Ship

I don't think we're getting enough credit for adding Johnson. He significantly changes the WR room and gives us a legitimate #1. Adding him makes everyone fit better. We saw last year what not having a WR1 looked like. His style should be good for Bryce too. Legette will be fun with his speed and hands.

Diontae Johnson is our WR1 this year, you all should get it straight. He's one of the best route runners in the game. Thielen is a technician route runner too and will be in the slot as security. We already know Bryce will feed him if he needs to. Legette is going to be a 3rd option behind them and will strain the defense and make some big plays for us while he develops into an all around receiver. This is a great spot for him to grow with those guys. Now, if we didn't have Johnson this would be a scarier pick, but currently I think hes a great fit for the context of our WR room.

Yeah but sad we missed this draft

Threads like these are just a testament to Cam's all-time greatness that we as Panther fans should continue to shout from the rooftops til the day we die.

It is so rare-- it seems in this era, but also ever-- to find a player with Cam's combination of power, talent, competitiveness, and joy. That alone should get him in Canton. At his peak he changed Charlotte and swept the nation. Insane.

We can't sit around here and try to find carbon copies of a once in a lifetime player. We can look for all Cam's traits in different prospects, but none will ever be him again. We need to clear the board about what we think is going to be greatness and start from scratch. Otherwise we will just be trapped by our memories of what once was. 

Bryce is not Cam, may even be the anti-Cam, but that doesn't mean he can't succeed. Players at extremes can find edges that the league is always striving to identify. We can find new ways to win and the feeling of finding that new edge is the most fun thing as fans to witness. Let's try and give Bryce this year to be who he is and to enjoy the ride of uncovering whether he can turn into the player we all want him to be. I'm excited to see what Canales' fresh perspective can bring to Bryce's talents.

It's a matter of time

LFG! Now do Gilmore and we're set.

14 hours ago, CamWhoaaCam said:

It hurts when someone turns you down. Panthers just saving face. Get better as a team and players will sign with you point blank.

 

Nobody in their right mind thinks we are a better chance at winning over the Jets.

 

If the money is the same are you taking Charlotte NC over NY City?

 

If the money is the same are you taking Bryce Young over Aaron Rodgers?

 

I rest my case. 

Not sure many players have been proud New York Jets in quite a while. You can live in NYC in the offseason if you love it so much. Their offseason buzz and happiness lasted 4 snaps? By the end of the year Rodgers went back to being a clown, alienating guys like Sauce with his antics and me-first attitude. If you read the reports about the Jets at the end of last year, I don't see why any player would want to be there. So yeah, it's perfectly reasonable for a player to not automatically choose the Jets over the Panthers-- or any other team.

I think it's about the talent around him. QBs have not been good and their OC was terrible. They run a ton and with Pickens, he clearly was losing his WR1 spot. 

FWIW, Pickens would say poo about how their offense sucked and would act out every week they didn't win, sometimes even when they did. I think few players on the Steelers O have been happy with the plays/production. I don't think he was complaining when he was balling with Big Ben.

He's basically the WR1 here now and his skill set will be perfect for tons of targets from Bryce, so he should be well fed and happy. 

The guys who left didn't do jack poo while here

You guys gotta move on. The Burns failure was last year. Everyone and their mother could see that the way to help Bryce was to get rock solid guards. It is the blueprint and before this offseason's crazy guard prices, was actually one of the most cost-effective ways to get a great O-Line. It's no mistake Cam's MVP year had our best G tandem (and center) in recent memory. This is what we have to do. And in an offensive league, there is no better investment.

I don't care what any PFF stat says about Burn's pressure rates or success. Watching the games he was not a gamebreaker and is massively overhyped. He can't anchor the D. Let him go be great on a D-Line with 3 other Pro Bowlers. Bell barely played and seemed like he didn't want to waste his body on our shitty team, I can't think of much that he did for us. Luvu was great- did it all, awesome homegrown talent, but he's not the guy you pay massive money to. It sucks to lose him and was unexpected, but he's not the end of the D. In my opinion, being a top 10 D with the guys we had last year was ridiculous and without them I'd still expect to be top half of the league. Depending on who we add in FA, we could stay pretty stable, and if Horn can stay fully healthy, we could be even better.

Wilks can get fuged. Be petty while riding the coattails of a team who has been pushing for a Super Bowl for 4 years without you. You got reprimanded midway through this season your play calling was so bad. You almost blew the NFCCG. Your defenses have underperformed from your time in CAR to today in SF. Your head coaching tenure was a joke. You're at the Super Bowl this week despite you.

We'll be back and will stomp that ass soon enough.

Too valuable a talent and position not to. If it's attitude, fit, or talent that's when you don't take it. If it's just injury but he has all the rest of the pieces you gotta hope the tide turns

On 1/31/2024 at 6:20 PM, Steelo said:

Well heres to hoping Canales works out, much easier to replace your OC when you don't have to change the overall scheme.

Also, him being the play caller was probably a plus for us. Won't even have a change of style if our OC moves on later.

I'm not looking for greatness out of our assistant coaches anymore. These are NFL coaches-- not college guys like Rhule, and not vaunted up and comers like Reich. Let's just hire some solid to average coaches and let our young HC build something with guys who know him.

Keep the defensive staff intact and we're good.

You guys are gonna have a hard time whenever we start winning.

For what it’s worth. The Bucs offense passed the eye test to me. Baker had a great year, Mike Evans had a good bounce back year, White was a top RB in fantasy, Godwin was solid. Lastly, they won and went to the playoffs and won there too. I’d like to see some offensive ranking splits from like the last 5 weeks of the regular season and see where they rank. In my mind the offense was way better than those numbers show.

Not sure if posted yet, but here's a doc the Bucs did on him last year: 

1 hour ago, ncfan said:

Yet so is Dan Quinn.  Who they’ve been diving deep into.

i have many been high on Canales at all.  He has been a predictable play caller for the most part.  It’s been pointed out he has used less motion (which is a big part of modern offenses) than even Frank Reich.  He had 2 top 15 WRs and one of the better LT’s in the entire NFL this year which helped.  

Also it is a huge red flag that the team where he was an assistant with for 12 years. And the guy everyone’s credit and points to for Canales in Geno Smith, is their current Franchise QB

Why aren’t they even reaching out, considering, heck not even a rd 1 phone interview.

 

Not sure if you've seen this since the news, but the Bucs have a documentary about Dave from last year. First thing he says-- passed up 2x for OC spot in Seattle and it made him mad. Probably why nothing was happening there. Link to the documentary: 

There is no greater glory than being the coach to turn a franchise around. People with confidence pursue challenges against their abilities. Yes, plenty of people would want that opportunity. 

25 minutes ago, Growl said:

my concern is that Tepper loves the Seahawks and is tantalized by the idea of stacking a bunch of Seahawks background guys together (especially after the lack of uniformity in the last bloc was considered a primary contributor to it’s failure.)

why would Tepper love the Seahawks? The “forward thinking” grandstanding they’re known for. Scott Fitterer muttering something in his interview about Microsoft was part of the reason he got hired.

seattle fluked into a great coach and a great QB and they dragged a lot of stupid drafting and dumb trades along with them for the duration of their stint there but to an outsider it looks like “wow what a well ran team.” 

They drafted an elite defense

Imagine thinking the most important skill to have is "standing up to the owner" of the team you work for. You can have "conviction" and make that clear, but if you're picking fights with your boss all day you'll probably be let go and that doesn't help anyone. I really don't think this aspect of the FO dynamic matters as much. It's just a way for fans to vent and feel like they're being heard by the owner through the GM.

Also, no poo we want someone who believes in Bryce! He's a #1 pick and talented QB who got fuged by his coaching staff last year. Why would you want a GM or coach to come in year 2 of Bryce's career and say "the plan is to sign Teddy Bridgewater and build a team while we look for a younger QB. We can trade Bryce for peanuts." I'm glad our focus is on helping Bryce. Also, if you think the "rep" Tepper is getting for firing Reich in his first season is bad, imagine what moving on from your traded up for #1 pick QB after one bad year with a shitty coach would do to our rep. That would truly be catastrophic. 

We brought in some talented guys the last few years-- especially in FA. Our biggest mistake was letting Reddick and Gilmore walk and trading CMC/DJ. Would have been better to keep them and trade Burns for Bryce. But a lot of our FA signings last year were good. Thielen will be good next to Tee Higgins if we can get him. Troy Hill is good and should stay. The DTs we brought in seem to be solid next to Brown. I fully believe Chark would have been a smash here if our offense system wasn't such crap. His early injury didn't help either. Sanders has more talent than we saw. I believe our O-line can be better than what it was last year. We've seen it. I blame the scheme.

My point is Fitt has missed for sure and our roster decisions have been bad. But there is still talent here that can be cultivated. I'll believe Dan can learn from those mistakes and hopefully with a good cap guy we can make smarter roster decisions on who we keep and cut/trade. Finally, we need a good coach. I like our options this year and especially think Canales will work out if he ends up being the guy. If Evero stays, we know what he can do and we should get more help on D this year too.

I like Dan. We on this board have liked Dan as a potential GM for a long time. He has been part of winning cultures at his other stops. He's a Carolina guy, and frankly I don't think he'd be here if he didn't wanna make this a winning team again. He could go elsewhere and have success. I'd rather we keep our talent and give him a shot here instead of losing another potential Beane.

46 minutes ago, Captroop said:

Are the interviews expected to be secret? I always assumed the league wants those publicized, at the very least to verify the Rooney Rule is being followed.

Not all of them, apparently people who aren't employed in the NFL can be secret, but yeah they want to publicize interviews and we have. I guess I mean we don't know what the team is thinking. Lots of random picks for our next coach like Moore being betting favorite and the ESPN article giving us Callahan. No one knows anything about our search other than us loving Ben Johnson.

Callahan would be a travesty and probably what's worse-- would mean we really are a place no one wants to be. We can do better, even if it's not Johnson.

we're keeping leaks on lock is what we're doing