Peon Awesome

That was a hell of a play by the chargers defender to knock it out. Also the Texans are definitely not a 10 win caliber team but some of that has to be attributed to the decline in Stroud's play. They have pro bowlers at WR, RB and LT, a 1st team all pro cornerback and arguably the best 1,2 duo of edge rushers in the NFL. They're no slouches. If Stroud was playing at 90% of his level last year, nobody would be complaining of the lack of talent on that team.

With his injury history, he's definitely someone you have to consider letting play out his tag if his agent is being unreasonable. You can't pay him top tier corner money and hope he can actually stay healthy for 4-5 years. The reality is, we can afford to retag him next year if he has another strong, healthy year and leverage that into a new contract in 2026. At least then, if he's proven two consecutive elite, healthy seasons, you don't really worry as much with paying top tier money. I have to think Horn also realizes if he is injured again next year, he loses his chance of ever seeing a big 2nd contract. If we push the guarantees, maybe he lives with sacrificing $20 million or so to ensure he is set up for life. Would you take 5 years, $85 million with $60 mil guaranteed now, or play on the tag next year, pray you don't get injured and hope for a 5 year, $110 million, $80 mil guaranteed next year vs possibility of getting injured and having to settle for a 1 year $10 million prove it 2nd contract. I'm sure that's where the discussions are going to be.

Moton is only 30. Do we really need to plan for his succession? Trent Williams was 1st team all pro at OT last year at 35 years old. I would definitely give him a 3 year extension through his age 35 season. At worst, if he slows down or his body becomes too banged up, you can cut ties a couple years early after most of the guarantees have passed. Even then, you don't need to start prepping his succession till 2027. Our 3rd and 4th this year should probably aim to net us defensive starters, e.g. LB, DT, safety, (nickle) CB.

Yeah it's funny. We had to go down to like the 5th tiebreaker for the division which was strength of victory (SOS of the teams we beat). Our unique wins were Oakland and Arizona (12 wins) compared to Browns and Cowboys (10 wins) for the Saints, so our strength of victory was higher. But strength of schedule is the draft pick tie breaker and the Saints was higher than ours

To summarize, we play the NFC west, AFC east, Green Bay, Dallas and Jacksonville. That means we finished 3rd in the division, Saints 4th. I'm not going to quibble over who we play, but Giants and Bears would've looked a lot easier on paper than Cowboys and Packers. Overall not bad though.

I think they ought to at least offer an extension. Between the cap rising every year inflating contracts, and the likelihood Ekwonu is more likely to play better rather than worse with O line/playbook continuity and another year of experience, chances are so much higher that his price tag will be dramatically higher next year. We kind of know his floor: above average run blocker and mediocre pass blocker susceptible to speed rushers. I'd look at the median salary for a starting tackle, tack on a 20% premium to account for cap inflation and the hope he improves, and offer a 5 year extension at that rate. Looking at current salaries, that would be something like 5 years, $110 million. Then adjust guarantees to work in some protection and see where you get with negotiations.

Yeah I'm kind of with you on this one. Someone to fill in as backup rb for one year shouldn't be a priority on a team with this many holes to fill, especially when Chuba has shown to be a capable workhorse. I could be on board with maybe a 6th or 7th rounder for someone with a 3rd round grade but not much more than that. Would be smarter to just workout a bunch of UDFA RBs and pick the training camp/preseason standout to be your short term backup.

Yeah that's insane. I've lived here for almost 20 years and I feel like that's maybe only happened 1 or 2 other times. I saw a twitter post about it and thought that can't be right and was still planning to turn the game on in the next hour. But nope, the tv guide is showing eagles and commanders in queue at 1 PM. I guess it's just a perfect storm: Panthers are near their nadir relevance playing a minimal stakes game against a non-divisional opponent. And the other offering includes a super high stakes divisional matchup against 2 (likely) playoff teams including the Commanders which are the next closest market to the area. I was going to add Washington was kind of a home market for the area pre-Panthers too, but unless you're in your 70s, I have to think almost everyone now unequivocably considers the Panthers the home team here.

Young's growth in the past few weeks has been astronomical. I'm not going to sit here and assume he's already hit his ceiling. His play has forced me to stop making any assumptions. I doubt after week 2, even the most die hard Panthers optimists and Bryce supporters envisioned any world where Bryce and Stroud could be uttered in the same breath with a straight face. The way Bryce Young is raising his game and CJ Stroud is regressing or at best stagnating, I suddenly don't think that's an outlandish possibility. And articles like this seem to hint it as well. But this is obviously still a time will tell situation.

Bryce Young went from being one of the historically worst performing QBs in NFL history to being lauded by pundits across the country for his recent performance and going toe to toe with 2 of the best teams in the league. Now Joe Schmo wants to poo poo on Huddlers being excited for the future since Bryce isn't Josh Allen yet. You must really have a miserable life. I honestly feel sorry for you.

You know it's interesting, I felt the same. For me, in part, in those 2 wins it kind of felt like those teams were mostly beating themselves and the Panthers were fortunate beneficiaries of their ineptitude. I felt perhaps more amusement at watching these other teams dysfunction than genuine happiness by the Panthers performance. Meanwhile for this Chiefs game, the Panthers rose to the occasion and nearly muscled out a win against a super talented team that wasn't making stupid mistakes. I was legitimately proud of the Panthers this week. It felt like for the first time in a while, we earned some real respect.

I had pretty much accepted that Bryce Young was never going to have a career here but this game legitimately gives me pause. He was really outstanding. We have 6 games left to see if it's a flash in the pan or true growth. It would certainly be better for the long term outlook of this team if he could pan out so we don't have to keep starting from scratch. I'm now keeping an open mind

The Chiefs have 6 including the #1 player on the list. The fact that it went to overtime pretty well reflects how fairly evenly they are on paper.

The way I see it, either Bryce will suck the team down which will deflate Diontae's value and then we can resign him for a bigger bargain than we could now. Or he'll help Bryce achieve new heights, in which case, I'm perfectly happy paying a premium for him and we'll have tons of money to do so.

You make a couple fair points. But there are some points of clarification. For one, I wasn't suggesting they'd be super bowl contenders in 2022 but 2023, considering they weren't that far without him. Although its fair to think they might have won an extra game or two with him and pick 36 could have been more like pick 42. Also, Burns didn't have to have as big of an impact as 4 starters, just pick 36, since they only traded pick 36. So my point is they could have made the same draft picks in the other rounds and signed a free agent guard and been in the same position. Also, the Rams don't trade 2 1sts and a 2nd and not sign Burns to a long-term contract. They're not going to let him play on his 5th year contract. His 2023 hit would've been modest and they wouldn't have had to make much of any extra sacrifices to fit him in.

Honestly it's a moot point but I think you're way off on this point. The Rams could easily find a serviceable free agent guard. Letting Burns feast next to Aaron Donald would have likely made them super bowl contenders. They barely lost to Detroit with a substandard pass rush. I could see Burns easily having 15+ sacks with Donald commanding triple teams. Don't get me wrong; even if the Rams won the super bowl every year with Burns, it'd still be good value for the Panthers so its definitely a big mistake that we turned it down. But people here kept saying the Rams would have been giving us top 10 picks. They already showed how wrong they were this year with the Rams making the playoffs and that's even without Burns impact.

This is probably the worst possible thing we can do. Best case in that scenario is we lose Burns, have to sit out free agency completely to not negate the comp pick and then get essentially the last pick of the 3rd round in 2025. The only viable options are tag and trade or sign to a long term extension. You're deluding yourself if you think we can't do better than what's essentially a 2025 4th round pick if we tag and trade him.

Patrick Willis getting in pretty much guarantees Luke will get in. Not sure if he'll be 1st ballot but that'd be great. I'm not going to squabble if he doesn't get in till his 2nd year if some people penalize him for his short career. But it's obvious the committee values dominance over longevity which bodes well.

Fitzgerald is a slam dunk first ballot hall of famer but he's not eligible yet. The others are a legitimate argument. I think there's just a logjam of comparably deserving candidates.

Not too surprised. They've got a lot of money invested in their original content on their own platforms (Peacock and Paramount+). If anything, staying out of this strengthens those services. Many people who only have cable for sports may opt to cancel their cable and sign up for this, Peacock and Paramount+ to make sure they don't miss any big sporting events. Fox doesn't have a paid streaming service and this can't get off the ground without ESPN since they have over 50% of the sports market, so makes sense those 2 would partner up.

The problem hasn't been Tepper stubbornly refusing to learn from his mistakes. Tepper's time has been a string of mistakes followed by a 180 shift that still fails. For instance, he hires a college coach with almost no NFL experience with a staff with almost no NFL experience, and then proceeds to hire Frank Reich, a highly experienced coach who assembled an experienced legitimate NFL staff. He was criticized for holding onto Rhule too long, so then he fires Reich midway through his 1st season. He also went from a couple retread veteran QBs to going all-in for a rookie. I think Tepper has shown he's willing to adapt. Just seemingly every move has stunk. I mean, if we take this example and let's say Canales fires Evero and replaces him with an absolute dud of a coordinator, I'm not going to applaud Tepper for being hands off. Bottom line, we need results, no matter how we get them.

This is an argument that bears out theoretically but not in reality. There's a reason guaranteed money is such a big deal. In your worst case scenario, Johnson gets $80 million for 1 year of work. He gets fired and either retires comfortably for the rest of his life if he wants or picks up a premium offensive coordinator position immediately if he wants to keep working. Or he can make half that money working in a position where 1/4 of the coaches get fired every year and coaches staying with the same team for more than 8 years is increasingly rare. Where best case scenario, he works 10 years to make what he made in 1 year in scenario 1, which is already more than he would spend in his lifetime.

We need a great coach and a great playcaller. They don't need to be the same person. People seem too stuck on the head coach having to call plays but that's absolutely not necessary and sometimes detrimental when it causes the coach to be overstretched. Two of the biggest turnarounds in recent history don't have offensive coaches: Houston and Detroit. 4 of the best coaches of this generation are not offensive: Mike Tomlin, John Harbaugh, Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll. I'm not saying we shouldn't hire an OC as the next head coacb. I'd be super excited if we could nab Ben Johnson. I just don't think we should be completely hellbent on hiring an OC that we essentially rule out hiring a DC from the jump. We just need to make sure any new head coach has a plan to bring along a promising offensive coordinator to fix this offense.

Most of our problems seem to be us course correcting too much in the other direction. Reich is one of the prime examples. First we hire Rhule, someone with no NFL experience who hires all his friends basically with little experience to flesh out the staff. So we get enamored with Reich, an experienced former head coach with a clear vision for an experienced and respected coaching staff. Now take the Bryce pick. We spent 2 years trying out failed qbs from other teams so now we decide to go all in moving up to #1 for our own guy, giving away our next first and our one good offensive skilled player in DJ Moore.

I'd be wary of firing Reich and making Evero the head coach unless you're prepared to take the interim tag off him at year's end. Otherwise we're looking at a Wilks type situation again. Evero has been one of the few bright spots on this team, keeping the defense playing tough despite injuries to some of our key players and the offense putting them in horrible positions with turnovers and multiple 3 and outs. I have to think they'd lean offensive coach for a new head coach so making Evero interim most likely means we lose him altogether. Obviously I'm massively disappointed in the team but at this point this year is lost so I'd focus on setting us up for the best situation next year rather than trying to turn around this one.