Mr. Scot

Imagine being a Panthers fan happy about Rhule being gone only to learn he's taking over your favorite college team

Meanwhile...

I have no problem with anyone speculating, but Florio treats his speculation like reporting.

The Athletic confirmed that Nebraska had already offered him the job earlier this month, but he wasn't satisfied with the offer so they continued negotiating until he got what he wanted. Basically, Florio's read on the situation was total bullsh-t.

From the article in The Athletic... Rhule was offered the job earlier this month, sources previously told The Athletic, and then Nebraska came back to him this week with a stronger package.

Nixon, Cooper and Snow all make sense. So do Siravo, Lombardi and all the lower level assistants. If he somehow manages to steal someone valuable like Campen or Tabor I'm gonna be pissed beyond belief

I think that title belongs to Matt Rhule.

Draft whatever rookie they feel best about. I don't have a favorite rookie, but I'm tired of going the veteran project route.

To be fair, he's never had the resources a program like Nebraska offers either. I'll be curious to see how this plays out.

No denying we've had subpar play. And I'm still waiting to actually like somebody in this draft. There's just not anybody I have a high amount of faith in at this point. And picking somebody just to pick somebody isn't my thing.

The vast majority of NFL scouts are regional scouts. They scout certain teams or areas, but they don't necessarily talk to each other until not just the season, but also the Combine, workouts and pro days are over. Scout X might be able to tell you everything you need to know about Bryce Young but not know jack sh-t about CJ Stroud because that's not his job. Maybe he's heard a thing or two second hand, but he's not an expert. Once everything is complete, that's when the scouts and personnel people all get together and everyone gives their read and/or makes their case for (or sometimes against) the players they've scouted. Then as a group, they hash it out. That's how draft boards get built. And that's why expecting teams to have anything remotely resembling an idea of who they like best, second best, twelfth best or whatever at this time of year isn't realistic. On top of all that, we don't even know who our coach is yet, so how the hell can we have any idea what kind of players we're looking for?

How good is the Mustang really though? Think of it this way. If you've got one receiver who runs a 4.3 40 but only catches about 50% of his passes and another who might run a 4.6 to 4.7 but catches every single ball that's thrown to him, which one are you depending on with a game on the line? Likewise, if you have a field goal kicker who can kick the ball 70 yards but only makes around 50% of his field goals while another guy who can kick maybe 50 to 55 makes 80-90% of his, which one are you keeping? Just like receiving, kicking, punting, etc, quarterbacking is a skill. If you have that skill, lacking elite athleticism isn't going to stop you from being a winner. And if you don't have that skill, being the greatest athlete in the world isn't going to help you.

Sure they do

We're not that far along in the evaluation process yet. Most teams won't have anything even halfway resembling a draft board for months.

The one with TJ McCreight? Yeah, saw that.

So does Dan Snyder. (Matt Millen did too)

If we're trading the farm, I'd rather trade it for Drake Maye.

If you're talking about what actual NFL personnel people think about any of this year's draft prospects, at this point we don't know sh-t. And come April, we probably still won't. We'll have loads of knowledge about what media analysts think, but actual NFL teams tend not to let that information be made public.

Correct, but there's a decent sized segment of the fanbase for whom those physical characteristics are all they need to see. That's just not enough for me.

I realize since you're a Kentucky fan this might not apply to you, but here's the question I ask in general to fans of Levis. Is it really Levis that you want to draft or are you wanting to draft the next Josh Allen and you hope Levis is that guy?

Ever hear the saying "there are three things that can happen when you throw a pass, and two of them are bad"? Drafting a quarterback is a lot like that.

The way I typically see it phrased is "well that kind of speed / arm strength / athleticism / whatever isn't coachable, so you draft that and then coach the other parts". And yes I've seen that here, but not just here. This is one of my biggest disagreements with our buddy Ellis. He's a big proponent of that philosophy.

Well as far as plans go, if we're going to take a guy high in the draft, the plan needs to be to develop him and build around him. If we're just gonna put a guy through his rookie year and then discard him because he wasn't an instant All Pro, we might as well hire Jon Gruden for head coach because that's what he did.

Pretty much. Here's the problem: The average fan sees three or four "highlight reel" plays and they're ready to fit a guy for his gold jacket. Scouts don't have that kind of luxury. They have to watch every single play of every game to get an idea of whether a guy can consistently play well rather than just flashing once in a while. Hell, the worst quarterbacks / biggest draft busts in NFL history all have amazing college highlight reels that convinced people they were going to be phenomenal in the pros. The additional problem with a portion of the Panthers fanbase is, even after all this time, they're still pining for Newton. So whenever they see an athletic quarterback they either think "Oh it's Cam, he's come back to us" or "Okay he's not Cam, but maybe we can coach him into being Cam". In reality, the best thing you can do is stop looking for "the next Cam" (or the next anyone else, for that matter) and just start scouting quarterbacks on their own merits. And to be clear, those merits start with their quarterback skills, not their athleticism.