vorbis

yes, and I don't think it's a question.

damn, I screwed up and watched a bunch of Mike Williams plays last night and now I want the Panthers to sign him. I don't think I realized how many amazing plays he has on top, top corners, and against double teams. his highlight reel stacks up against anybody's. I know he has an injury history but he has legit skills. I wonder how much the allure of playing close to home matters to him.

watching some Dolphins footage and yeah, Hunt looks like a monster. a tone-setter. liking it.

thinking about it and wondering if the "Corbett to Center" talk is just the front office source covering up for what would otherwise be an obvious, visible from space, need to draft a center early, since there isn't one on the roster right now.

that's what a source told Joe Person. Corbett to center.

Damien Lewis to Panthers

5 years, 63M guaranteed with 26 in a signing bonus means the contract is a lot more cap friendly than it initially appears. plenty of flexibility. the splashy 100M number is good for his agent to show to prospective clients. the cap number for the Panthers should be a lot easier to swallow.

I have no idea how good Hunt is. but obviously making a big investment in the interior OL for the 2nd year QB was always going to be the plan. not surprised it's a market-setting deal. but mannnnn they better be right holy crap

Robert Hunt to Panthers

I think a better coach and leader than Shanahan could make it work with an accomplished coach like Wilks. I see firing him after one season as a sign of weakness. yes he's a great offensive mind, but maybe he's not all that as a HC. if Wilks was good enough to hire after righting the Panthers ship, then he's good enough to retain after a year that saw SF finish 4th in total defense and stifle KC in the first half of the Super Bowl. I think Shanahan just didn't trust Wilks. with an offensive-minded head coach, Wilks had total purview over the defense. and yet here we are in the Super Bowl and Shanahan is calling time out because he doesn't like a play call that Wilks is making. literally his job. just a bad sign all around, to me. raw deal is exactly what Wilks got.

Will Harriger QB coach

the amount of people talking about Evero primarily in terms of compensation picks is kinda weird ngl. sure there's a rule that dictates what happens if he stays another year and then leaves for a head coach job down the line, but the football counts more. he's a good coach. he's done good things here already, and nobody will be surprised when he finally gets a head coaching spot. I wouldn't want him to stick around if he doesn't want to, but he has lots of reasons to want to stay. it's a good place for him to be, he IS valued, he's already here, and he will have pretty much total purview over the defense here. anywhere else he goes as a DC, even if he has a good relationship with the head coach, he'll be starting from scratch yet again. he turned down the interim HC opportunity in Denver after Hackett was fired (fair enough), and wasn't offered the interim role here for probably a variety of reasons. reasons totally unrelated to his potential success or failure as a future HC, I would assume. but turning down the interim role, leaving Denver to come to Carolina, and then leaving Carolina again after a year when he has a path to stay, this is not the kind of story that will be an asset to him in HC interviews. even if it's not fair to him, which it probably isn't. he has a lot to gain by continuing to build the defense in Charlotte. the pieces are still all there. when asked why he took the job after not getting the HC job last cycle, he mentioned his relationship with Tepper and the pieces on defense that the Panthers had. nothing about both those things has changed. I know the best way he can show everyone how wrong it was that he was passed over for the HC role two years in a row...

voted Raheem Morris. I think he's kind of the safest bet because he's already had some success as a head coach, then a bit of a unique situation and he lost his gig. he's had a bunch of years to think about what he can do better, and he's still relatively young. everyone speaks highly of him (have for years now), and he can get players' respect. as good a starting point as any. and I imagine he has good contacts throughout the league to build a formidable staff (that will succeed as one, unlike others we could mention).

fact of the matter is, due to the overall dysfunction with the franchise, any stated strategy or plan for dealing with something along the lines of hiring new football leadership is going to be looked at by both fans and by football talking people as the wrong move, or worthy of healthy skepticism. and it will remain this way until the franchise finds some sustained success.

Byrd already has an injury settlement. he's off the roster/IR.

wonder if this means the writing is on the wall to some extent for Brandon Smith. because he seems tailor-made to be competing for a backup LB spot in the middle.

damn

In this period of optimistic offseason puff pieces, I enjoyed this timely catch-up with Tommy Tremble from Mike Kaye. https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/nfl/carolina-panthers/article276127776.html it's easy to focus on Tremble's comments about this year vs last year, and god knows there's a lot of material to mine there. but I'm just appreciative that he feels equipped to develop his game under Reich/Brown/Lilly. he definitely has the physical tools to succeed, and now he's hopefully getting the coaching he needs to take his game to the next level.

people should definitely make enormous-scale conclusions about a single play in OTAs I don't think this has ever backfired before honestly

I agree, hella players had to have been involved but... Cook on his current deal is barely even an asset in the NFL trade market. Cousins... it's just not going to move the needle. it doesn't add up IMO. even Justin Jefferson, as good as he is, top 2-3 WR in the entire league, not going to bridge the gap between #1 and #23. and I doubt they'd just throw him in a trade like that after a very successful season.

to get back on the ostensible topic of the thread, something about this Vikings wanting to trade up (to #1??) story is fishy to me. teams can only trade max 3 1st round picks in one deal, if I recall correctly. and they were coming up from what, #23? huh? that's not remotely feasible. we're missing a piece of the puzzle here.

this guy's videos have gotten quite sloppy over the years. this one is pretty surface-level. can't be an expert in every NFL position, I guess. and yes, his voice is annoying. not the end of the world, but combined with getting simple details wrong (Ekwonu was not the 2nd tackle taken last year in the draft, for one), it's just not particularly interesting content.

I think the main concern is just him having the core strength to slip out of tackles in the pocket like he did at Alabama. whether that results in added weight is kind of immaterial. as long as he can maintain the play style he had in college, he should be good to go.

it's obvious the Panthers valued Johnson highly at that point in the draft, and made the move they felt they needed to to get him. the more drafts I watch, the less attached I get to how *I feel* about how the draft is going to play out. I don't watch film of hardly any of these prospects until they're drafted by the Panthers, so I'm not going to pretend I know better than an entire department of professional scouts and "league observers." so to me, a lot of the talk about "he would have been available at $X_pick" is just noise. whether he's "worth" the pick at 80, also, is really only an insightful query relative to the snapshot most people have in their heads of the draft order before the first pick was made. the only thing that matters now is how he plays. I kept looking at this, scratching my head. he had such a weird RAS profile: he was a 2-way player for Oregon in 2021. would practice on offense and on defense. he's been moved around the defense quite a bit during his college football odyssey. that to me says multiple coaching staffs have looked at Johnson and said, here is a great football athlete. let's figure out how to get good results out of these talents and traits. in that sense, the Panthers are only doing what the coaching staffs at Miami U and Oregon also did. he only settled into a role this past season, and his production went up significantly. and this weird-ass RAS profile tells me, here is an explosive mover who doesn't have the refinement right now to perform well in agility drills. so the RAW is real. but so is the underlying physical ability. Dom Capers has a history of finding pass rushing talent, and front-7 talent, in the dustiest corners of the draft and free agency, going back to the early 90s with the Steelers. so with him and Ejiro Evero, I feel like Johnson is set up to have the best chance to carve out a career and a second contract for himself. I'm concerned about the mindset and attitude of a guy who would smack the **** out of a fan who was being a dick on the field after a hard-fought loss in a rivalry game. it just is what it is. maybe the fan deserved to have the **** smacked out of him, but if you're getting caught up in that, maybe you can be manipulated and/or baited on the field by strong-willed opponents. I'm less concerned about him being an unfinished product as an older draftee, given his physical ability, kind of weird path during college football, and the coaching situation he's coming into. I'm also less concerned about the circumstances of the Panthers seeing a run on pass rushers in the 3rd round, and moving up to get a particular guy who was one of the last sitting on a particular tier. that's just tactics of the draft.

it's fun having a GM who is ready and willing to move around during the draft. both because it makes watching the draft more fun and exciting, but also because (to me) it shows a GM who is comfortable with the relative values they put on players, and feels empowered to move around to extract as much roster value out of the draft that they can.