Khyber53

Nope, can't blame that on the defense. Teddy owns that. Still, in one score games, the defense has to hold some of the blame. I also think our offensive and defensive coordinators were behind the learning curve and our opponents seemed to take great pleasure in showing off the difference between the pro game and the college one. Hopefully, this season will see more aggression on both sides of the ball for the Panthers. We were timid last year in our play calling.

I'm not saying he's good enough to continue as our starter. He played timid last season and after the third week he looked nothing like he did in New Orleans the prior season. Offensively he had weapons, even after CMC went down (although that was a huge one). And we did score, most of the time. With the exception of the Detroit game, though, we couldn't stop a team to save our lives. Our defensive coordination looked like a rookie player in his first year in the league (which it pretty much was). The objective is always to win games each season, as many as possible. I'm not saying Teddy would have won us those games, just that we had the capabilities as a team to win a few of those games with a bit more backbone in our defense. We do need a new QB, desperately, if we are going to be relevant any time soon. I think we draft one, the best available and move forward there. If that pick is somehow a bust, we move into next season picking it again, repeating if necessary.

Nope, I think Teddy has cemented his role as a back up wherever he ends up. Timidity never serves a QB well.

Exactly. And that's an awful lot of eggs in one basket. I still say that a guy who makes the trade demand after getting a mega contract might be a bit on the demanding side. If you take him on, you may have to relinquish control of many aspects of the team to him... Russell Wilson anyone?

I just cringe at the opportunity cost in trading so much for Watson.

Can't argue with you there, but had things been different on defense we'd have been happier having him as the bridge QB here. And until our defense gets and stays aggressive it won't really matter if we have a mad bomber back there throwing or a gazelle-like mobile QB.

What a huge investment. Could end up crippling the team for years if Dak doesn't come back 120% of what he used to be. I mean, he hadn't gotten a Lombardi yet... best I can tell he's only won one play-off game so far. $160 million for four years. Wow. Just flabbergasted.

Oh sure they did, on almost every third down. Do you know how many games we had last season where our opponents never punted? And how many of those games were decided by a single score? Give me four punts to sprinkle among those games and we come out with a winning record. Then we'd be talking about making the short passing game work for us and how we got a better season than we expected.

Had we been able to play defense last season, this story might sound completely different.

I understand the quandary for sure!

It was an excellent series, start to finish. Completely different story-telling experience from anything seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far. Everything wrapped up fairly neatly, too. I will say that all the teases of cameos and whatnot did seem to be overblown, but the series was so good who cares? Looking forward to The Falcon and the Snowman, err.... The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

However, the opponents of quality they played were the best the season had to offer.

You need a lot of talent around someone to win the big game, that's for sure. Even Brady had to have the deck stacked in his favor to win the Super Bowl this year. Mahomes had a fantastic supporting cast around him the season before. We can look back to our own last Super Bowl appearance and see that even Cam Newton couldn't carry the game on his own shoulders when it came to the championship. I think Jones would do well here, but he would need a better o-line. Then again, any QB here would need a better o-line to succeed. Jones has the tools, has the processing speed, the accuracy and has been at a higher level of competition than you'd see BYU or NDSU coming up against week to week. He'll be the pick, or we'll regret seeing him twice a year in a Saints uniform.

We have playmakers here. Loads of them. O-line can be fixed.

Easier to build a wall than a bunch of bumper cars.

This may be much more important for Carolina fans than even any of the QB stuff.

You'd have to go back to Kenny Stabler, Bart Star and Joe Namath. Of course, if that's in your history, that's pretty impressive. You can pick pretty much any great college football program and only get a handful of names for QBs who made it big in the NFL at the very most. It's just really hard to play QB in the NFL. To play it well is really rare and to be at all-pro or HoF level it's a one in 10 million shot or so. Out of the 32 teams in the NFL, probably less than half have even a decent starter. And of those 16, most are just journeymen or are at one end of the arc of their career or the other. The rest are on their way to the bench or to a different career. The college program may or may not matter, but you can't disregard a player's performance within it, against the best competition of his day. Doing so would be pretty foolish.

Sometimes it's easier to build an o-line for a traditional pocket passer than it is to build one for a hyper-mobile QB.

You, too, friend!

If that's the price, then that's the price. Don't want to see us wade into the 2021 season without him.

Dang man, hit a nerve?

Not even close, not even close. Look, out of nowhere you decide it's time to bring up the end of Colin Jones' pro football career back last year to start crowing about it today. Why? Really. Why? It seems both an odd grudge to carry and a really old bone to pick. Unless you're either Haruki Nakamura or Sherrod Martin (the two guys he ended up replacing), there's not much of a reason to keep up some grudge. Really, man? Colin Jones criticism is your best game? Surely there's some take on current players or maybe even some legacy players of actual note. Colin's play wasn't going to have him remembered much by the fanbase down the road, but just like the Karl Hanktons, Nick Goins, Raghib Ismael, or Jason Kyle ... he was a long-tenured Carolina Panther who mainly played on special teams and got a chance to contribute. He had a long career because he came to work and worked at it. He wasn't a gold jacket earner, a ring of honor guy, all pro or pro bowler. He was just one of the guys who went out there and played his heart out for OUR team. There's nothing wrong with that and honestly, a lot to cheer for. Edit to add: If you had to look up some of those player's names, good. You'll learn something about this team and its history.

Neither did you, though.

Don't know. I'd imagine that with $7.8 million in career earnings (avg $870k yearly) at the age of 33, I'd say "unemployment" probably isn't that bad. If he invested well, chances are he's managing a nice portfolio and may own or partly own a number of businesses (as many former NFL players do). He also keeps busy as a member of the board of directors for the Christian Outdoor Alliance. Really, why make a personal attack on the guy? He did something that not a lot of folks do, he played professional football (those who even get invited to one training camp is just a sliver of those who dreamed of doing so in college, much less high school or even those going back to peewee Pop Warner leagues). The guy was in the NFL with an eight-year career (49ers and Panthers), mainly playing special teams but contributing as a rotational player and a starter, snagging 3 interceptions in his career (one for a TD) and played in a Super Bowl. He wasn't Ed Reed, but then again there's only one Ed Reed. No reason to slight the man for his career. Honestly, there's no reason to slight any man for his career, in the NFL or outside of it.