I don't know if yesterday we inflated, in fact it was the opposite. Went 80+ yards and right before crossing lost 7 points. Allen literally crossed the end zone but without the ball, which was popped a foot before. Then Miami started at 6, making it easier on defense. If we scored they would have started around 30. And the fumble, that should have been 3 points, no need to go for it on 4th and 5 when you are not able to pick up blitz. Defense to me much bigger problem with so much experience there. This is a huge step down from Bob on defense.
Quinnen is top 5 highest paid defensive tackle Sherwood is top 5 highest paid LB. Ahmad is the highest paid paid CB. Carter is probably one of the highest paid nickels in the league Who on offense is top 5 paid at their position besides Garrett?
you made the point that all the money is on the defense. I'm just saying its pretty split. Where certain players are relative to the league is not the point you made.
Why are you going by average per year? That leaves out a TON of context when you look at the actual contracts. Q is the 8th highest paid DT in 2025 Sherwood is the 28th highest paid LB in 2025 Sauce is the 15h highest paid CB in 2025 I'm not gonna bother with Carter, too much sorting through shit
I said “the money” is on that side: You added “all” for the desired effect. We have guys at every level on that side of the ball getting paid near the top for their position. And guys like Cusco & Stephens making above average money. Forgive me for expecting more from them than an offense led by the 20th highest paid QB and a rookie OC. Talk about arguing just to argue.
In no way is it apples to apples. Some guys have 4 void years on their deals, some guys have none. Some guys have huge guarantees, some don't. Some guys got huge short term bandaid deals, some guys are signed long term. If you wanna go by total guaranteed money I can by that but year by year averages is for agents to bring to the bargaining table, not for comparing players.
This is some twist. The conversation started about the issues with the offense, we are in the offensive line thread after all, and you made the point the offense is not the problem, the defense is. Now you are somehow furthering that point by pointing out examples of the offense making game crushing fumbles?? So I guess I agree with you. yes, those fumbles are terrible
Determining rankings in players’ pay is confusing in the NFL, because with the cap, so much of it is done with financial manipulation in terms of bonuses to get the desired cap allocation So there are a few ways to compare across players and teams 1. A player’s cap charge for the year - Pro: brings some sort of level playing field across players and takes into account bonuses but on an annual basis - Con: often includes voidable years or exclude bonuses that are deemed “not likely to be earned”, so can be skewed up or down 2. A players cash income for the year - Pro: this is really the number that matters for players…just includes amounts paid - Con: this can really be skewed in a year if the player gets a huge signing bonus or other bonuses 3. Contract value including only guaranteed money - Pro: may be the best gauge of how much a player will get paid over the realistic life of the deal - Con: not apples to apples across players as contracts are for different amount of time, etc. 4. Average salary per year under contract (can also include any guaranteed bonuses) - Pro: helps smooth out the timing of cash payments between bonus and non-bonus years and also accounts for length of contract - Con: can also change based on how some of the bonuses are structured So not sure how we are ranking salaries or player costs for us…so not sure how to think about it… I know Sauce and GW just signed huge top of the market deals, and I also know that in a couple of years, maybe even just next year, they will look like good bargains as deals just go up and up and up, so I don’t get too hung up on that
It wasn't prevent defense for the most part aside for very few specific plays when we were backed up by penalties, it was still legitimate defense with less blitz, but some blitz too, like I said before, we also did a better job picking up blitz, and Fields scored a TD on a blitz. We can't discount good play by QB when the defense is not blitzing, it's simply dishonest. The problem is you don't give Fields any credit for making good plays, but shit on him when he doesn't. That's simply not a balanced view. I also want to see more all 22. The team record when a QB scores a specific number of points makes no sense at all. According to your own account, offense put up about League average. And this is not even considering refs stealing 4 points, AG not taking 3, and Allen's fumble right before crossing taking 7. Plus refs made other bad calls against us to make it harder to move the ball and get more points. Fields has not been amazing so far, but played as around League average, top 20 starting QB. This is also supported by all metrics. We need to have better defense and ideally another weapon on offense, and fewer turnovers and penalties and better decisions by AG. Then we can start winning games. QB play aside from game 2 has not been a major issue.
I appreciate you getting into the weeds but regardless how you slice it my point remains that we have quite a few more guys on defense getting paid top dollar relative to their position compared to the offense. I expect more from them individually and as a collective.
Another point here is that we have 8 starters returning from what was a very good defense under Bob. It got worse under Ulbrich, but still with Wilks and AG here the expectation should be that the defense is good with 8 starters returning. It has been bottom 5, giving 30 ppg. The offense is actually better than last year in spite the biggest unreplaced loss on the team by far being Adams. It's very clear the biggest area of underachievement is the defense, where we also have similar talent as last year and most coaching expertise.
I don’t know what to say…honestly I don’t understand how you are still defending this guy so hard…just like when Tyrod “almost” brought us back in the 4th quarter last week, you can’t ignore 3 quarters of shit play and then say well he didn’t do bad because look, he almost brought us back in the 4th. If you can’t see that the defense let up I don’t know what to say to that. They clearly did. We didn’t come back because all of a sudden Fields “got it” in the 4th quarter. We came back because the defense had a lead against an offense that was not performing and started playing it safer with more coverage and gave up a lot of the short underneath stuff, which to his credit, Fields took advantage of. I’m ok with that…take what the defense gives you and all that. And I also get that Fields’ stat line was actually VERY good…high completion rate and high QBR. But watching the whole game, he was bad for most of it. That great first drive until the fumble was all runs and the one throw to Breece was a disgusting wobble…even the announcers called it out. Breece had to jump and twist and make a great catch on a bad ball, which the announcers also called out. you can use the stats and you can use the GREAT run he head and you can use the 4th quarter almost comeback, but come on man, when your QB has 65 yards after 3 quarters, you can’t say he played well. Now, that game was lost more on the turnovers and penalties (plenty of which were total bullshit) than it was on bad QB play, but there is a LOT of play from Fields that doesn’t show up on the stat line but is just bad play. Like the other poster already pointed out, he is who he’s been since his Chicago days…elite runner, but slow to process, slow release, questionable or inconsistent accuracy (sometimes threads the needle and sometimes shits the bed) holds the ball too long, takes bad sacks, etc. In fact, I could argue that this is exactly the same way I’d describe Zach Wilson except that Wilson is not in Fields’ league with the running…for sure. But he is Zach. And the sad part is that neither Zach nor Fields are going to develop into good QBs…they have the physical skillset but they don’t have the intangibles, the feel, the football vision or IQ, whatever you want to call it…they don’t got it
I dunno what else to say man. If you truly believe that the "shackles" were on him for 3 quarters and his fourth quarter numbers were indicative of what he could do as a passer spread across a full game rather than being down 14 in the fourth quarter with the defense cutting their blitz rate by probably more than half, I really don't know what type of convo we're expected to have. I don't give him credit for good plays? This is the same shit as you saying I thought he was the reason we lost which I specified to you directly wasn't the case. You have some weird hangup with Fields and want to protect him at all costs from any criticism at all and only want to talk about the good things he did. No one in their right mind is going to stroke off a QB for completing passes underneath when the opposing team and your OL is giving you all the time in the world to make a throw. This isn't some complex film study. This is what has happened for decades in the NFL. A team goes up by 14, they allow passes underneath, give up nothing deep, bend don't break, preserve the lead. The only people that use that time to evaluate QBs as a whole are people that look at the box score. I'm not gonna do that. Feel free to, but like I've said to you plenty of times before, don't be surprised when people call it out for what it is: garbage.
Don’t know how to say it any better This is totally a case where the stat line is not indicative of the quality of play for the whole game…
Agree on this…the offense is not good, below average if we are being ranked as 18 in a league of 32, but just barely so. Problem is our style of offense requires very good play across the board because we can’t come back from deficits and we can’t get big chunk plays unless someone (often Fields) breaks a crazy long run. But I also expected the defense to be above average…wasn’t expecting top 5 certainly like Saleh had us once upon a time, wasn’t really even thinking top 10 honestly, but for SURE I did not expect bottom 5 in the league on D. This is a BAD indictment on AG. It just is. I don’t care if he’s not the DC. He chose Wilks and he oversees the D. Period. I think Wilks needs to go honestly and I wouldn’t even have an issue firing him mid year but he’ll probably be fired after the season if this D doesn’t improve. But this is on AG as much as on Wilks.
With the way we play offense our margin for error is small. We simply do not have the fire power to overcome penalties, turnovers and/or bad calls by the referees. I thought the margin was greater on defense but I was wrong.
