All Activity

Unfortunately, corners can be vertical in nature as well.

Tepper your expectations, my son.

Baker reminds me a lot of Jake. Good QB but he's got a dawg in him that carries him above and beyond what he should be and makes his teammates and fans love him. I really wish this shitty organization hadn't dropped the ball on that one. We actually made the smart move for once and we still fuged it up. That's impressive. Impressive for all the wrong reasons but still impressive.

One thing I'll say is that stuff like the Mingo trade and Bryce benching last year bodes well for this. I think we need to balance patience with the player with needed growth/development for these guys. So far I think we've been ok the last couple years with that.

Yeah, turning the corner to the bench once Coker is healthy again.

I firmly believe Baker was broken on arrival. It's possible he ends up fixed if we hold onto him for another year or so, but I'm not so sure. I don't think he was washed up, just damaged. The Cleveland ordeal would get in anyone's head. Ridiculous what they did.

We seem slightly more prone as a franchise than most to the sunk cost fallacy. If you realize your mistake, pivot ASAP and recoup what assets you can. Holding onto these guys for dear life in the hopes they will eventually pan out is tying up valuable resources spent developing better assets(hopefully).

Most of us are advocating for him to at least push the ball down field as much as he did last year, which he isn't really. I'm not super interested in all his incompletions beyond 15 because we all see the wounded ducks. Of the overwhelming majority of young starters he has more attempts and far fewer completions deep. The only comparison in raw numbers is Bo Nix but of his 3 completions beyond 15, 2 are 35+ yards, so he is threatening deep. I don't need that. I just need him to be doing something more than 5-10 yard passes in front of the sticks. If he doesn't, our running game will continue to suffer, too.

Yeah, Darnold I still believe will be a career backup and he is trending that direction. I was a Baker fan before he came here and never really bought the line about him being washed. Nor do I buy the line about him being some big turnaround. He is performing the best of his career but it isn't insanely better than with Cleveland. He was always a good NFL QB. I think it's more his progression/experience as an NFL player that is leading to the improvements. But you see why I harp so much on evaluation failures. This is the most critical flaw in our attempts to build anything cohesive here. You gotta be able to identify actual NFL caliber talent.

Which ones

Gotta be one of the most brutal stretches of fandom in sports history. So close year after year after year just to get Charlie Brown'd at the finish line. Imagine 2015 four years in a row. Good lord, I think I might rather just suck. At least you get numb to the suck.

I didn't want the guy and I think he's almost certainly a bust but I'm rooting for him. Seems like a really likeable guy. I wish if we were gonna draft busts that we'd draft assholes that bust. It's a lot easier to deal with a bust like Josh Rosen where it's like "yeah, fug that prick" versus likeable guys like XL and Bryce.

I could use less of Steve Smith's opinion in my life.

It probably would be. Given that most 6th and 7th rounders aren't NFL game day material except on the Panthers, the pick might improve us slightly with a drafted player, but I'd like to see us actually be able to open up the field. I do think some of our offensive problem stem from defenses aren't afraid of Bryce's arm. They cover a short field and that makes life a lot easier for them. If it doesn't work though, unless we get rid of the scouting department and whatever drafting algorithm Dave is making us use, it won't really matter anyway.

I think the Baker/Darnold thing has been overblown. QBs that struggle with the team that drafts them and go on to find success elsewhere often do end up going to multiple new teams before they figure it out and/or find the right situation. It just so happened that we traded for both guys in back-to-back years and neither player had quite figured it out yet. Baker, I think, needed more time and a better supporting cast. Darnold, I think, benefitted from a year on the bench in San Francisco a ton. I don't really have any ill will towards either of them. I think they both came here with the best intentions after coming from difficult circumstances; unfortunately the Panthers were - and still are, it seems - also in the process of figuring things out.

At this point this is all I want from this team. I'm done hoping for wins. I just want to see a competitive team for 4 quarters. Come out of the gate hard and don't give up no matter the score.

Tbf Darnolds last few games here were on par for "good Darnold." Some good decisions and some bad. He had extended success with the Vikings but he still had plenty of poor decisions. Still better than anything we have here. I've always been a Darnold fan and I hope that he finds continued success as a veteran.

I honestly hope he figures it out, but at this point we have little reason to think that he will. He's been even worse than he was as a rookie, which is tough to do. I see no reason he shouldn't be bumped down the depth chart once Coker is back. Jalen is the better player and it's not even remotely close right now. That would if nothing else allow XL to be moved around to where he's in the best position to contribute instead of forcing him into a role he's clearly not ready for and may never be ready for.

I think a lot of this stems from how well some of our FA acquisitions / trades played after leaving us. But there's a lot of important caveats there, and I think in Mayfield's case he needed to hit rock bottom (yes, we are rock bottom) to bounce back. He seems much less arrogant in TB. Darnold was, for Darnold, playing well here when we moved on from him too. I think you are right. I also think we can't wait another 3 years to see if the offense turns around. XL needs to start his turn around this year. And Bryce needs to at least return to how he played the last half of his 2nd year. Or, imo, we move on from both.

Oh yeah, the draft has been a poo show. You are 100% right there. I was thinking about Darnold and Baker. Two guys we traded assets for (would have missed on those picks I bet), sucked while here, and then went on to revive their careers. Since 2018: DJ Moore has had continued and greater (???) success in Chicago. Brian Burns got paid, and seems to be a big deal in NY? Go back a bit: CMC - duh, incredible part time player sadly Curtis Samuel - same ish? James Bradbury - Got paid and played well for several years after Carolina So I don't think we drafted anyone who left and lit the world on fire. More like FA mis-fires.

Name a guy we have drafted since 2018 that has had greater success elsewhere than they had here? I can tell you after looking, there aren't any. Hence why I keep saying this is an evaluation issue.

Turn the corner? That would mean he'd actually have to beat the corner and we know he can't do that.

I don't know if Canales is any good as a head coach yet, but he has done well with our non-XL receivers. I personally think he is handicapped by a key personnel and that is partly out of his hands for the next couple weeks. He's also very young, so will absolutely have head scratchers and growing pains. But outside of Wilks he's probably already out best HC since Rivera, which isn't saying much, and imo his ceiling is unknown vs Wilks' which unfortunately seems well known.

That's not what Bryce was pitched to be. Nor was the, what, 4th or 5th Tepper rebuild iteration? That's the problem with all this. You trade all this draft capital up to get these guys(Bryce, XL, etc) and then when they get their opportunities they can't hack it. As I have said many times, I view this as less of a development issue as I do an evaluation issue. We just suck at identifying talent correctly. It fails us all too often. If it was solely development, so many of these guys that left here after being failed draft picks would be studs. That is literally almost never the case.

I remember the days when it would take WRs a few years to figure it out in the NFL... What a time that was! Getting to the point of guys finding success else where after flopping here: patience and a vision. Thanks to Tepper, we haven't been able to develop a vision. Without patience, everything is a reaction. That's not to say sometimes you can tell when a fit it bad and people need to move on. In XLs case, it's not going to hurt us to be patient. Sure, fans see how Tmac is doing and are like "XL who??" I get it, but I also think reacting for the sake of reacting isn't the best thing to do. Should XL get off social media for a bit and focus on the game? Yes. As Cam screamed "Lock in bro!" I know being patient is hard when you see guys get off to fast starts in their careers. Tepper can't really afford to be reactive right now. He's got to let Dan and Dave have the time to build their team. Most of us are Panther fans. We're the idiots here, year after year, hoping things have changed. Most of us will continue to do so, and hope things turn around. While some of us will balk at the salary cap, contracts and wasted years; it doesn't affect us personally since we're just fan. Now for those folks on the teams...yeah...they need to get it together before they lose their jobs and have to move!