How to make lemonades from this lemon of a season?

Our season is more or less over from playoff perspective. Everything that could have gone wrong has went wrong, we still have games to play, let's talk about what the team can do to get some benefit out of those games:

1. Experiment on OL, Brown is expensive and showing every bit of his age. Sit him, try out our young tackles or at least let them earn some experience. Swap position on guards, rotate RT too. If there are FA linemen, sign them and kick their tires in real games.
2. Run run run, two teams that won yesterday, 9ers ran 42 pass 22; and Eagles ran 50, pass 24. Run our existing RBs and sign some FA to test. Time to play Peteball.
3. With the above, sit Russ, he is clearly not himself. Pete needs to grow a pair and be the HC, this is time to sit Russ no matter what he says. Play Geno, heck if there are intriguing FA QBs, sign them and try.
4. Let us play Waldron ball under Geno. We have the luxury now that this season's record doesn't matter anymore. If Shane's system doesn't show sign of hope, start shopping for a new OC.
5. Try Brooks, let him play some middle LB.
6. May be time to play less of Dunlap, and let some of your youngsters play.

Finishing the season with three wins or 7 wins, is will losing season. Let's make some lemonade.

Wow.
Awesome post.
Love the thoughts here and man it would be WAY fun to see all of those experiments.
And, I think the fun for this season as indicated in another thread is playing spoiler. Man it would be so wonderful to reverse any smiles on the Rams or CArdinals faces in the near future.

Mjolnir":1mb9w530 said:

Wow.
Awesome post.
Love the thoughts here and man it would be WAY fun to see all of those experiments.
And, I think the fun for this season as indicated in another thread is playing spoiler. Man it would be so wonderful to reverse any smiles on the Rams or CArdinals faces in the near future.

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Not sure what will happen this off season but we sure could .akr the remao I g games interesting by experimenting. Don't you think?

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Absolutely. There usually isn't a good time to "experiment" with things like you noted in your post.
The goal for the remainder of the season has got to be making some positive like your title mentions, and learning something about your team with trying out things can be a gold mine.

I especially like your suggestion of actually letting Waldron run his offense. Just let it rip and see what happens. Maybe not with Geno, though that is an interesting thought in itself, but I'd actually like to see Russ in an unfettered wide open offense. If it fails miserably, well then the team has learned something.

toffee":bn5tfm54 said:

Our season is more or less over from playoff perspective. Everything that could have gone wrong has went wrong, we still have games to play, let's talk about what the team can do to get some benefit out of those games:

1. Experiment on OL, Brown is expensive and showing every bit of his age. Sit him, try out our young tackles or at least let them earn some experience. Swap position on guards, rotate RT too. If there are FA linemen, sign them and kick their tires in real games.
2. Run run run, two teams that won yesterday, 9ers ran 42 pass 22; and Eagles ran 50, pass 24. Run our existing RBs and sign some FA to test. Time to play Peteball.
3. With the above, sit Russ, he is clearly not himself. Pete needs to grow a pair and be the HC, this is time to sit Russ no matter what he says. Play Geno, heck if there are intriguing FA QBs, sign them and try.
4. Let us play Waldron ball under Geno. We have the luxury now that this season's record doesn't matter anymore. If Shane's system doesn't show sign of hope, start shopping for a new OC.
5. Try Brooks, let him play some middle LB.
6. May be time to play less of Dunlap, and let some of your youngsters play.

Finishing the season with three wins or 7 wins, is will losing season. Let's make some lemonade.

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Agreed Agreed Agreed. Nice post. I like #2 and #3.

Play Geno. Balance run/Pass and see what happens. Check out the other post on APPG between Geno and Russ. I'll take Geno for the rest of the year.

And, unfortunately, if PC was gonna grow a set - well, he would have already.

The only thing I disagree with is #4. I'd like to SEE the offense under Waldron. Let's try that for a few games instead of hero ball.

Sitting Russ could save his career and boost his trade value.. Sitting Him is not hating on him, it will help him.

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toffee":2j5th2h1 said:

Sitting Russ could save his career and boost his trade value.. Sitting Him is not hating on him, it will help him.

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It's a clean out as well Injuries are a good way to protect his reputation and hold his value, especially a hand issue he came back from too fast, Wilson may not like it, but this is where Coach Pete says sit down shut up and get well your only hurting yourself and the team now.

chris98251":3a33uv3q said:

toffee":3a33uv3q said:

Sitting Russ could save his career and boost his trade value.. Sitting Him is not hating on him, it will help him.

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Click to expand...

It's a clean out as well Injuries are a good way to protect his reputation and hold his value, especially a hand issue he came back from too fast, Wilson may not like it, but this is where Coach Pete says sit down shut up and get well your only hurting yourself and the team now.

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Leverage on that finger injury would be a good way to sit and rest Russ. It will do the team good by protection Russ's trade value, it will also do him good with time to reflect. It's a win win, just need Pete summon courage to sit him, which may be hard as Pete may have gotten used to saying Yes Sir to Russ for years. Old habits are hard to break.

Meh, you do what you always do when you're getting blown out. You try to win the 2d half, or the 4th quarter.

Applies to games and seasons. Not buying into the modified 'suck for luck' BS.

toffee":3otdmpvn said:

Sitting Russ could save his career and boost his trade value.. Sitting Him is not hating on him, it will help him.

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Sitting Russell not only assures an all out locker room civil war, it assures he's gone next year.............AND gives you no time to show other teams that he's healthy and productive again.

If you're trying to maximize Russell's trade value, you have to hope as his finger gets healthier, he plays better and better and finishes the year strong.

Because if he continues to struggle and his finger continues to be a problem it's going to scare a lot of GM's away if you're shopping him next off season.

I am of the opinion to sit him and play him in the last two or three games. Ie to show that he is healthy.

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More importantly, we must leverage the rest of season to test our young players, test schemes, etc

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toffee":3odtt2x3 said:

I am of the opinion to sit him and play him in the last two or three games. Ie to show that he is healthy.

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I understand where you're coming from, but everyone's playing for their jobs...........including Pete and his coordinators. No way Pete sits Russell unless he get hurt again, he knows even a 80% Russell gives him the best chance to win.

If we had a young backup that we're trying to develop and get experience? I'd agree with you. But Geno's a retread career backup, no reason to start him over your franchise QB if he can play.

It's an unpopular opinion but my view is that every game matters even if we're out of contention. Since joining the NFC we have as many titles as the rest of the division combined and have never finished last. That means something.

We are 25-23 head to head against the Rams all time, 29-17 against the 49ers, and 22-22-1 against the Cardinals. I'd love to push our lead in those and not just forfeit games. If we can spoil any of their seasons by hurting their playoff seeding or knocking them out of the wild card then that's just a nice bonus.

As an added bonus, trying to win gives us a much better view of this roster and our schemes going into the off-season than if we are throwing away games playing reserves. Forsythe and Curhan show promise but they are rookies with zero experience and just throwing them out there doesn't guarantee that we get a fair evaluation of their potential. More importantly, we can't evaluate any other part of our roster well if they are busy making rookie mistakes.

I also don't buy that we know everything there is to know about the Russ and Waldron pairing. Moving on from Russ is one of those decisions that I would want the team to be really, really, really sure about and I'd like to see Russ given increased responsibility if anything over these final games. Our playoff chances are already sunk so trying to prove a point about a short passing game with Geno doesn't actually help us going forwards.

Not having our first round pick just makes trying to win an even easier opinion to hold.

sutz":16spme72 said:

Meh, you do what you always do when you're getting blown out. You try to win the 2d half, or the 4th quarter.

Applies to games and seasons. Not buying into the modified 'suck for luck' BS.

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LMAO!!!!!

Sgt. Largent":1nm8hgi4 said:

toffee":1nm8hgi4 said:

I am of the opinion to sit him and play him in the last two or three games. Ie to show that he is healthy.

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I understand where you're coming from, but everyone's playing for their jobs...........including Pete and his coordinators. No way Pete sits Russell unless he get hurt again, he knows even a 80% Russell gives him the best chance to win.

If we had a young backup that we're trying to develop and get experience? I'd agree with you. But Geno's a retread career backup, no reason to start him over your franchise QB if he can play.

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I get your logic and it's a sound one. My take is Russ's trade value can get seriously impacted if he has a few more games like the last two, on the same note, playing at the level of last two games, can one really be sure that Russ gave us the best chance to win?

My real beef with Pete was his failure to draft quality backup to Russ, counting on Russ be indestructible was reckless.

toffee":1h7djzmy said:

on the same note, playing at the level of last two games, can one really be sure that Russ gave us the best chance to win?

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That being unknown, along with unknown effect that Russ's finger has, sounds like a strong argument for playing Russ and finding out more information before we possibly make a bad trade using incomplete data.

toffee":1h7djzmy said:

My real beef with Pete was his failure to draft quality backup to Russ, counting on Russ be indestructible was reckless.

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While JS claimed to want to draft a QB every year, that's tough to do in practice. JS has been linked to supposedly really liking three of them - Patrick Mahomes, Ryan Tannehill and Josh Allen - who went #10 overall, #8 overall and #7 overall long before our selection. We would have had to bundle a lot of picks with multiple firsts, and I doubt Russ's camp would have sat for that.

Even if we had the benefit of hindsight and knew that Wilson was going to get hurt this year, who should we have drafted in 2021? The only rookie QB who was available when we picked that has played at all really is David Mills and he hasn't been better than Geno.

With how early QBs are drafted these days the superior strategy is to always keep your first round picks so when the wheels do fall off you will have a chance at drafting a decent QB prospect as a silver lining.