Khyber53

Here's the deal. I still think pursuing Watson is a bad idea. It's like being at a used car lot and telling them, nope it's just too much money for a car I really shouldn't buy. The next thing you know, everyone comes out of the woodwork to explain how we can afford it by jiggling the numbers, getting some easy financing, put some additional money down now to ease it up later. And yet, it still comes down to it being a used car, with some very rough mileage (sure, it is just a couple of years old, but...) with long-term payments that I'm saddled with. Sure, it looks fancy, it'll impress the neighbors and all the other people want it sooo bad... I'm just not buying it. I get a bad feeling about it and what it will do for me (or won't) down the road.

It's easy for you and I to negotiate millions of dollars away from contracts, since they are pretty imaginary for us. For guys who actually have contracts that pay out $35 million, they may be a bit more reticent to waive those earnings in the effort to be a good guy.

And that's an awful lot to work with. Watson's expected to cost $35 million, which doesn't sound bad, but if we picked say a QB at #8, we're looking at I believe a contract of $2.8 million... leaving us about $32 million to work with for say O-line, retaining DJ, Burns' contract, etc... Just saying, Watson might be worth that $35 million on the open market, but the opportunity cost of us taking him gets steep considering the other things we can do with that money.

Once we basically sell the farm to by Watson's favor, you can pretty much write off everyone else on the team. When DJ's contract time comes around, he'll be too expensive based on what little, tiny bit of cap space we have left. Pretty much the same for anyone else we don't trade away to get Watson. Really, let's just keep working at building our team and quit trying to buy something off the shelf at a wild premium. And that's even if Houston is willing to give him up. Heck, prices might fall amazingly if he has another season playing for the Texans.

Lol. I'm not triggered, just amazed. There's a difference between price and value. You're hung up on price, but don't really appreciate the value. There wasn't a guy on that list who had turned in a single season like CMC had.

Let's see, so the Panthers would be Watson, a single-syllable last named DT, a couple of linebackers a few folks have heard of and 49 JAGs after making that trade. Oh yeah, with an unproven coach and a team owner who "knows football." Yeah, that worked well in Houston last year. How about we don't trade our rebuild in progress for someone's broken down plans?

What about 1,000-yard receivers that get over $8 million a year? Do they pay off? Just asking, because the guy we're attempting to say is overvalued broke a thousand yards receiving as well as 1,000 yards rushing. Oh yeah, he was also excellent as a back field blocker, too. Off the field the dude is doing as many fashion as Cam was, was dating a frikkin' supermodel, was putting on pounds of muscle and being another well-spoken and charismatic face of the franchise. Really, just let it go. Had he not been injured (and then I think held out by Rhule to preserve him for next season) we'd have most likely gotten another spectacular season out of him. When playing the guy was literally the whole team when our offense was on the field. Had they been able to figure out a way to get him on defense and special teams, they'd have had him out there then, too.

Team leadership would have lost their damned minds if they traded away CMC for Watson. And Watson would have lost the best receiver he'd ever had. Please stop.

Please let him go to Miami. It'll be good for him and his pocketbook. Let him buy a home there and pay no state income tax on checks he receives for playing home games. Huge advantage for him.

Every team cuts players this time of year. Not sure why any move like this always fires off a flurry of rumors. If we end up trading our future for Watson then we'll never finish the rebuild and it will say that what our coach planned for was basically flushed down the toilet because Tepper thought he could buy a Lombardi trophy. He could have done that last year when Brady was on the market had he wanted to.

In his defense, injuries are injuries. And it isn't like he's had good o-line coaches until this past season. Heck the guy was Kyler Murray's blindside OT throughout high school and was a starting LT from freshman season on. I really think those two concussions (and who knows if there were any in college and HS that made him more susceptible) were the biggest factors in his tenure here. What looks like a bust to the outside observer might have more to the story. He's still on the relative cheap for us, but I think we need to look at him playing guard. Wonder if he has ever played center??? Keeping him around could be a good choice, if nothing else as depth or for an extra tackle on goal line/inches to go plays. He has power, he just may lack technique and aggression.

This is year 2. We rebuilt a pretty fair amount last season and it showed in the final outcome. If Rhule agrees this is year 2, then we're going someplace. If Rhule says this is year one because the Hurney year doesn't count, then we may never go anywhere and there may always be an excuse. I've long said Rhule's history shows massive improvement by year 3 in his programs and I think we'll see that here. Now, if he starts moving the starting line, then he's signaling he may not be up to the task. 2021 is going to tell us a lot about Rhule and our future. Sure hope he works things out. Eight or nine wins is a minimum to keep my belief in the guy.

Okay, not bad. $4 million here, $4 million there, eventually it turns into real money.

You're right, and there's the crux of the problem... sheer numbers. There are about 350 million of us in need of the vaccine. That is an astronomically huge number, especially when it comes to manufacturing something (not just the vaccines, but the syringes, vials, boxes, alcohol swabs, etc... all while maintaining our regular supply streams of those things for normal medical uses). It's just an incredibly daunting task that we have to do just to get our country squared away, not to mention assist the rest of the folks on this planet. And on to school personnel... we often forget how big our education system is, particularly when you figure in all of the personnel beyond classroom teachers. In NC, the largest single employer is our education system. There are 98,590 classroom teachers alone, and probably one to two more support/administration people per teacher. That's big. But it could be done, going back into the original question, it's just a matter of will. And, I think, if we want to get the kids back to school and keep the environment safe for everyone involved, the state and counties need to do this.

We need to walk away before the Jets bail and we're left holding a very expensive bag that isn't happy to be with us.

Something to keep in mind when looking at trading the farm for Watson and his contract...

It's a frikkin' crime that each county can't take two to three days' worth of supplies and vaccinate their entire education workforce en masse: teachers, bus drivers (many of whom are elderly), cafeteria workers, janitorial staff, support personnel and administrative people. No teacher is saying "Don't send us back in to those massively difficult underpaid jobs!" They are saying "Don't send us back to one of the most highly infectious places ever devised without giving us vaccinations first!" And what they are saying makes perfect sense. Teachers want to get back to doing their jobs, as do the rest of school personnel. They just want to be protected from the pandemic, and we should want the same things for them if we are any kind of a decent people. And for those screaming "Where's my tax dollars that weren't spent??!!!???" Just shut the fug up.

Next will be a few cuts to smoke screen the drafting process a bit more. We're spending a lot of time talking about the necessity of re-signing Moton (which I am in total agreement with) but bookending that one is the Russell Okung question -- he's a free agent now. He wants to be the player's union president, so he has to be on an active roster for the upcoming season. Will we re-sign him and would he be willing to do so at a massive discount? If not, taking an LT at 8 and paying the cheaper rookie rate might be where we end up having to go.

Hate to see him go. Good guy, he'll be missed. Back in 2019 folks were talking about needing a new coach and management, a few squeaks about blowing up the team. Well, this is what it looks like: a dismantling of what we had and a total rebuild. If you thought we were trying to be competitive for next year, you haven't looked at Rhule's track record and methodologies. Third year is his target year after two years of house cleaning and recruiting. I said back in the day, things were going to look worse before they got better. They did and they are. I said back then that there was a pretty good chance that Rivera would have a winning record and be relevant again before the Panthers were. He did and he is. I'm buckled in, though, and waiting for next season to see if we can see that sea change starting to happen. I'd hate to think that after 2021, Rhule would be sailing into 2022 still wrecking the roster and trying to get his plan in place.

Well, there was that ass-grabbing incident at the press conference. What's the point of having a trophy if you don't polish it in front of the peons, I guess.

I'm getting that what I'm seeing is just another billionaire, nothing special. So far. I'm not mad at the guy, I'm just not very impressed with him since the honeymoon ended.

Jerry, for all his multitude of problems, at least new something about football. Not heartbroken he was moved out, but The Who had a lyric that was something about "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss..."

Well, the Rooney family in Pittsburgh have been great, and Tepper has a tie in there with his history as a minority owner. The Hunt family have done well with the Chiefs since their inception. There were definitely some tough times, but there were also long periods of steady competitiveness even before the Andy Reid years. The Kraft ownership in New England have to get part of the credit for turning around a terrible franchise, along with Belichick and Brady. The Pegulas seem to be handling ownership of the Bills very well, returning that team to a level of prominence Green Bay's community ownership group has done an excellent job. While there was a vast wasteland in the late 1970s and 1980s, it has still created three distinct competitive/championship dynasties over their long history. Winning one Super Bowl doesn't give you a mark for good ownership, but regularly putting teams for long periods of time into the top competitive level points to strong capabilities among the leadership. Short blips of championship quality or competitiveness really don't mean much except that perhaps they caught lightning in a bottle once.

The musical chairs thing holds a lot of water, but I think that if we're patient, something very good could fall to us. Maybe a QB in the draft, maybe a QB in FA, maybe an LT in the draft... In chaos, there's opportunity for the person who keeps their wits about themselves and their feet on solid ground.

This has been so entertaining that I really don't want any spoilers or leaks, yanno?