Accuracy or hyperbole: Is Jimmy Clausen a 'victim' if the Panthers go QB #1

In no way is Clausen is victim. Whether or not Clausen plays for the Panthers, I’m pretty confident he will be successful in the NFL – he may talk a little longer to become produce at a consistent level but that is a different point.

At this point, I’m far more concerned about the Panthers’ drafting a QB in this draft than about Clausen.

He had plenty of starts to show something, and other than eking out a game manager win over the hapless Cards, he did nothing.

If anybody’s a QB “victim,” it’s the guy who suffered a concussion and torn labrum.

(You keep bringing up Clausen, I’ll keep reminding you of Moore’s superiority. Fast forward 2 years, and Clausen’s warming somebody else’s bench. If he’d have had IT, he’d have shown IT. Ain’t got IT.)

To me, this is just another variation on the Why Are People Giving Up On Clausen post of 2 weeks ago. The emu has reached dead horse status.

I felt like my family and I were the victims last year. We had to watch every second of the awful QB play, while playing a nice and hearty 83 dollars a ticket for it. I mean, to shell out 332 dollars a game to watch Clausen throw balls out of bounds, into the D-lines head, or maybe 2 yards down the field was hard to stomach. The guy was down right awful and honestly he should not see the field for atleast 2 years if ever again. Hey, just my thoughts on the situation

I’m not an Armanti Edwards fan outright- but as poorly as Clausen played last year- what did we have to lose by trying him @ QB? Umm…. lets see… another embarrassing loss,… uh …we would have to replace a 2nd/ 3rd string PR/WR,… OH YEAH.. Hurney & Fox would have the proverbial egg to wipe off their collective faces!

Will Clausen be a victim in whose eyes? His, his fan/fans, or everyone elses?

How much does he charge? My son misses spots on ours all the time.

I’m glad someone brought up Matt Moore as a possible option while looking @ QBs. Did Edwards ever get a chance @ QB other than the wildcat formation? A lot of people wrote him off as a 2nd round bust because they were trying to make him into something that will take time to adjust to, while all the time we may have had Mike Vick 2.0 without the bagage.

Honestly, I am stuck on this one.

There’s the reasoning (most here, I think, would call it excuses) that Clausen was in a bad situation that he never should have been in to begin with. That the O-Line was for crap. The receivers were rookies. That Davidson’s idea of a playbook was a single page because the rest of them were all fused together with doughnut glazing. That the Fox/Davidson facepalm was actually a play call… okay, that last one, I just completely made up out of the blue.

By contrast, there’s the flip side of the coin: there was zero improvement on the field (if anything, it was regression). There was no will to win, no drive to succeed, even when it seemed all but a foregone conclusion that Andrew Luck would have his starting job come training camp. He was playing scared and the entire league knew it. There was the disregard for the coaching staff (lame duck or no, it’s still not cool). There’s several of the big-name current players, and several former Panthers, all saying to pick a new QB and move on. There’s his loss of respect from his teammates and the loss of the locker room to contend with.

When all is said and done, the answer is still a tough one to call. In some ways, yes: Clausen is a victim of his own mediocrity as a rookie, and his complete inability to hold his head up high and push on. He stuck his head in the sand, and it showed. In other ways, no: I have very little sympathy for someone who can still wind up walking away with millions (assuming he doesn’t paycheck-to-paycheck like a number of NFL players do), and wasn’t willing to do everything it took to try and keep up the spirits of his team and listen to his coaches (no matter how lame-duck or pathetic they were, in most cases).

Right now, Clausen has a lot to prove. I can’t help, at this point, but to lump him in as our version of David Carr — and until he can prove otherwise, that’s where he’ll remain. He may prove to be better, but right now I can honestly say that I’ll believe it when I see it.

victim?? come on, this is the NFL, not junior high. Produce, or you’ll be replaced. Clausen has “had promise” since the publicity machine at notre dame handed him to the NFL. Cream rises to the top, and sh!t settles to the bottom.

I typed it in the dictionary.com thesaurus, and these results popped up.

Main Entry: victim

Part of Speech: noun

Definition: someone or something sacrificed, preyed upon

Synonyms: babe in woods, butt, casualty, clown, dupe, easy make, easy mark, fatality, fool, gambit, gopher, gudgeon, gull, hireling, hunted, immolation, injured party, innocent, mark, martyr, patsy, pawn, pigeon, prey, pushover, quarry, sacrifice, scapegoat, sitting duck, sitting target, soft touch, stooge, sucker, sufferer, underdog, wretch

Antonyms: criminal, culprit

A couple things jumped right out at me. Obviously Jimmy has been scapegoated to some extent for this season, as evidenced by the multitude of us (including me) who believe our problems will be solved with a franchise QB. The QB is always an easy mark when your team is struggling. However culprit popped up as an antonym, and of course Clausen has been marked as such. So really it’s not as simple as “Is Clausen the victim here?”. I think he may have been “victimized”, which one of the definitions listed says to slay as or like a sacrificial victim/. And I think Clausen is definitely paying the price for this season. Not saying it’s not his fault, he certainly shoulders some of the blame, but he wasn’t in a favorable situation. He’s partially a victim, but he certainly could have done more to allay our concerns.