I recently had an opportunity to sit down with heavy hitter and pro tweeter Chris Harris. Here are the highlights of our conversation.

First off, your tweets have gotten quite a bit of attention. Is that really you tweeting?

Absolutely, I do it from my Blackberry. I have been more active lately, but its me.

Good to know. How would you compare Ron Meeks to Mike Trgovac? What about Meeks and Lovie Smith?

I love Trgo, he was a good defensive coach. Meeks is a little more laid back from Trgo. The scheme is less complicated than when Trgo was here. Meeks and Lovie both were calm in their approach and both rely heavily on the defensive front four. It all starts up front in their defenses.

Speaking of front four, we have lost ours. Any concerns going into next season?

Yes, for me. I feel we have some good young players, but it might hurt not having a single defensive line starter returning. But we do have some good young guys. I think Charles Johnson will have to step up as well as Everette Brown. Lewis Leonard showed a flash before he got hurt that he could be a really good player. Tank Tyler and Nick Hayden are not proven but they are good young players that can step up.

How will those changes effect open competition this year?

There will probably be more open competition this year with the guys being cut or released. There will be huge competition at the strong side linebacker with Nai’l Diggs being released, between James Anderson and Dan Connor. The d-line is wide open. Plus you have Sherrod Martin and Charles Godfrey both looking to start at free safety.

How would you compare Martin and Godfrey?

Their games are very similar, they are both ranging safeties with good ball skills that can cover sideline to sideline. They can both make plays. The only difference is Charles has a little more experience, this being his third year. But when Sherrod had his chance in there he had three games and three interceptions, so there is a guy that made the most of his opportunity, which I think speaks volumes with the way he prepares.

What do you think is the motivation for all of these changes this offseason?

What they say is that they want to go younger and they feel we have some young players that can play. If that’s what they want to do, the players like me, Beason, Thomas are going to have to step up and play a bigger leadership role. We lost two captains on our team in Delhomme and Julius Peppers. Jordan Gross and guys like that are going to have to step up into a leadership role.

Do you think these changes are coming down from the top or from coaching?

I am pretty sure its coming down from the very top. More than likely. I don’t work in that front office but if I had to say, it would be from the very top.

Would you prefer to get an interception or force a fumble?

To me, I would say causing a fumble because I love to hit, that’s one thing I take pride in. To me a fumble is a little more than a take away, you kind of build a reputation. You become known as a hitter and disruptor. A physical player. I love interceptions, but I prefer forcing fumbles.

Do you keep a mental list of hard hits you have administered?

I keep up with some of the big hits, I like to be known as a heavy hitter. When we played the Chargers in the 08 season I had a pretty nasty hit on Ladanian Thomlinson. Exactly one play before he ran to our sideline and I kind of eased up and he came into me. He didn’t knock me down but he game me a little somethin somethin. I hit him back the very next play.

So if you were GM for a day, what needs would you address in the draft?

I would probably say defensive line since we have lost a lot of linemen. I would look at wide receiver also with losing a veteran player in Moose.

Any advice for Peppers on the Chicago scene?

They are going to be on you. The media here is no where close to the media in Chicago as far as how much coverage the football team gets. You got 12-15 reporters there every single day, and thats just the local media. So pretty much be careful with what you say out there, everything is under the microscope.

Does seeing Chicago on the schedule give you any extra motivation?

Yes… Absolutely. I always look forward to playing them. Ever since I was traded in 07, that left a bad taste in my mouth. I love the city, love the players, but it just left a bad taste. But to get traded, I kind of got blind sided. I didn’t see it coming, I don’t think anybody did. So I am always up to playing them. I was talking to Brian Urlacher just the other day via text, so yeah I will be ready to play them.

Some are loving this offseason. Some are hating it. I think we can all agree it has been the most interesting in recent history.

Discuss Here: http://www.carolinahuddle.com/forum/carolina-panthers/32140-hoover-released.html

Jake now has a good opportunity to play somewhere else. Instead of sitting the bench for a year collecting dust, he can compete for a starting job somewhere desperate for an experienced quarterback.

For the Panthers, cutting Jake was a move toward the future. Matt Moore can now go into offseason workouts with the confidence that the  starting QB job is his to lose. He also has at least 3 million reasons to be confident the Panthers are fully behind him thanks to the first round tender placed on him.

Moore has never had an offseason where he received the majority of snaps, and we suspect his game will improve a great deal between now and September. This is an exciting time to be a Panthers fan.

No, Panthers Fans, there will be no Vick in Carolina.

For anyone who has paid the slightest bit of attention over the past ten seasons, ever since a man named Rae Carruth brought genuine shame and disgust into the front office, the Panthers have stayed away from anyone with even the slightest hint of a troubled past.

Michael Vick spent two years in federal prison for the slaughter of dogs. This puts Vick in the “no chance in hell” category of being hired by Jerry Richardson.

So please, Panthers fans, find something more constructive to spend your energy on.

10. Say it ain’t so, Bill
Bill Rosinski, the Voice of the Panthers for 10 seasons, left the team following the 2004 campaign without anyone in the organization saying anything. He wasn’t fired. He simply wasn’t re-signed to a new contract. Fans wanted to know why the Panthers had replaced one of the most talented broadcasters in the country with a relatively obscure college announcer named Mick Mixon. It wasn’t fair to Mixon, but fans felt it wasn’t fair to them, either. Rosinski said the team stunk when it stunk, and his calls were legendary, from “Yes Charlotte there is a Super Bowl, and we’re in it!” to “He Hate Me, we love you!” Many fans unfortunately took it out on Mixon.

9. Kemo becomes the Panthers’ Achilles Heel
On the first day of training camp in 2009, the Panthers promising season came unhinged. Defensive tackle Maake Kemoeatu wasn’t one of the five or maybe even 10 best players on the roster, but when his Achilles tendon snapped during a drill, it didn’t take long to realize that he was one of the two or three most important. The only true run-stuffing DT on the team, Kemoeatu left a gaping hole in the middle of new coordinator Ron Meeks’ defense. Carolina lost all four preseason games, started 0-3 in the regular season and struggled all season long to get to .500. It was an honorable accomplishment considering the beginning, but once again the Panthers had failed to follow up on a successful season with another playoff appearance or even a winning record.

8. This End didn’t justify the means
There are bad trades and there are BAD trades. The trade for Sean Gilbert was the latter. Carolina traded two number one picks to the Washington Redskins for Gilbert. Gilbert registered 15.5 sacks and two interceptions in return…over FIVE seasons. Gilbert wasn’t a disaster on the field, he just wasn’t worth a first round draft choice, let alone two. The fact that the Panthers traded away their first round choices in 1999 and 2000 probably had a huge role in….

7. 2001…An Odyssey, Allright
The 2001 season couldn’t have started any better. Rookie Steve Smith returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown and the Panthers pillaged the vaunted Vikings in the Metrodome. That about covers the good news of that season. The Panthers lost a record 15 straight games (until Detroit came along). Head coach George Seifert had entered the season with the NFL’s all-time best winning percentage. He left without even telling his players he had been fired. The Charlotte Observer held a haiku contest for fans to address the season, and the winner summed the season up perfectly…
Win, then lose lose lose
Lose lose lose lose lose lose lose
Lose lose lose lose lose

6. The Jeff Lewis Decision
The primary reason for that God awful season was Seifert’s decision to release veteran quarterback Steve Beuerlein right after the previous campaign and promote Jeff Lewis for reasons known only to him. Lewis, who had never shown anything special before, was an unqualified disaster. He didn’t even make it through the preseason as the starter. Rookie Chris Weinke, drafted in the fourth round, supplanted him. And mercifully, Jeff Lewis was never heard from again.

5. Kerry Collins Quits
The face of the franchise’s future, quarterback Kerry Collins screwed it all up somehow. Leading the Panthers to an NFC Championship in just their second year of existence, Collins gave fans every reason to expect him to emerge as that most important cog in any successful NFL machine – the franchise quarterback. But things got ugly. He used some racial slurs when addressing two teammates at training camp, got beat up because of it, and his role as leader of the team was history. Soon, he was, too. Collins quit on the team, a no-no in any sport but especially football. Ironically he moved on to play for the New York Giants, leading them to a Super Bowl alongside a defensive coordinator named John Fox.

4. Qwest Denied
When the Panthers rolled to impressive road victories over the New York Giants and Chicago Bears in the 2005 playoffs, winning the NFC Championship at Qwest Field in Seattle seemed like a very doable task. But without a running game or a secondary receiving target, Jake Delhomme was a sitting duck against the Seahawks. He was intercepted three times, and the Panthers offense was limited to 109 yards of total offense through three quarters. Steve Smith, who was Superman in the playoffs coming in, managed to score on a 59-yard punt return, but it was too little, too late. Fans never got to see Smitty line up against the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl.

3. Zounds! Out of Bounds!
First things first…John Kasay is probably one of the top 10 kickers in the history of the NFL. The man has been clutch for the better part of 20 years as a professional. The Panthers lone Super Bowl season of 2003 doesn’t happen without his four game-winning kicks. And he kicked a 50-yarder at the close of the first half of Super Bowl XXXVIII to keep the Panthers in the game against New England. But it’s what happened at the close of the second half that haunts Panthers fans and Kasay to this day. After the Panthers tied the thrilling game at 29 inside the final two minutes, Kasay simply choked. He kicked the ball out of bounds. Way out of bounds. Think of Phil Mickelson drilling the gallery off the 18th tee. The Patriots started on their own 40 and…well, you know the rest.

2. Jake’s Cardinal sins
It seems strange to rank a first round playoff game this high for an organization that has been to the Super Bowl and three conference championship games. But the 2008 season held so much promise for Panthers fans after two years of mediocrity that preceded it. Carolina had relied on vaunted rushing attacks in each of its previous three playoff runs, but the DeAngelo Williams/Jonathan Stewart tandem was better than any of them. When the Panthers used them to march downfield for a 7-0 lead against Arizona, it seemed like a rematch with the New York Giants was in the cards. But the Cards had other ideas. Five times they intercepted Jake Delhomme, although it was a Delhomme fumble that started the onslaught. Panthers fans watched in stunned silence. The last three quarters badly bruised a collective fanbase that was hopeful of seeing the Black and Blue back in the Super Bowl. In three previous playoff appearances the Panthers had met or exceeded expectations. This was their first clunker.

1. Rae Carruth
Truth be told, this story probably didn’t hit most Panthers fans as hard as the others on this list, as it was simply a case of human tragedy. But it was the blackest of black eyes on the organization. An active player involved in a murder-for-hire scheme on his pregnant girlfriend…it doesn’t get much worse than that. As a fan, there’s not much you can say when fans of other teams bring this one up. And it’s nothing that the Panthers as a team or organization did, on or off the field. It was a senseless ordeal everyone would like to forget, but the image of a pro football player hiding in the trunk of a car in another state makes that impossible.

Now please provide us with decent Panthers coverage. Thanks in advance.

“Snubbed,” Jon said. “The numbers don’t lie.”

Jon was referring to the egregious fact that he didn’t make the NFC Pro Bowl roster. The fact that he’s a second alternate behind London Fletcher doesn’t help take the sting away. Jon wants to be the best — not just at the end of the season, but after every single play. That’s how he rolls. He’s intense, and I’m afraid this latest oversight is just gonna make him meaner. Like the Hulk.

I heard Jon on WFNZ’s Primetime with the Packman later in the day with the same message that he delivered to Jeremy and I. Snubbed. Anger. Venom.

Then you read his latest blog post on JonBeason.com an it’s the same thing. Snubbed. Anger. Venom.

Jon is angry — not that he isn’t just going to the Pro Bowl but that people don’t recognize that he’s one of — if not THE best middle linebacker in the NFL. Jon’s not off base. It’s a fact.

The numbers don’t lie.

Beason broke his own team record for tackles in a season, notching 169 in 2009 per the Charlotte Observer, which ranked him second in the NFL behind San Francisco linebacker Patrick Willis. The Panthers’ defensive captain notched three sacks, three interceptions and a forced fumble all behind a virtual revolving door at defensive tackle.

“I try to break it every year,” Jon said. “I got the mark my rookie year, I was extremely happy about it … and proud, knowing there were some great linebackers that played here before me. To be the best in franchise history is a great accomplishment.”

Then I asked him about the Pro Bowl.

“I had a lot to say,” Jon said. “My blog is about a 10 minute read. The guy who went ahead of me, who is a UM guy and a guy I look up to and a guy I admire (Saints MLB Jonathan Vilma), and I don’t want to put him in a negative light. I tried to sit back and think about what I wanted to say. To me, being an NFL player, what validates you in terms of your play is going to the Pro Bowl. I think every player going into the NFL wants to go to the Pro Bowl. With the success I had my rookie year, one thing I didn’t want to be was a fluke. I want to be a guy who is real consistent and have a great career. Pro Bowls validate that.”

The thing I like about Jon is that this bothers him. Some players could take missing the Pro Bowl in stride.

Not Jon. He wants to be the best. All the time. It’s the fire that churns in him.

“To still get snubbed for the Pro Bowl, it hurt bad,” Jon said. “My rookie year, I cried — I wasn’t even thinking about it, and people were like “hey, you got a chance to go to the Pro Bowl” and “you know you are ranked here in the league” and I was like wow. To miss it hurt bad. Then last year I cried because I did make it and kind of was thinking that I had arrived, and then not getting it this year just kind of opened my eyes.”

“They way I’m looking at it, God’s got more for me than just the Pro Bowl. Maybe I’m bigger than the Pro Bowl. Maybe I should be shooting for MVP, Defensive Player of the Year … bigger awards than just the Pro Bowl. ”

You can’t help but to believe that Beason is going to back up what he says. The guy has so much talent and so much passion for his team and the game, how can you argue?

“I’ll be better,” Beason said, already thinking of next season. “I’ll be more comfortable in the scheme that we’re in. I’ll have more fuel, more rage with the whole Pro Bowl thing going into the offseason.”

“I want to win it all.”

Jeff Davidson

Currently the Panthers Offensive Coordinator, Davidson has managed to put together the best rushing attack in Panthers history. Hindered by the play of Jake Delhomme this season, the play calling evolved into the most conservative in the NFL. His greatest accomplishment may have been keeping the Panthers somewhat competitive with such a one dimensional starting offense. Once Matt Moore took over and showed competence at the position, Panthers fans witnessed a balanced attack and a vertical passing game. Should Davidson be selected as head coach, it is likely GM Marty Hurney would insist on keeping Ron Meeks as defensive coordinator. With Davidson, there would not be a Panthers rebuilding, but a change in philosophy and hopefully an end to the “play not to lose” era. Davidson could fill his now vacant Offensive Coordinator position with Offensive Line Coach Dave Magazu, another standout due for a promotion.

Ron Meeks

Ron Meeks, a student of Tony Dungy, took the defense from former Coordinator Mike Trgovac and transformed it into a hungry ball hawking powerhouse. You would be hard pressed to find anyone in the Panthers nation that has not been impressed with the turnaround. With success like that, one has to wonder what type of positive changed Meeks would bring as a Head Coach? Presumably Meeks would also be required to keep Jeff Davidson, putting the team in a similar change in philosophy, not a complete overhaul. In his now vacant Defensive Coordinator position, Meeks could possibly fill from within. He has a talented pool of position coaches to choose from, like Mike Gilhamer, whose secondary helped the Panthers rank #4 overall against the pass.

Jim Skipper

Not as familiar to the casual fan, Jim Skipper could also be a contender for the Head Coaching position. Skipper is listed not only as the Running Back  Coach, but also Assistant Head Coach. Skipper is held in very high regard within the front office and in the locker room. As Running Backs Coach, Skipper has developed the leagues best tandem, breaking the single season rushing record for a running back duo. Skipper has head coaching experience on a professional level in XFL, and joined the Panthers in 2002. In this instance, both coordinators could remain in place.

Any of these three men could step into a Head Coach position seamlessly and continue to win next season. Jerry Richardson is looking ahead to a possible players lockout in the 2011 season, and may decide now is the best time to give one of these men a chance, a one year tryout to prove his ability. Should the Panthers perform well the first half of the 2010 season, a contract extension could be offered.

This is an ideal situation Panthers fans, should John Fox decide to leave. Lets not rebuild, lets improve upon what has been built.

This is a sample of what folks had to say:

Chris
Don’t mind Fox we are due to a great year next year but don’t want to miss out on Cowher

Marc
stay, hire cowher as manager or sumthin….we don’t have one of them

Aaron
Fox in. Moore in. Jake out.

Matt
Fox go. Maybe we can have a back to back winning season.

Todd
Fox out, Jake out and Cower in!

Jeff
Cower in, please don’t F*@& this one up Panthers!!!!

Guy
Fox in!!!! What’s wrong with you people? We have never finished worse than 7-9 under Fox and those seasons (like this one) were full of disastrous injuries. Remember when Nick Goings was our starting tailback after Davis, Foster, Smart and Hoover all went out? Smitty was out that season also. It took pure grit to finish 7-9 that year, lesser … See Morecoaches would’ve been 4-12. Do you remember going into the playoffs with Nick Goings starting at tailback and going out with a concussion? Fox’s teams are tough, smart, hard working, defense and run oriented powerhouses. What do you think Cowher would do differently? Mart Hurney is to blame for the stupid contract signings this past offseason, fire him. Fox takes a collection of bruised up veterans and greenhorns and makes them 10 times better than they should be. Fire him and he’ll be unemployed for about 48 hours and then be on a private jet to Washington. Look at all the talent the Redskins have, but they couldn’t make it work. Plug Fox in up there and we will really see how stupid we were for even having this conversation.

Brian
Hiring Cowher is stupid. I’m not saying he’s a bad coach, but he’s essentially the same coach as Fox. He has 1 Super Bowl win, but he’s winning percentage is similar to Fox’s. They’re both run first coaches that like to keep it close and win with Defense. If Fox were to choose to leave then fine bring Cowher in, but if you’re truly looking to make … See Morea coaching change then you need to bring someone in that’s a different style to Fox ball all together. Its ignorant to continually call for Cowher when there would be no real change.

Andrew
Moore in, jake back up or out

Brendan
If Fox plays Moore he can stay, if he wants Delhomme I don’t Fox around.

Eric
Fox needs to leave.

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