DCOrange

Unfortunately he is not. I think he’s literally the lowest rated pass blocker in the NFL since he joined the league on PFF and having watched most Bucs games every year, he routinely missed reads and got Brady lit up. He was also low key terrible at short yardage runs and also zero threat for long runs. He does have good hands as a receiver though (but we should be wanting Cook to get those reps). I think Brady, like so many before him, loves the idea of Fournette without realizing what kind of player he actually is (and Tampa admittedly had nothing at RB so they were desperate for any sort of veteran help they could find). Still, if he’s just a third RB or whatever you can do worse. If we had any semblance of a RB screen game, he could be helpful there.

Fournette has long been one of my least favorite RBs to watch/have to root for as a kinda sorta Bucs fan. Hopefully this is purely a depth signing. He made Tom Brady take a lot more hits than he should have due to his horrendous pass blocking and I believe is ranked among the worst pass blockers in the league every season since he was drafted. Not a good runner either.

It was picked up because it wasn’t a penalty. At the time the pass was thrown, his back foot is less than a yard downfield, therefore no penalty. https://x.com/benvolin/status/1716471004346642806?s=46&t=LzlSJJUF6bvvDA1Ph6jBcA

Feel like you have to be more pessimistic now than you were at the beginning of the season unless you were weirdly low on this team to begin with.

Yep, this is the alarming part to me. I don’t at all buy what Allen is selling when he says he’s fully healthy right now. He looks like his arm is bothering him on the field. I’m willing to let some of the coaching stuff slide for now in the hopes that they’re treating the season as a marathon and will ramp up the QB runs as Allen gets healthy, ramp up Kincaid’s usage as he gets more experience, etc. (but if that stuff doesn’t change, I will be quite upset). But things like running into sides of the field that the defense is overloading and generally processing the defense slowly are serious concerns to me, and particularly frustrating because as you mentioned, we know from experience that Allen can do better.

The kinda sorta workaround I've found is I just select one of the multiviews of 4 games that I'm interested in and then once that loads up, I'll click on the Bills game from there. Then, any time you want to switch feeds you just hit back once and it brings you back to that multiview and you can select one of the other 3 games quickly.

If Chance is 100% healthy, I suspect he'll be a better offensive player than Bell too, but shooting is definitely an edge for Bell and may make him a necessary starter for us given the other guys expected to start. First time in years that I'm legitimately excited about a Syracuse basketball team. Pretty high ceiling for this group if things click, and it feels like they should probably be back in the tournament next season.

To be fair, it makes perfect sense that he'd be putting that out into the public right now. He wants to stay in the draft if at all possible so it makes sense that he's at least projecting that he's all in on it. But yeah, I'm kinda back to assuming he's gone and if he returns, it'll be a lovely surprise.

The short answer is yes. He just didn't put in the same level of effort that Red is putting in and there was only so much Red/GMac could do as the assistant coaches. Recruits want to see the head coach and when they're getting recruited by 10 schools and 9 of them are sending their HC out to meet with them and the 10th is sending an assistant...it just doesn't look good. Other schools told recruits they didn't know who they'd actually play for at Syracuse and it worked; kids don't want to go to a school and then find out the coach is gone and they may no longer be wanted. Boeheim vetoed some recruits that Red/GMac had worked and had ready to commit. Point #2 isn't really Boeheim's fault; just kinda natural when you get up there in age. #1 is pretty much inexcusable. #3 depends on the reasons involved. I think it also helps that Red and the new assistant are extremely connected in the DMV and that's where we got guys like Freeman to suddenly be a lot more interested in Syracuse. Today is the day for the Judah Mintz decision; seems like everything has gone dark and nobody knows what he's thinking right now. My own speculation is that he's probably holding out hope that he'll get a team give him some good news before the deadline...I think he's probably looking for any reason to stay in the draft, but selfishly hoping he comes back to school (mainly because I want us to be good, but also because I think he's one of the rare Syracuse early entries where he could improve his draft stock by returning).

I haven't heard anything personally, but I've heard from a couple people that do have sources with the Syracuse staff. One said the staff thinks it's 50/50 on Judah coming back at this point. The other said the staff is expecting him back.

FWIW, seems like Judah had a relatively disappointing first day at the NBA Combine. Measured as one of the smallest players in terms of wingspan and weight and was below-average in the shooting drills. Had a few good athleticism scores though, including one of the top 5 fastest lane agility times in the last 5 years. He's going to want to kick ass in the scrimmages and team workouts to solidify his draft position.

I've heard it's pretty much a done deal we're getting him. Hopefully he fits in well but I'm more nervous about the PG position at this point as it's starting to sound more and more like Judah is gone.

If we end up landing Bethea (which, no insider knowledge here but I just get the vibe we will not) I won't know what to do with my hands.

Haven't heard anything really since the decision date was announced, but everything I had been hearing before that was sounding very good.

Realistically, even if he's drafted in the 1st round, he's going to play in the G-League for a bit. If he's a late 1st/early 2nd, he can lock in a 3 year deal around $6-8 million; Syracuse is not going to match that. We'll see how it goes; like I said, I haven't personally heard anything yet, but my personal expectation the entire time has been that I would assume he's gone and if he comes back, that's great. I still think there's a chance he goes late 1st round this year if he stays in the draft; I know he has a lot of fans out there in the draft community and if teams agree that he could be a lottery pick next year, they'll likely be fine drafting him later in the 1st round this year to get him in the facility.

I haven't heard anything myself, but another person I know that has sources is saying he's officially worried about Judah Mintz leaving.

Knox has been among the league leaders in drop % almost every year in the NFL and was a poor route runner in college. Kincaid has some of the best hands I’ve ever seen in a TE and is a very good route runner. Their skill sets are almost nothing alike.

Kincaid was my favorite prospect in the draft regardless of position. A star in the making if he can stay healthy and Dorsey/Allen take advantage of his skills.

Yessir. Generally considered a top 30 recruit in his class. He didn't really light it up this first weekend of EYBL games, but made the All-Defense team and was still pretty solid. He and Jahlil Bethea seem to be the two best 2024 guys that we're going after.

I haven't heard anything concrete, but it seems that the recruiting world at large expects us to land Donnie Freeman, which would be a huge get for us.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Chance ends up being our starting SF next year (or starting SG if Judah leaves). I also won’t say I expect it to happen but I think there’s a non-zero chance that someone like Copeland could potentially transfer out still. Not really scared that it’ll happen but if it did, I’d get it.

Yeah, I knew that they offered Jesse a lot more. I'm saying I think their budget is no bigger than ours; they just valued Jesse a lot more than we did.

More likely to want to come back to when you can play for a contender vs returning to play for a team that might not make the tournament. I have no idea if WV has more to offer than we do, but if it is, it’s not by much. I know for sure we’re somewhere around the top 20 in the country in terms of NIL money. We simply didn’t want to pay Jesse what WV is offering to pay. I imagine nearly half our budget is earmarked for Judah right now and from what I’ve heard we offered Edwards, I think even paying what we offered would have been a mistake.

To be fair, Edmunds' PFF grades were similarly terrible up until this past season. But yeah, White is simply not a good football player. I think most Bucs fan will be elated to see him traded for anything of value.

If the Bucs can get a 3rd or 4th round pick for White, that's a win for them IMO.