You’re Fired

[punch it in]

Originally Posted by MTK

So basically no credit for last year but all the blame for this year.

Nah, just reading between the lines. We rode the greatest rookie quarterback season of all time all the way to the NFC Championship game and the rest of team seemed inspired by it …. we caught lightning in a bottle. Can never take that away from us. However, the truth was that we really were not that talented around JD, and certainly had no depth.

We will see what AP does going forward, and like I said before I hope he makes me eat crow. *

[MTK]

Originally Posted by punch it in

Nah, just reading between the lines. We rode the greatest rookie quarterback season of all time all the way to the NFC Championship game and the rest of team seemed inspired by it …. we caught lightning in a bottle. Can never take that away from us. However, the truth was that we really were not that talented around JD, and certainly had no depth.

We will see what AP does going forward, and like I said before I hope he makes me eat crow. *

Slight exaggeration to think JD did it all himself. He had plenty of help from impactful moves like Ertz, Luvu, Fowler, Wagner, Armstrong, Biadasz, Ekeler, Chinn, etc.

[calia]

Originally Posted by MTK

Slight exaggeration to think JD did it all himself. He had plenty of help from impactful moves like Ertz, Luvu, Fowler, Wagner, Armstrong, Biadasz, Ekeler, Chinn, etc.

BTW, I think the loss of Ekeler really hurt us. The guy had gotten into terrific shape in the offseason (said he felt the best he had in years), and was a real threat catching passes out of the backfield. We didn't have any RBs with that ability (or at least close to what Ekeler could do), although i would like to have seen more passes to them (McNichol at least has shown some of that ability in the past).

We've been down for significant portions of the season: our starting QB (most of the season), starting RB, top 2 WRs, best return man (and #4 WR), top 2 CBs, top 3 DEs, and starting FS -- that's a shit-ton of talent unavailable to us (and we can add our starting TE to the list now too). If at the outset of the season, if someone said that we'd be missing all these pieces, I don't think anyone on this site would have said we'd have a winning record.

Other teams have lost impact players for sure and done better than we have (e.g., SF). But with 8 seasons together, they've drafted greater depth than we can do in the wake of Rivera, and I can't think of any team that has lost as many actual starters as we have.

I get it that folks are miserable with the way things have gone -- I'm right there with you. But not acknowledging this brutal reality and concluding that the coaches and AP are primarily to blame seems wrong to me. I am not saying give them a complete pass either -- DQ didn't have the team ready against the Vikings, and that's inexcusable, as was throwing the ball 4 times in a row on 1st and goal from the 2 when CRod was running so well. And we've all talked about how worried we were about the DE situation at the outset of the season -- although the first couple of games were a pleasant surprise on that front until the group got decimated by injuries.

So 2025 will go down as a lost season, but I think we're primed for a bounce-back in 2026 with some critical pieces in place (QB and OL for starters -- when was the last time we thought we had those positions right?), and a lot of cap $ to spend.