t96

The biggest and most important question in this whole situation by far: @Zod will the Huddle hold up once the decision is made, whether it's us or the Aints?

Yep 100% and he also saved all those people in Nakatomi Plaza

McClain, @Verge, plenty in Panthers media and others have all said Watson waiving for the Panthers is no issue. It'll all come down to compensation for the Texans, which we seem to be leading in at this point...

yeah he's clearly getting fed from someone in the Aints org who is very confident in their ability to get Watson, which ultimately likely means nothing. his like 10 straight tweets about how great the Aints are for this deal made it obvious

I think the asterisks make it pretty clear that it could absolutely change depending on the outcomes of meeting(s) today...

oh poo it's all going down tonight huh

Loading up on comp picks this FA cycle makes a lot of sense as we are losing plenty of FAs who can get us high comp picks

The Texans, Watson and the NFL all had an understanding that he wouldn't be playing this past season while the allegations and especially potential criminal charges were hanging over all their heads. A big part of that has now been resolved. Watson may have played for the Texans last year since no team was trading for him with everything hanging over him. If he tried to play or the Texans tried to play him the league certainly would've stepped him and put him on the exempt list. They didn't need to since both the team and player kept him out of the spotlight anyways.

Pretty sure if he refuses to play they can suspend him for conduct detrimental and he won't count towards their cap.

Yes they can, if the Texans have a team or teams offering more than others they can say waive for that/those team(s) or play for us or don't report and don't get paid at all. No the Texans don't want to do that they want to get the return for him ASAP but if it's that much of a difference they can absolutely just sit on his rights, and he will most likely give in before they would.

There is a limit on how far out you can trade picks I believe, for what it's worth. I don't think we can trade picks from the 2025 draft or later right now. So we have 3 firsts and 2 seconds potentially on the table. That alone won't get it done most likely, especially if they're taking Darnold's contract off our hands.

You mentioned dead cap which only applies to us and which makes it make more sense for the Texans. The contract would be much better for them than it is for us since we've already paid him his signing bonus. He's still an elite offensive player, easily a top 3 skill player in the league. Darnold is a throw in to make the salary cap work. They aren't contending this year and it's just 1 season then they move on from Darnold, with Watson's cap hit gone that's easy for them to take on for 1 season. Part of why we have one of the best deals is we have the 6th overall pick. Other teams' picks this year who are actually in the mix are much lower.

We may have soured on Brown as a fanbase but I still think he has a bunch of value in this trade. 3 firsts, Darnold, Brown and McCaffrey; or swap out McCaffrey for a couple 2nds

It makes sense if we don't want to give up any of our top defensive players. Plus it's already been reported we've been taking calls on him outside of the Watson trade so that's not really a shock to me, although the Texans haven't shown any reported interest in him

I think my worst Panthers jersey is Jason Avant. No idea why I got it, I think it was on sale for 50% and I always liked him with the Eagles even though he was never that good. He was cut like 2 weeks later. All my other jerseys were long term Panthers or at least made an All-Pro in their shorter time here.

Not a bad deal at all for the Eagles. Back to back 10+ sack seasons and only takes him to age 30 so won't be an anchor at the end if he declines. I would've been happy with us paying him that if Burns was being traded. This is another indicator that Burns won't be involved in any Watson deal (hopefully). Happy for Reddick getting paid and being in Philly.

Who will be buying a jersey as soon as the trade is official?

Not exactly. We may be able to include Darnold in the trade or off load him to another team attaching a pick. Also after we trade for him we can adjust his contract and clear up space this year very easily. Not to mention any other potential players included will be lowering the net cap we're taking on in a trade. We can "agree to terms" with free agents right now and deal with the specifics later. None of the signings being reported will even be official until Wednesday. Not a peep on any front from Carolina except Watson.

We are literally just ignoring free agency to focus all our efforts on Watson. Lol

any real news will get a new thread, this thread is just nonsensical ramblings at this point

I am ready

Speculation is they are both going to Houston to meet him there in person...

The thing that eases my mind a bit about the draft pick compensation is that those could very easily be busts with our draft track record. Fitts seems a bit better than Hurney/DG but who knows for sure. A sure thing franchise QB in place is extremely important. My issue is still with adding a franchise defender (or more than 1) to those picks. Burns, Chinn and Horn should be off limits. Brown or someone else, ok.

That would be stupid, he's actually solid and if we're letting Jackson and Gilmore walk then we'll be kinda thin at CB. Maybe we're going to try hard to keep Jackson for relatively cheap?

Not that this is actually gonna happen obviously but how would the NFL treat player-coaches in terms of salary cap? Could you have a QB or LB player-coach and pay them more as a coach and less as a player and have it be technically legal?