Big Blue Huddle

Let's end this f***ing series tonight. Enough! I really don't need the stress of a potential collapse in a series that we led 3-0 in. God help this franchise if that ever happened.

Just get it done. Tonight. I don't even want to entertain these thoughts.

Quote from: Ed Vette on Today at 05:33:09 PMThe Detroit Franchise can't seem to get it all together. Stupid contract for a journeyman QB who will never get them to the trophy. They would have been much better off building a team around Matt Stafford.

Can't argue your point, but this is a team that has been basically a doormat for decades. They finally have a successful year, and they're supposed to let the QB go? They weren't in a position to draft a QB. If you let Goff walk what do you do? Pay Cousins similar money?

I'm with you on the broad point of not ever paying elite QB money to a non-elite QB, but when you look at this organization and their long run history it's hard to kill them too badly for this.

If you want to say they never should have gotten rid of Stafford, fair enough, but now that they were in this situation what should they have done? If you don't pay Goff, who is your QB in 2024?

One for the good guys today.

Not sure if we've ever both been perfect in this game on the same day.

Strands #71
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Quote from: Ed Vette on Today at 05:27:50 PMI find it interesting how on one grid you can find it easily and I can't, while the opposite happens for me. This one just clicked for me.

Agreed. I got the first one no problem and then just struggled after that. I agree that we sometimes differ in which ones we find easy versus hard.

Mixed feelings about this deal.

On the one hand, it's hard to fault the Lions in any way for wanting to keep what they have built going. This is basically the worst or second worst franchise of all time that is still in existence today, and all of a sudden they're one of the best teams in the league. Goff is at least top 10 (if not top 5) in all the key statistics except QBR, where he is 11th. The guy is very clear a top 10 QB on paper.

On the other hand, one can reasonably question whether Goff is legitimately a top 10 QB in a vacuum. The Lions have one of the best if not the best situations for a QB in the league (elite O line and premium weapons all over the place plus a very good playcaller last year). The Rams have also been down this road with Goff, paying him very well, and they then wanted out of that very quickly to bring in Stafford, with whom they immediately won a SB after coming up a bit short with Goff. I think it is fair to say that the Rams are a very smart franchise. Did the Lions pay elite QB money to a good but not elite QB? I think that's very possible.

Tough one. I'm curious what others think. I can't fault them for doing what they have done, but I can't say for sure if it was a great move. I just don't view Goff the way I do Mahomes, Burrow, Allen, etc talent-wise. That said I can't really argue too much with the decision either, all things considered.

Just didn't have it today.

Connections
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Quote from: Gmo11 on May 12, 2024, 08:43:46 PMTo be clear I'm not absolving him of anything. I was only saying that despite the other things he's tried if Neal had been as advertised it helps an awful lot. And on that one pick I don't really blame him. Busts are gonna happen to everyone in that position but you can either do your best to minimize the risk or do the opposite like Gettleman. I prefer schoens approach.

I'm also not ready to write off JMS who I really did like as a prospect. I think he's got a leap in him perhaps with a proper OL coach now he'll make it. 

I hear you and don't disagree. If Neal had lived up to his billing and turned into a Tyler Conklin/Tristan Wirfs caliber RT, things would have been very different.

That was very ugly today.

I'm not going to do a deep dive autopsy on this game, because it was just brutal all-around, but the Knicks will need to do some soul-searching before game five and come up with a much better effort than that if they want to preserve a decent chance of winning this series.

Beating anyone decent without OG, Randle, and Mitch plus Brunson playing on one foot may simply be too much to ask. I feel like it all finally caught up with them today. I'm honestly not sure if they'll win another game with this group.

Quote from: MightyGiants on May 12, 2024, 01:42:29 PMI saw both you and @DaveBrown74 bring up injuries.  That seems to be an invention to let the author off the hook, though, as the author never suggested he had injury concerns.  He said "limitations," which implies talent, rather than "uncertainty," which one might claim is an injury issue (even if the author never mentioned injury concerns

He used "limitations" referring to the whole offense, not specifically to Daniel Jones. He used the word "uncertainty" to describe what Daniel Jones might be able to bring to the table this year. That wording is consistent with what one might say about a player whose precise level of health is unclear.

Honestly, who cares about any of this anyway? Even if the guy is a "Jones hater", which I have no idea if that's the case, who gives a damn? I don't see the point of getting so sensitive about the opinions of some random stranger whose views have no bearing on anything the front office or coaches will do.

Quote from: jgrangers2 on May 12, 2024, 11:50:37 AMI appreciate the energy aspect but, beyond that, I'm not sure what else he brings. He's not a highly skilled offensive or defensive player and not a great skater. He's a liability against a team like Carolina that can skate circles around him. There's also that the refs clearly have an eagle eye on him and he's a penalty waiting to happen, which is probably part of why Laviolette hasn't had him out there late. I think the fact that he played just 4 minutes of an 80+ minute game on Tuesday speaks volumes. I just don't know that the positives with him outweight the negatives.

If he is a liability as you have said, why is the Rangers' record with him active (20-2) materially better than their record without him ?

I think it would be fair to say that he is not the reason for that great 20-2 record given he isn't on the ice that much, but, given the results, I think it's hard to argue he is a material liability that other teams have successfully exploited. If that were true, his presence would have led to more losses in 22 games than just 2.

I think Rempe is what he is - a borderline player who brings a lot of energy and physicality to the table. I would also suggest that it's a bit unfair to conclusively judge him as a player given he is a rookie who played basically 1/3 of the season. If we did that with LaFreniere he'd be off the team by now. Rempe's presence on the ice was felt plenty of times this year, and I don't just mean fighting.

And as far as the fighting goes, he has been fighting way less in the last ten or so games he played than he did originally. From what I have seen, he has been out there throwing the body around and getting in the slot and setting screens, etc.

Quote from: MightyGiants on May 12, 2024, 11:11:35 AMI am not sure what the point of that extreme binary question is.  Are you suggesting the offense wouldn't have looked significantly better with their two most important players healthy?

My original point was that you had people on this forum saying the Giants were going to be "something special" in 2023 based on their observations over the summer through the preseason, and that the eventual reality on the ground was in stark contrast to that. I further noted that that disconnect has occurred plenty of times in the past, both with us and with other fan bases around the league. I specifically noted the disconnect between the intense optimism seen here and the woefully poor performance in week one, which is generally the most reflective week of how well prepared the team was over the various stages of camp and the preseason.

You seemed to disagree with (and want to discredit) my observation by pointing out that Waller, who played the whole game and for another 7 weeks after that, wasn't 100% perfectly healthy and that Andrew Thomas missed some of the game. I personally don't agree that those two issues are why we lost 40-0 or that had every relevant member of the team been 100% healthy (an extreme rarity for any NFL team in any game), that things would have been dramatically different in that game.

To me that game illustrated a lack of preparation of the team and also the team's lack of overall talent and depth. To isolate one or two injuries, even to starters, simply does not debunk the above.

Quote from: MightyGiants on May 12, 2024, 11:05:34 AMThomas was injured very early in the game and Waller had been injured prior to the game and was not playing like he had in camp.

So your argument is that if both of those players had been 100% healthy in all four quarters, we would have instead looked good in that game instead of losing 40-0?

Quote from: MightyGiants on May 12, 2024, 11:02:15 AMDo you think key injuries to Thomas (arguably the offense's best player), Waller, and Jones might have impacted what was expected versus what was produced?

How did any of those impact the week one game, which is what I was referencing?

Quote from: Philosophers on May 12, 2024, 09:58:17 AMJMS has not looked like a good center yet as a 2nd round pick.  Even if Neal improves, JMS needs a big jump as well.

Precisely my point. The failures (to this point) go well beyond the Neal pick.

Quote from: Philosophers on May 12, 2024, 10:01:40 AMI am not going to focus on all these training moments.  Gets way overhyped.

I'll pay attention to more finished products at the end of August.

Well said, and I couldn't agree more.

I would even take it a step further and argue that the whole of camp and preseason get overhyped too in terms of their meaningfulness and correlation to real games. Look at all the optimism we had on this board in late August/early Sep, and then look at the historically terrible week one performance. That was not the only time we've seen this disconnect either. Not by a longshot, sadly.