

If you are Poles, don't you take in all the information? Fields gets compared to Lamar more than any other QB, and rightfully so. The issue I see is like in hockey, and probably most pro sports, the playoffs are at an entirely different game than the regular season. Ask Dan Campbell, you can't just blindly go for every 4th down because you trust your guys. Lamar was supposed to be the MVP. He was shutdown for basically 58 minutes, then got 100+ garbage time yards that didn't even matter, but they look good on his stat sheet. He is primarily a running QB, while Mahomes is mobile and can run if needed, but that is normally his last option. My concern with Williams is, did he do enough in the system? He did a ton of hero ball, and in some cases, too much. I am thinking this may bring Maye back into the discussion. He plays within the system, has explosive plays, can play offscript, and runs when he needs to. Plus he is bigger, and is not going to get crushed every time he is hit. I honestly think there is a 3-headed die. One is Fields, Lamar clone without the 4th quarter prowess, two is Williams who could be a Mahomes clone or taller Kyler Murray, or three is Maye, who could end up between a Josh Allen and Justin Herbert.

9-18, 105 yds, 1 TD, 1 FL thru 3 quarters looks terrible. Lamar has never been held under 170 TDs passing+rushing in his career. He has 143 right now.

The difference though is the off script passer looks much better than the off script runner. Lamar did make a nice TD pass off the scramble but that's all he has done to this point. I was honestly thinking if Jackson loses convincingly it would make more of a case to move on from Fields than to keep him. If Jackson wins and carries the team then your roll with Fields.

I would give Poles and A for his process. That is something we haven't see out of a GM since Angelo was hitting on all the great defenders. Pace was too inconsistent and would go with his gut (see Trubisky). The results are the other half, an in order to get an A+ you normally have to hit on everything. So I would give him more like a B+ for the results. The grades are weighted heavily for this offseason.

Odunze may be slightly overrated. Here are his comps using a rather obscure stat that actually correlates pretty well to NFL production. Take it for what it's worth. In comparison, MHJ's comps were Julio, Jefferson, Chase, AJ Green, Demaryius Thomas, and Brandin Cooks.

For Waldron compared to Getsy, sure you can't predict the future, but going off of what they both did as play callers, Waldron has been superior in almost every way. The one thing the Bears stood out for the last two years has been rushing efficiency, but that was mainly due to Fields running or the threat of him running and taking away a defender on run plays. If you take away that component of the offense, Getsy was horrific as a play caller. So Waldron would literally have to have a lobotomy and call all WR screens for him to have a worse year than Getsy had in 2023. For the DC, a tackling dummy would be an upgrade over Williams. So getting a solid defensive coach that is coming from a winning culture is never a bad thing. He is a DL coach, which will only help guys like Dexter and Pickens get another set of eyes on their development. He may even may be able to unlock something in a guy like DRob. Another piece to this is Buffalo has a bunch of free agents on the DLine, I would not be shocked if they picked up a DT and Edge from them. If I had to guess, someone like Jordan Phillips at DT and AJ Espensa on the Edge.

He is definitely headed in the right direction. I agree with what I heard on the radio, that this year and beyond is where Poles will be truly evaluated as a GM. He basically had a free year to reset with no expectations, then got gifted the #1 pick by Houston, which led to the no-brainer trade for Moore+picks. Interesting note was that he wanted Burns who would've been a free agent after this year, so getting Moore actually worked out in his favor even though he was not the first choice. He got away with the Claypool trade by redeeming himself with the Sweat and Quinn trades. So it ended up being Sweat, Roschon, and a 2025 6th for 2x 2nds, Claypool, Quinn, and a 2025 7th. For the draft picks, I would say his picks have been as expected. Braxton is probably the main one playing above his draft status. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd round players should be starting, so Brisker, Gordon, Wright, Dexter, and Stevenson are doing what they should be doing. Velus and Pickens may be his whiffs, but those are easier to handle when not in the first two rounds. For free agency, the Edmunds thing was a head scratcher but then Edwards was a steal. So those cancelled themselves out. Billings already earned an extension and has been a pleasant surprise. All the others are roster fillers. The best part was no wasted money or sunk costs you can't get rid of. Cap management has been excellent. We will have to see how that goes after the departure of Cliff Stein. Signing JJ is a must. If he fails to lock him up, that would suck because not a single player on the defense would be on their 2nd contract with the team. What Poles does from here on out will define his legacy. It starts with arguably his biggest decision too, lol. JF1 or CW0? Then it's how does he address the holes while also upgrading and creating quality depth. There is no reason the team should have a hole after the draft. One aspect I am impressed with this offseason has been with the upgraded coaching staff. The Coordinators are an upgrade, and overall the entire coaching staff is improved, which should raise the playing level of the players.

I thought all brokerages do that lol? I feel like that is basically acting like a booker, you want half on one team and half on the other, yet the odds make it so no matter which team wins, you always make money.