How do you grade the 2023 season?

Straight up an 'F'.

Kwesi's big FA additions to the Defense were unquestionably busts. Murphy is near the bottom of the CB list rating-wise. Lowry made literally zero impact. Davenport barely played.

Flores disguised the utter lack of Talent with smoke & mirrors for a shockingly long time before the League figured him out. There was zero development from Evans. Blackmon is small and can't make plays on the ball when it's in the air unless it's thrown straight at him instead of the WR. Smith got old fast.

The D-Line is Hunter and good run stuffers that can't generate a lick of pressure in Phillips and Bullard. Pace was a revelation but is a liability against the run. Wonnum got sacks but was again near the bottom in generating consistent pressure.

If Hunter walks the Building Blocks on Defense are Metellus, Bynum, Pace and Phillips. Not one of them plays the Premium roles of Edge or CB. If Flores walks too this has the real potential of being the 32nd Ranked Defense in the NFL.

On Offense Boy Wonder couldn't get the horses out of the gate despite having a Top 10 QB, #1 WR, Top 3 TE, Top 3 Tackle duo and all 1st and 2nd Round Picks everywhere else save for running back. 1-5 start.

And how about that running game? Bottom 3 for the 2nd straight year despite all the moves and lip service O'Connell gave to fix it. Still the wrong blocking scheme for the IOL. Still runs up the gut way more than off Tackle. Mattison over Akers and Chandler for like 10 games too long. They hardly ever throw the ball to the RBs, and yet when they do it's almost always a positive play.

The Screen Game might be worse than any Les Steckle ever ran. The trick plays are laughably bad and horrifically executed. Kevin routinely can't get the plays in on time. His Final 2 Minutes of Halves game management makes Mike McCarthy blush. His play designs on 3rd and 4th and short and long are 180 degrees from what they should be.

And all of this without mentioning how conservative he gets with a lead. Minnesota either barely wins, barely loses or gets their doors blown off.

How about the turnovers?

I saw nothing that remotely resembled improvement from Kevin O'Connell this year. If anything, he doubled down on his Intermediate Passing Game emphasis. Even when blitzes and stunts and superior pass rushers were crushing his O-Line. Even when he had backups that simply couldn't execute it. No Quick Game. No draws. No boots. No waggles. No WR Screens. No Sweeeps.

It's all 5-7 step drops all the time. And damn it, if it doesn't work it's either the Offensive Line's fault or the QBs. Sure, he talks about ownership and accountability in press conferences, but then he goes out and calls the exact same plays with a Rookie 5th Round QB against the Vikings nemesis in a must win game.

This was nowhere near a Top 5 Offense when the injuries hit. Despite all that Talent and Investment. The guy has a sub .500 record since JJ went into Near Earth Orbit in Buffalo. Multiple guys need big contract extensions.

Just an absolute Poo Poo Platter of a season that frankly leaves me more down on the future of this Franchise than I've been in a long time. The Wilfs will chalk it up to injuries. And when the record is sub .500 again next year they will conjure up some nonsensical reason to extend a pair that are clearly in over their heads.

As Morbo says on the News every night, Doooom!

Ill go C..

When your at the bottom of the barrel as the most unlucky team this year and your starting QB goes down, you aren't going to make it in this league. That doesnt negate how the past draft classes have contributed and FA signings last year, but again as usual we were just bargain shopping to get us through the year. They dug there own grave early on pooping the ball out to a 1-4 record, but they fought back to 4-4 and I believe they would've rode that for a long time probably until last Sunday night if Kirk was still here. It is what it is, but any realist knew this would be a process and the real verdict of Kwesi and KOC will come out around this time next year.

Where is the LOL option?

I had it at an F but I decided to factor in the direction forced as sort of a separate issue related just to management and judge based on realistic expectation.. To me I think a lot of what we have seen should have been expected given the circumstances. It would have taken players showing surprising talent and/or coaches doing the same to get much better results. We were projected to be a 8.5 win team heading into the season healthy. With some horrible luck and injuries we are going to end with 7 or 8. I think almost anyone knowing even just about Kirk/JJ time missing would adjust it by 1.5 games.

There is a big gap between realistic expectations and the hopium constantly sold to fans that is being bought into. We have only had 1 season the last 4 years projected to be above .500. You wouldn’t know it by our preseason guesses. Same with once Cousins went down, there wasn’t another person on this site that thought we would go below .500. Despite what the obvious norm is in those situations with meh backups and defense. So I think that in terms of players and coaching they keep getting put in situations where expectations are much higher than the reality of talent.

So management gets an obvious F imo. Easily the biggest issue with this franchise the last 4 seasons is no real logical direction and poor drafting. It’s been to hover in mediocrity by using resources for now to make up for it while hoping to luck into a great rebuild eventually. I’m not sure there is a single team that’s drafted so well we would have been true contenders this year with just changing 2nd year players and rookies anyways. It just doesn’t help that Addison is seemingly the only impactful player drafted so far (obviously time to grow still just not showing it yet). We pushed over 50 million in cap into next season to be projected a .500 team.

The rest of it averages out to more like a C- or something to me. I think we had some players produce a bit more than expected (Bynum, mettellus, Pace, maybe even Addison too although he was drafted in 1st). Flores did a pretty good job coaching given the talent he was dealt. Koc is trending down given the major issues with the running/screen game imo. The offense was actually able to move the ball and maintain possession better than last season overall. So it wasn’t all bad but he brings down the grade a little bit for other issues related to game management as well. So to me it’s a really mixed bag landing somewhere in the average range when you consider what expectations should have been given our talent level. We performed 1.5 games behind expectations but that gap can largely be explained by a couple injuries.

The key for this team moving forward is getting a team that has the talent to be projected to win 10+ games (for the first time since 2018). No more pushing chips in to win now just for 7-9 win projections. It’s pointless and breeds mediocrity. We need to finally go all in on rebuilding the roster instead of this competitive rebuild crap. That’s a massive key to what keeps leading us to have mediocre talent over and over and over.

I'm blowing it up, just to see something different. I'm keeping Pace, Addison, Darrisaw and Hock and building around them.

My expectations were low for the 2023 season so I'll give the team a D.

I went with B. Let's face it, if Cousins doesn't get hurt, this team is a contender.