Hairyducked Idiot

You're gonna hate this, but that was equally on fields. He took his normal slow dropback and then had the pocket awareness of a light pole as the rusher came in from his face side. Every actually good QB in the NFL would have seen it coming a mile away, taken one step forward in the pocket and Hutchinson flies right by. Caleb Williams would have been great on that play, tbh

If I really really have to, I guess trestman > eberflus but I really don't care either way, they are both below a minimum level of acceptability

Nagy > Fox > trestman/eberflus

Fields continues to be a player whose contributions are overrated by raw stats. He's like a 1970s slugger who puts up HRs and RBIs with a .280 obp. He can pop off enough runs and bombs to get his yardage up, but he's so unreliable in must-pass situations that his team will struggle to convert those yards into points and points into wins. His passing success rate (getting at least 40% of yards to gain on first down, 60% on second down or 100% on 3rd/4th) is 40.8%, 28th out of 34 qualified QBs. (Bagent is 4th at 52%). His statistics take an absolute nosedive in 4th quarters, especially in non-blowouts, when teams know you have to pass. He's also uncannily good at doing bad things that don't count against his passing stats. Hop around for 7 seconds on 3rd and 7 before finally eating a sack and hurting your thumb doesn't help the team win, but it protects your completion percentage and doesn't subtract from your passing yardage. Handing off a zone read when you should have kept or not checking out of an outside left run when there's two looming left side blitzers doesn't hurt your passing stats at all. Wins are not a QB stat, but Justin Fields' historic run of losing isn't a coincidence or bad luck. It is directly tied to his extremely poor execution of his job at the most important position on the field.

You know what's funny? Until his traditional final minutes pants-pooping, Fields was having the most Bagentian game of his career. Low passing yards, decent 3rd/4th down conversion rate, 0 sacks/0 turnovers through 3.5 quarters, tons of time of possession.

oh no ... stop ... please come back...

What can I say, I'm an optimist

Or, hear me out, we could try to get a good QB instead

Lose out and clean house plz and ty

I think my biggest takeaway is that this is a great game for showing how poles' vision for the team is doomed. This is *exactly* why a great running game and a great run defense don't mean jack in the modern NFL

He was covered by Justin Fields standards, by which I mean there were defensive backs within 5 yards of him. But a franchise NFL QB hits him and gets the first down 10/10 times

The problem with the decision to throw the deep ball on that late third down is that you're increasing the risk (that's a tough catch to make no matter how good the throw is) for no additional reward (the game is over on any first down). And Moore was open for a much easier throw and catch. I'm surprised that "3rd down when you're trying to bleed the last two minutes to seal the win is a bad time to take a deep shot" is such a controversial take.

Because QB is more important. Fix the defense and you have a good defense that might win a playoff game or two before it gets housed by someone with a good QB, then the whole thing falls apart after a couple of years. Fix QB and you can start winning these shootouts

I like Bagent more than most but I can't imagine any scenario where I make a roster decision based on his existence or where I intentionally have him starting games going into a season.

With fields next year if we draft another qb, the question to me isn't "why not" it's "why?" What am I gaining from continuing to employ Justin Fields as a QB if I'm not doing it with the hope that he snaps it together and becomes a franchise QB? The only scenario I can think of where it's useful is we fall out of maye/Williams range and need a veteran stopgap but somehow the veteran stopgap market is even worse than normal

Yeah I think this is the one that tips me over from "they should probably clean house on the coaches but I won't see it as tragedy if they don't" to "they absolutely must."

For me, what happens in that situation is you're accepting that fields isn't an upside play, he just is who he is. So the question becomes: is he better than whatever other random stopgap veteran QB is out there. The Dalton Line. I'd lean toward no but he might convince me if he keeps playing as ok as he has recently.

I would say if he plays like he did for 3.5 quarters today for the rest of the season, and stays healthy, I'd be more willing to accept a fourth year if somehow we didn't get Williams or Maye. I wouldn't love it but he might be the best of the bad options.

Definitely. I was surprised he didn't get a single on of those calls.

The nice thing is that's the kind of loss that makes a house-cleaning more likely. A regular old 37-17 drubbing would have been way less demoralizing.

No more responses to non-football takes.

It was an intentional strawman *responding to a strawman*. To demonstrate the problem with strawmen. You'd know that if you weren't mad and looking to take it out on me. Block button is somewhere in the new software. But you won't use it

Just returning your energy. Sarcasticially oversimplifying is apparently how you communicate, so I thought it would help get the point across.

I thought he played ... what's the right adjective here. OK, bordering on good, but not great. Until the end, he avoided mistakes. He created a touchdown out of nowhere on that one pass. Emphasis on one. The problem is that this sort of designed run playcalling 1) will lead to him getting hurt again 2) doesn't work in must-score situations.

That's how I know you know I'm right. Because you're resorting to stuff like that because handling your emotions like an adult is hard.