Peon Awesome

Well the writing was on the wall for Little. Not worth the $1.1 million in base salary he was owed. So instead of flat out cutting him, we get a 7th round pick. And even though it's kind of pennies in the grand scheme of the cap, we also save an extra $100,000 on our cap compared to cutting him ($100k of his 2021 salary is guaranteed). At the same time, I get it from the Dolphins standpoint. They need line help and are probably hoping that Little's pedigree gives him a shot to turn it around in a new environment. And if he doesn't, they can just cut him and only have to pay $100k and the lost 7th round pick. If he even turns into a serviceable swing tackle and starts a game or two due to injury, it's probably worth it for them. Granted, I seriously doubt he'll do that and is more likely to not even make their 53, but it's a low risk proposition for them.

If PJ is better than Darnold, that's not only a terrible sign for this season and the immediate outlook of this franchise but would make the Darnold trade one of the worst decisions in franchise history. Having said that, PJ is still a reasonable backup. If Darnold gets hurt and we're not looking competitive, we can trot him out, make our games semi-interesting even if largely uncompetitive, and angle for a top draft pick. If Darnold keeps us afloat for a playoff spot leading up to his injury, we can scour the league and buy low on a semi-decent fill in (e.g. Minshew or Foles) and leave PJ as the backup.

It is painfully obvious that you are not understanding this article. I was going to let it go but it's just hurting my brain reading your responses. 1. This is only referencing false negatives, not false positives. They make no comment about the rate of false positives. False positives are also incredibly difficult to ascertain since people can be infected and be asymptomatic. So you can't definitively say it's a false positive just because you do a test the next day and it's negative. Especially if you have no symptoms, your viral loads may be so low that you keep testing negative after your initial positive test. 2. The majority of false negatives in the report are before people develop symptoms or well after they got infected. That's universal for any virus and any test, no matter how good the test is. It's because these are the times when viral loads are the lowest, either because there hasn't been enough time for the virus to replicate in the case of the early testing, or because the immune system has cleared some of the virus as it relates to later testing. Many of the other false negatives are often due to tester error, for instance the nurse not inserting the swab far enough or not leaving it in long enough either because they're doing it wrong or the patient squirmed out of it. Anyhow, I implore you to stop posting articles and misinterpreting the science before I get anymore of a headache. Thanks

Holy sh*t you mean there's another virus masquerading as COVID that's flying around killing otherwise healthy people in their 40's? Now we're really f*cked.

Probably because this is the 90 man roster that includes 12th string offensive tackles and a couple dozen players that won't even sniff the practice squad after final cuts. Let's revisit this thread after the final 53 are named.

Yeah we're so screwed guys! 1 year, $850k contract with ZERO guaranteed money. How will we ever recover???

I'm guessing Elflein is our true backup center and we'd subsequent plug in someone to replace him at guard if Paradis goes down. Which is a bit less frightening

I guess that makes our projected oline starters: LT Erving LG Elflein C Paradis RG Miller RT Moton Although I'm kind of surprised Daley isn't at least on the 2nd team. Unless he's injured, the fact he can't beat out Kaskey is disappointing

The only starters I'd advocate for is the offensive line. I'd like to see us pick a starting 5, put them out there for a quarter and see if they can gain some confidence and start to gel against an Indy defense likely sitting multiple starters. The sooner we figure out our starting line, the better. I'm fine with sitting Darnold. How quickly we forget Cam playing some preseason snaps, messing up his foot and effectively ending his Panthers career.

I used to have direct tv with a really good rate for 2 years with sunday ticket included. Then when the 2 years are up, they jack up your rate. Called to try to angle for a better rate and they wouldn't even budge. So I cancelled and switched to YouTube tv. Only $70 bucks per month including taxes, unlimited dvr, pretty much any channel you could want including over a dozen sports networks (every espn, nfl network, nba tv, etc etc). Happy with it but you do miss out on the sunday ticket of course.

Questioning the team cutting an UDFA without firsthand knowledge of the goings on in practice is a special level of narcissism. He went undrafted among 259 draft picks. Even if he was a 7th rounder, odds were stacked against him.

On the one hand, the guy isn't totally unreasonable in that supposedly he just wants more of his contract guaranteed rather than more money. On the other hand, it's getting tiring when players sign 5 year contracts that are inevitably going to be front loaded on guarantees and get overshadowed by new contacts resetting the market a few years later as the cap goes way up, and then act like they're way underpaid 2 years into their contract.

Yikes, how little respect do you have to have for your own coach that he basically is begging you to get the vaccine so he can protect his own life after just overcoming a battle with cancer and your thought is "Naw, I'm good." The fact that they're one of the least vaccinated teams is astounding.

I was doing the calculations the other day. Comes out to about a 3 year, $54 million contract if I did the math right. And 2 years is only $30 million roughly. If Moton's agent is expecting us to match the Ramczyk contract, at the very least tagging twice seems to be the most financially prudent decision for now. Hard to know how far off the numbers are but I suspect that's the hold up.

The value of Erving's contract is very much TBD. He's similar to Kalil and Oher in that he's a former 1st round pick that hasn't lived up to billing but we're hoping in a new environment, he can be a serviceable LT. If he does become that, similar to Oher, his contract will be a bargain. If he's the 2nd coming of Kalil, well at least it's not a 5 year, $55 million contract. If he is what he's always been, a versatile backup that can plug and play for a few games but you're hoping you aren't counting on him as a 16 game starter, then it's a modest overpay, where you'd probably expect to pay more like 2 years, $5-6 million. Doesn't strike me as worthy of worst contract status. But that could reflect the fact that we've cut bait with most of the dead weight.

I might have to put a couple hundred dollars on that bet

In a vacuum, competent O line depth is more valuable than a mid to late round draft pick. However, he's on a one year contract and the lions have pretty much announced they are doing a full rebuild. What benefit do you get keeping him in the first year of a complete rebuild? So that if Sewell gets injured, maybe you win 3 games instead of 2? Or maybe you think they should resign him to a big extension to be their 3rd OT, since that's what it'll take to outbid other teams that will gladly pay him to be their starter. Smartest move is to get something for him rather than have him leave for nothing in free agency next year and add to their draft arsenal as they build to the future.

Your rankings seems pretty darn good to me; infinitely better than PFF's. Andy Reid is a no-brainer as #1. Joe Brady being in the top 5 over Sean Payton is so incredibly laughable. The list goes on.

Yeah great point. Think about how laughable it would have been if Chicago offered the same package for Lawrence. It doesn't matter if there wasn't as highly touted of a #1 pick; in no universe does the 20th pick, a future 1st and 2 4ths get you the #1 pick. So to say that us not trading with Chicago means we thought Horn was more valuable than a #1 overall pick is absurd.

Didn't see anyone post this article. But he's ranking teams based primarily on how well they did in free agency and the draft. For reference, his top 5 are Bucs, Patriots, Chargers, Ravens and WFT. Bottom 5: Raiders, Packers, Steelers, Texans and Falcons. The relevant Panthers section: 26. Carolina Panthers What went right: The Panthers continued to build carefully under Matt Rhule and new general manager Scott Fitterer, with one significant swap that we'll get to in a minute. I like the deals they made Haason Reddick and A.J. Bouye on defense, and they added a valuable piece at cornerback in No. 8 overall pick Jaycee Horn. The decision to give up on Teddy Bridgewater and make a run at Sam Darnold might end up being the most notable and important choice the Panthers made this offseason, but I generally liked the supplemental decisions Rhule & Co. made around their roster this offseason. What went wrong: I'm not thoroughly excited about the Darnold trade, which saw Carolina send three picks to the Jets for the former No. 3 overall pick, including a second-rounder in 2022. Perhaps more importantly, the Panthers also agreed to pick up Darnold's fifth-year option for 2023, which is now fully guaranteed at $18.6 million. Quarterbacks who start their career like Darnold rarely turn into effective passers in their second stops, and this franchise is making a significant bet that Darnold will be the exception. His lack of development and middling success even in clean pockets would worry me, and I think the most likely scenario is that Carolina is back in the quarterback market again in 2022. What they could have done differently: The other big bet the Panthers made this offseason was staying put in Round 1 of the draft and drafting Horn. The Bears sent pick Nos. 20 and 164 in the draft and their first- and fourth-rounders next year to the Giants to move up from No. 20 to No. 11 and draft Justin Fields, and even if the Panthers didn't want the Ohio State product, they presumably could have accepted a similar offer from the Bears and picked up a tantalizing first-rounder in the 2022 draft. Even if we value those future Bears picks as being the last picks in their respective rounds, the package on the whole was worth 33.5 points by the Chase Stuart value chart, which is right around the value of the No. 1 overall pick in a typical draft. More realistically, those picks will add up to being worth more than the top pick in a typical draft. Passing up that trade offer (or, at the very least, not successfully seeking out that sort of offer from a team like the Bears) implicitly values Horn as being worth something like the No. 1 overall pick, and cornerbacks taken in this range just do not have that sort of success rate or impact historically. You could make this same argument for the Lions at No. 7 or the Broncos at No. 9, but this was probably an opportunity the Panthers missed. What's left to do: Extend Taylor Moton. The 2017 second-rounder has developed into one of the best right tackles in football, and with the left tackle spot looking like a big question mark, the Panthers would do well to solidify one tackle spot for Darnold's sake. The Panthers franchised Moton for 2021 at $13.8 million, and a new deal for the 27-year-old should come in around four years and $62 million. My thoughts: 1. His only mention of the draft was us not trading down with the Bears as a mistake. That's fair but do we know for sure a similar offer was on the table? You'd think but it's also feasible Chicago saw the Patriots pick approaching and got desperate with their offer. And even if it was available to the Panthers, dropping from 8 to 20 is a move you make when you don't mind not being competitive this year. With our 2022 2nd rounder going to NYJ, we need to win some games now. And why no mention of all the times we did trade down? 2. He has Moton taking 4 years, $62 million. If so, why isn't he signed already? I'd do that yesterday.

I don't think taking a flier on a no risk, minimum salary, end of roster player really warrants much criticism here. And more and more teams keep only 2 qbs on the roster. Having someone like him would be primarily for his TE and/or special teams contributions, with a lesser role as the emergency qb if we get horribly unlucky to have both our starter and backup qb injured in the same game and need someone to get us through to the end of that game. Then we'd sign another qb before the next game. So in that sense he doesn't even have to be better than either Grier or Walker. If he's more likely to meaningfully contribute to the team, he is worth a roster spot over 1 of them.

The book isn't written on the draft but the Little pick is a huge stain particularly since he required both our 2nd and 3rd round picks. Miller could be good; he only played his rookie year with minimal time on the field and flashed at times so can't judge that yet. Daley if he can actually get healthy, would be tremendous value in the 6th. So best case scenario, we could look back and say it was a mixed bag with 1 complete stud in the 1st and a couple decent role players on day 3 which would be a far cry from an all time dud. On the other hand, if Daley and Miller get cut this year or never really make it on the field for one reason or another, then yeah, it's up there in terms of all time Panthers badness.

Apparently some people think a JAG is anyone not in the Hall of Fame conversation

From all the moves we've made, it's clear we decided we're going to give Darnold a real shot. We gave up a 2022 2nd, passed over Fields and Mac Jones at 8 and picked up Darnold's 5th year option. If they decided after all that to go all in on Watson and his pending legal issues, then I really don't know what this team is doing. Honestly, given the choice to pick Fields with a single 1st round pick and pay him $20ish million over 4 years (or around $45 million over 5 years), or give up 3 1st round picks and pay nearly $150 million over the next 5 years for Watson, give me Fields all day.

Not quite. What's the going rate for a veteran cb1? Easily $15 million per season these days. Jalen Ramsey is making $20 million per year now. So you can't give credit for Fields being cheaper than Darnold and ignore the potential value of Horn over a veteran replacement. You obviously get more value with qb, but it's more like half what you're quoting. At the end of the day, the team didn't feel Fields was likely to be the answer or at the very least, Darnold was more likely to pan out than him. Time will tell if they were right.