Khyber53

Tepper is the Shahid Khan of the Carolina Panthers, except he financed a frikkin' soccer team insead of a wrestling operation. Neither knows a thing about what they are doing and it pretty much shows. We can get into things other than football, but really what matters in the end is do they know enough about football to create a solid organization and pick good coaches. Tepper, like Khan, has shown he's a rube at the table.

Just because you can buy a Ferrari with a few financial adjustments doesn't mean it's a smart purchase. Considering our coaching staff, we could be looking at the #1 pick next season, and potentially the following one with which to snag the best, most certain QB available on the ROOKIE pay scale with a fifth year option at a reasonable rate. Or we could shoot the moon with Watson, give up all those draft picks and have a QB who hasn't played a meaningful down in over a year, who could still be up for suspension by the NFL, and have no money to pay for decent players around him, so even getting him becomes a wash in the old W-L column. Really, think it through. The salesman doesn't care if your car gets repo'ed down the line. He'll just laugh.

After Elflein and Paradis do you really think that Center is a meaningless position? There are no franchise QBs in this year's draft (okay, there's always one but it may be someone wayyyy down in the pecking order). The top LTs will be gone most likely. And even if we were to get a decent DE, this coaching staff would pretty much ruin them. Center, however, runs the line, calls the protections and is generally responsible for making the hits on the second level of the defense on running plays. Whether you want to believe it or not, it's a valuable position on the team. We've got little draft capital going into this mess thanks to Rhule, Fit and Tepper, so take the value pick that will also be least likely to be crippled by the bad coaching that will be inflicted upon it.

Not so much a hope for, but this is a good time for a great utility pick. Grab a foundational position player, not necessarily something flashy. I've been saying forget draft position and take Linderbaum at center. No matter what else happens to the organization, you'll have the best center in the draft and a foundational piece for the line going forward. No one ever cheers over the pick of a center, but we've sure as poo seen how bad it is when you don't have a good one over the last couple of years. A smart center is a QB's best friend. We don't have that QB yet, but it would be great if we had a top flight center with a year's experience out there next year for him.

In any other year, I think you'd have made a very good point OP. This year, though, we're looking down the cannon's barrel. No one can predict what our situation will be. Because of poor coaching, management and ownership we may go into the draft with no first round picks for multiple years, a new QB who could be under an NFL suspension, a lame duck coach that shouldn't have survived last November much less coaching here in 2022 and no identity to a team. So what do you do? Take the best offensive lineman, the smartest one, you can and hope you are building something that can survive the shitstorm that's about to happen here. Unlike in Jay-Z's case, there's no Sean Combs to lift him up and no Beyonce` to marry. Rhule's just dead man floating right now. Throw the safest pick with a look to the future and hope that we can have a chance in 2023.

Oh stuff will happen under Rhule.

Good read! Nicely written and concise. I hope they work out, but even good grabs can crash and burn with bad coaching. That has me very worried for the coming season.

It's not going to happen with this coach.

If he's still out there after a week, I'd at least kick the tires and see what we could get him for. He'd need to be released, though, rather than traded for. He's played pretty well in Cleveland, something that no one else has done for a long time. He did a lot to break their curse there, but he got pushed to play while injured last season. We could do a lot worse. Honestly, I'd rather see him here than Watson. Mayfield didn't throw his team under the bus like Watson did. That means a lot to the fans and the team mates.

Guys like him (and Mario) win because they just wear the offensive linemen out over the course of a game. Good to see him back, hope he gets more field time.

I wouldn't cry if we picked him up. We could get five or six good seasons out of a quality center. That could shore up our line immensely. Or we could grab the right center in the draft in the first round and lock the position down for a decade. Either way, we seriously need a center, a top tier one. Otherwise it won't matter who we have at tackle or guard. Please see 2020, 2021 Panthers as an example.

fug Deshaun Watson and the wreckage he will make of a team because of the high price to get him. Let him go somewhere else for the sake of our team.

His football career was exactly that, too. Made all of his money off of performance against one bad tackle that Atlanta had one year.

MTG back before they got really valuable. I remember selling a couple for $100 apiece and that was massive. Paid a couple of month's worth of bills during a tight time like that. They'd be worth thousands apiece now, so I could be kicking myself. But having lights and heat that winter was really nice!

Good luck with that. You're gonna need it.

Because, geez, the last time he gave away complete control of everything, it went so well. These last couple of years we've just been swirling around and around, I guess we better get ready for the flush.

Florida's commitment to quality education continues proudly!

I guess he got his Happy Ending afterall.

Nah. You gotta pay a guy better than that as a starter. And it would still be less than we're paying Darnold to ride the pine. Honestly, I think Kap's been away too long and I didn't think he was really that good. His Super Bowl appearance was greatly because of the tough games Alex Smith had won for the 49ers before Smith was lost to a concussion. Still, if he'll come here, play out the season and work at winning some games, $10 million would be a bargain for us and a big paycheck for him.

I'm sure the next team will be extremely happy with the five games he'll give them. Dude is the guy who takes the job and then starts calling in sick the next week.

If it gets us out of the train wreck that would be a trade for Watson, I'm all for it. Would he take $10 million on a one year prove it deal? Put an option for a second and third season for us in the contract and we can trade him away if the opportunity presents itself and set those years at $20 million each. Worst that could happen is that we have the bad season we're already predicting. Best is that we find out he can still play.

We're not a QB away. Even if Rhule was going to be here longer term, grabbing a QB now doesn't fix anything. A new steering wheel doesn't fix a broken down jalopy.

If the private investigator came back and said anything different than "there's a whole lot of allegations and no resolutions yet" then they need to can that investigator. The NFL investigation isn't even finished, and that could result in anything from clearing the man to a multi-year suspension.

Honestly, I was like, "yeah, this could be a really smart deal if it plays out." Man, did it ever NOT play out. Epic fail and I was wrong back then. Of course, me being wrong doesn't cripple a franchise, so...

Sadly, Rivera and Hurney have been better at finding and developing quarterbacks than our current regime is proving to be. Talk about only having to hop over a very low bar. Heinicke > Darnold and in what world would you have thought that to be the case three years ago?