BrianS

We ran plenty of go routes last year, we just didn't have a QB who could throw them. Defenses realized this after a few games and just stopped covering it. In some cases literally.

Obviously, as a team you want to be above average, but what this does say is that our drafts haven't been the dumpster fire we sometimes make them out to be. Our drafts have been perfectly average. I'd be curious to see the year by year breakdown. I suspect last years draft may have covered up some below average performances prior.

Toward what? Sure if your division is trash you've got an easy road to the playoffs. I said that was definitely the case. What I don't buy is that being in a trash division makes you successful. The successful teams aren't successful because they beat the dregs. They are successful because they beat whoever is on their schedule every year. Remember, teams that win their division play 25% of their schedule against other teams that won their division last year.

Anyone crapping on DJ hasn't been paying attention the last two years as he has continued to get better despite the downward trajectory of the QB position. Dude is a baller.

Then how do you explain the Ravens and Steelers - teams in the same division mind you - who have 15 winning seasons each out of the last 20? Yes, the Bengals and Browns have been bad. But that's only 25% of the schedule for the Ravens and Steelers. The strength of your division isn't really all that crucial to winning seasons overall. Two thirds of your schedule is outside your division. I do agree that playing in a weak division does make it easier to get to the playoffs. But that's not the case with the Packers. The Packers division has had two teams reach the playoffs 11 of the last 20 years. Successful organizations succeed regardless of the teams around them.

Our record over the last 20 years ranks us 18th out of 32 teams. Given only 6 winning seasons in those 20 years, that doesn't scream successful to me. By way of comparison, the Steelers have had 16 winning seasons out of the last 20. The Ravens have had 15. The Packers have 15. The Seahawks have 15. These are the sorts of things that represent the accomplishments of a SUCCESSFUL franchise. This is what I, as a Panthers fan, hope that my team aspires to be. Losing seasons are an anomaly. Something that we look at and go "Oh, that was kinda crap. We need to be better next year". And then we are.

Forget WR's . . . even RB's are gonna take note of him coming downhill from deep to fit the run. That dude could be our next Kuechly if he gets his mentals right, just playing deeper. I've always thought that safety was the ideal spot for your defensive QB, since you can see everything in front of you.

He doesn't fit the profile of the players we've brought in since Matt Rhule has been our coach. Gilmore is a very Rivera signing.

So . . . do the refs in (American) football immediately blow the whistle during a play when someone gets hurt? No. They allow play to continue until the ball is down, out of play, etc. They finish the play. It could be five to ten seconds. How is this any different? The guy got help pretty much immediately, all things considered. Using something of this nature as an "example" of why a given sport is bad is uneducated at best and idiotic at worst. I'm glad Erikson got the help he needed and that the outcome was positive. That is all.

I am cautiously optimistic for our offense this year. It all rides on Darnold. We have weapons all over the field, we just need to put the ball in their hands and let them do their thing.

I'm shocked that we as Panthers fans haven't yet realized that our head coach is NOT an open book any longer. Rhule is far, far better at coach speak than any of our prior HC's. He will absolutely tell you with a straight face how excited he is about _______________ only to cut / trade him two days later. He'll reveal literally nothing of consequence. Thank goodness. We've need a guy who can actually play the coach game for a long time. We simply need to learn that he's doing it, so we can believe only what we see.

In favor of the Peyton Manning retirement party.

We were 18th in POINTS surrendered.

I disagree. Bradberry shut down Julio Jones, Mike Evans, Michael Thomas, etc more than often enough to earn the tag "shut down". Gamble certainly had the best PANTHERS career (as a whole career) of any CB who has ever played here. Some folks might want to argue for Eric Davis, and he's another good shout but I think Gamble's body of work with the Panthers was better. All that said, Josh Norman's 2015 dwarfed any season Gamble ever played. In that year, anyone who tries to argue that JNo was anything less than a shutdown corner has an agenda. He was amazing. Not every corner can be Deion Sanders, Champ Bailey or Richard Sherman with many years of outstanding play. That doesn't mean that in a given time and space they cannot be a shut down corner. JNo certainly was for a brief period. I believe James Bradberry did it for a year or two as well.

I definitely began last season as a Snow doubter. He did more than enough to earn my support. Our defense went from 31st to 18th in an offseason where he began not having met any of his players, COVID hits and he doesn't get to have a real offseason with them. Our HoF MLB retires leaving the defense without it's QB. Our shutdown corner leaves via FA. Basically, our best two players from the 31st ranked defense walked out the door. And we still improved to 18th? Not only that, we were in 8 games decided by one score, in which our offense had the ball at the end with a chance to tie or win. Yes, the offense completely failed to produce, but that isn't on Snow. Snow worked miracles with that defense. The bottom line is that he doesn't look at things in the same way as most "old school" NFL coordinators. Frankly, that's a good thing. NFL offenses today look a LOT more like college offenses if we're being honest. Maybe an exceptional college DC is what is really needed.

I am pretty optimistic about our defense. We went from 31st in 2019 to 18th in 2020. Effectively, the defense is already "average". And we *clearly* got better. My questions all center around who is in the middle of it all. If Perryman can just not be Tahir Whitehead we'll be a LOT better. We got gashed over and over in the run game because Whitehead was just awful. Stopping the run shorter will make distances longer, make the QB hold the ball a little longer. Better coverage on the back end will make the QB hold the ball a little longer. And after watching our line last year, they only need just a LITTLE more time to get home and our defense is gonna be legit.

I don't think I agree. Obviously you need blocking, but does it really make THAT much difference across the league? How many kicks are actually BLOCKED every year? Not too many, which tells me that blocking isn't all that different from the best ST units in the league to the worst. Likewise tackling / gunning. How many kicks are run back for touchdowns every year? Again, top to bottom, not much difference between the units. I do agree, good ST coaches can make a difference. Chase Blackburn certainly did when he came in and took over. Nevertheless, your biggest determining factors in ST are your kickers and kick returners. How accurate is you place kicker? How far and how much hang time does your punter produce? Is your returner sure handed and evasive? These are the big difference makers.

I cannot forsee us going in to the season with the guy who was statistically speaking in the bottom third of the league in FG% last year. That just screams awful to me. Bonkers. Slye wasn't even "the best of the rest". You gotta try to get better.

I find Spotrac a bit easier to sift through. Might just be me.

Yea, that's really kinda the point right? Now, to be fair, Herbert is a rookie, and the rings are still there for him. Tannehill was part of a dysfunctional organization and under the tutelage of Adam Gase, and just recently started showing us that he could be "the guy". Frankly, Tannehill is the guy we hope Darnold emulates. Cousins just keeps getting punted around, but those numbers are enough. Everyone keeps trying to temper / lower expectations with Darnold and I'm not aboard that train. We should expect him to show up as a good to great QB. Or a terrible one. Anything in between just condemns us to middle of the round draft picks and "best of the rest" status. As a last aside, I will say that the last 20 years have grossly skewed the SB QB conversation off the rails. Tom Brady has been involved in half the SB's over the last 20 years, and won 7 of them. That's just crazy. The dude is 7-3 and the biggest game.

Actually, in light of a 17 game season, I'd like to see a little more than that. Maybe 30-33 TD's, 14-15 INT's. For reference, Kirk Cousins went 35-13 TD/INT last year in 16 games. Justin Herbert was 31-10. Tannehill 33-7. Those are "good" QB numbers. Probably not top 10, but you can win rings with those guys. That should be the expectation floor for Darnold. Anything less is not the guy who will bring us a trophy.

But not because of our offense! We were looking like a top pick because our defense in 2019 was historically bad and old! We lost our best DB to free agency and our HoF MLB retired. We were a middle of the pack offense in 2019. Everyone thought that with the pieces we had, with Joe Brady at the controls and TB5 upgrading what we saw from Kyle Allen we'd be a better offense. We were slightly worse. All because TB5 was anti-clutch. Again, what specific things on our offense grade out as below average? The only one I can come up with is the TE room, and that may be underselling them a little. Our skill positions are among the best in the league QB aside. Our line is average to possibly above average. Everything about our offense SCREAMS "Give us a franchise QB and we will light this league up!"

I like your positivity man. I really, really hope you're right. If Sam turns into a franchise QB this offseason will likely go down in history as our turning point. And Fitts will be a savant.

How did they exceed expectations? They regressed! In 2019 we ranked 19th in total yards, and 20th in total points. In 2020, we ranked 22nd in total yards and 24th in total points! To me, we *massively* underachieved on offense. Remember, 2019 was Kyle Allen at QB. I hate to say it, but I think we would have won more games last year with KA under center. I'm so tired of the excuses man. We have "offensive guru" Joe Brady running the show here. We have amazing talent at all the the skill positions except TE - which may not even matter in this offense. We have a line that grades out average or better. Take away the QB! Who has a better offense than we do? KC, I'll give you, they were great with Alex Smith and terrifying with Mahomes. Titans, Bucs, Vikings . . . maybe. But past that it's QB's making the difference. Not expecting production from this offense is another year of "missed opportunities" man, and I don't think I can stomach that. Sam has nothing standing in the way of him showing us he is a franchise guy. He either shows he's the guy, or he doesn't. There is no alternative. Bear in mind, KC tossed away a guy who was 50-26, with a 3:1 TD to INT ratio because he wasn't good enough. I'm not saying Sam needs to be that, but it sure wouldn't hurt.

Setting aside the obvious, which is waiting for the season to play out, the question you need to ask right now is "Do you believe the Panthers overall offensive personnel, outside the QB room, is average or better?" Let's examine that. Start with the WR's. I honestly believe our WR room is one of the best in the league. DJ and Robby left no doubts last year. It was very clear that their production was held down by the limitations at QB. The scary part is they were already a top 5 WR duo. Marshall should easily replace Samuel's production in the slot, if not more. Our TE room is still not great, but I'm also not sure that Joe Brady's offense really requires it. In an LSU offense with 400 receptions, their TE's only caught about 60 balls all year. I just don't think it's as important. Still, I believe we've improved that room this offseason. I would call them average. Certainly not high end, but average. Our RB room is great. Setting aside the question of workload balance, you have Christian McCaffrey. He is one of the best in the league, if not THE best. Blah blah health issues, workload. I GET IT. We drafted a guy who seems to fit, and we have a couple on the roster who have done alright when called on. All that said, you have to say our RB room is top 5. Our OL is probably still average. Make no mistake, it was average last year. Pretty sure we wound up 18th overall. If we've improved, we could be 11 to 13 this year. That's an above average room. No, not top 5, probably not quite top 10, but not cringe worthy either. Solid, but not spectacular. Put all that together, and what do you have? You have a Panthers offense that is poised to be easily a top 10 offense, and probably a bit more, maybe even a top 5 offense. WITHOUT considering the QB position. Which leads us to Sam Darnold. He doesn't have any excuses this year. None. He can't. He's got NFL experience, so he understands the speed of the game and what is expected. He has a team around him with the talent to go places. BIG places. If you really want to understand, flip the script. If you drop Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson, Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes, Kyler Murray, Justin Herbert . . . into this offense, how does it fare? Forget salary concerns, just look at the talent. Even guys who are "just" good QB's like Tannehill or Carr . . . come on man. This offense is easily top 5. So that's really what Darnold is up against. No excuses. The talent is there. He simply has to play like a real NFL QB. Sam has to produce.