Peon Awesome

It really depends on what your expectations are. If you treat Henderson like the 3rd round pick we gave up for him, he's been fine. If you're expecting a shutdown corner worthy of the top 10 slot he was originally drafted, he's not that. The one long pass to Olave he gave up was actually solid coverage with a perfect throw by Winston and great catch by Olave. Henderson timed the hit perfectly and if Olave had lost control from the hit, we'd be applauding Henderson for the timely hit. He had the boneheaded PI in week 1 and he lays off defenders a little more than ideal. But I still think we're clearly better off with him than without him

Shenault on offense of course. McCaffrey also still looks explosive with 100+ yards rushing for the 2nd straight week and another long run called back with the hold. Lots of possible candidates on defense. Chinn looked good overall between his sack and a tipped ball. Horn with the tip that led to the interception plus an interception himself. Obviously the combo of Luvu on the forced fumble and Haynes with the return td was the play of the game. Hell Pineiro deserves kudos remaining perfect for the year including two from 40+. Truly a team win.

Lemme tell you guys a secret... it's possible to be happy we won and still think we can do much better than Rhule.

Another positive: this is the best punter we've had in years

No outcome would surprise me at this point. Win by 30, lose by 30, lose on a last minute 55 yard fg for the 3rd week in a row. I'm not writing off the season after week 2 so I'm still hoping we win and figure things out, regardless of how likely/unlikely that is. But there's no question it's a winnable game.

#7 and a 3rd for the #3 pick? In what world do you think there's precedent for that? Has there ever been a comparable trade in NFL history? I doubt it. If so, please share. Unless you mean 7, our 3rd plus a future 1st. That's probably more likely. The closest recent comp I can think of is the Jets trading the 6th pick and THREE 2nd round picks (including 37 and 49 from that year) for the 3rd pick to take Darnold. But going from 7 to 3 only takes a 3rd? Sure...

Not necessarily. We have like $15 million in cap space. How much different would things look with $33 million in cap space instead? Other than maybe allowing us to go even more all in on Watson, which is probably a blessing in disguise. You could definitely argue the loss of an early 2nd plus 4th and 6th round picks, was a bigger blow. Basically ask yourself this, could we have traded Darnold and his salary to a team by giving them the 38th pick plus two day 3 picks? I think any team with available cap space would happily have taken Darnold off our hands for that return.

Guy is truly remarkable. No doubt about it. Yet, doesn't it seem almost inevitable that had we drafted him, Snow would have utilized him as a sideline-to-sideline coverage LB? And then we'd have a half-dozen threads ridiculing the Panthers for wasting a top 10 pick on a coverage linebacker, one of the least valued positions in football. Now the main reason I bring this up is, how many players are we similarly underutilizing by our bad coaching? Would Brian Burns be competing with Parsons and Garrett for the sack title this year? Would Chinn be a 1st team all pro strong safety? Does McCaffrey have another 1000/1000 yard season, become unanimous comeback player of the year and serious candidate for offensive player of the year? The list goes on. It really makes you wonder how much talent we're potentially wasting.

I wouldn't go that far. Daniel Jones averaged 5.2 yards per attempt on 34 passes; that's bad by any metric. Barkley averaged 3.4 yards per carry; his longest carry was 16 yards and a player like him running 21 times and expecting him to not have a single decent run is not realistic. We gave up 19 points despite turning it over twice in our own territory. Hard to be too critical of the defense here.

Our receiving corps is pretty bare bones at this point but he's definitely not worth $22 million. He's either a candidate for a contract restructuring or a cap casualty. The problem is replacing his production. TMJ showing anything would really help make the decision easier. Ultimately I think maybe you add a year, cut his base salary down and turn it into a 2 year $22 million deal. That way you have a neglible effect on your cap compared to cutting him outright and we don't have to be desperate to replace him. If he refuses, then cut him.

That's fair. I just disagree on the shutdown aspect. There's a clear difference between this year and last year. No one could get open on Horn last year. He had them smothered and QBs just ignored his side because there was nowhere to throw. Meanwhile this year, his stats are certainly aided by the fact that the qb on the opposing team wasn't talented enough to take advantage of his lapses in coverage and when they did, he had a tendency to commit a penalty to stop it. If you are arguing the same thing was the case last year, I definitely didn't see that and I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree which is fine. I'm attributing the difference to rust and recovery from his injury. I don't know if you are saying he was every bit as shaky last year but the offenses were so terrible it didn't matter. If so, that's where we would definitely disagree.

I think that's oversimplifying it. He was considered someone who could take young moldable athletes and help them overachieve. As a young rebuilding team, it made sense on paper. He didn't even have to be the coach to take us to the Super Bowl, just someone to get us on the right path and build the nucleus of the future. The thing that is so disappointing is how awful he has been at coaching up players. Seems like a lot of the young guys either regressed or at least never made any meaningful strides. I understand that not everyone is going to make it even with excellent coaching but his hit rate has been dreadful.

What do you want from him? He can't change his competition. You still have NFL offenses who were scared to throw his way last year. In a league where Carson Wentz and Joe Flacco are throwing 300+ yards per week this year, you can't just say he's no good because he shutdown mediocre opposition. Especially when he did it as a rookie. I'm not sitting here anointing him as the 2nd coming of Darrell Revis; I'm willing to acknowledge that the book is still unwritten on him. That's all I'm asking the haters to do as well.

Yeah I don't think Horn merits the hate at all. He was a shutdown corner right out of the gate as a rookie. Then he gets a massive injury and plays his first meaningful football in almost a year and people are pissed because he's committed a few penalties? It's OK to be upset but use some simple context before you actually write him off. If he's doing this all year that's one thing but give him a few games to shake off the rust and get used to real life NFL speed. Hell it's not even like he's playing awful. He's basically playing like an average starting cb which is pretty good for a guy who has only played a handful of games and had a major injury.

Yikes.. I mean Burns is athletic enough to be decent in coverage but he's an elite edge rusher. Why did we invest so much in the secondary only to rely so much on our pass rushers to help out? You draft Horn in the 1st, Chinn in the 2nd, resign Donte, trade a 3rd for Henderson, but you need Burns to help them out? I've also noticed that they keep McCaffrey in the backfield to help with blocking the majority of the time. Why have the best receiving rb in the NFL and rarely use him as a receiver? Especially after putting so much effort on rebuilding the O line and hiring a new O line coach. I realize the line is still shaky, but hell put Foreman in the backfield to help block and kick McCaffrey out wide a few times if you have to. We have only a handful of stars and we're not maximizing their talents.

I hate when refs don't just own up to their mistakes. It would be so easy to say on the Burns roughing call "At our angle, it looked like he made forceable contact to the head or neck area. Of course on replay, we realized we made a mistake. Unfortunately we are human and we regret that mistake happened at such a critical juncture of the game."

Yeah and that makes sense but you could easily craft a narrative to argue the opposite. Let's say we do a run heavy scheme against Cleveland. So you have injury prone McCaffrey, who has only played in 10 games the past 2 years, and you decide to run him 20+ times in his first action in a year and a half? Let's say he dings himself up. What the hell were we thinking? We didn't learn a thing from the last 2 years? Especially when you have Baker playing his old team with a gigantic chip on his shoulder ready for the ultimate revenge game and you decide to neuter him so you can run McCaffrey ragged? What a complete idiot Rhule. Refusing to budge on his failing run heavy mindset when all the successful franchises have moved to a pass oriented offense.

Yeah but I blame Tepper for that more than Rhule. Rhule is obviously way over his head and not cut out to be an NFL head coach. It's on Tepper to acknowledge that and fire him. If he's not going to do that, Rhule trying something different, failing, trying something different, and so on until he either lucks into a winning strategy or gets fired is better than sticking to his guns on a failing strategy. Would I rather have a coach that knows what he's doing in the first place? Of course. But that's not an option until Tepper accepts it.

His press conferences are pretty consistently awful. I don't really care what he says as much as what he does. Do I think he had an epiphany since December? Not really. Do I think he made a bigger effort to hire coaching staff with actual experience who at least approach competency compared to the crap we had and maybe allow them to influence the gameplan? Hopefully

Yeah I appreciate the context. I was hoping someone would actually post the interview Overall it seems a little strange how much hate this engenders. Almost everyone agreed that we ran McCaffrey to the ground and most people thought it was stupid that Rhule wanted to utilize a run heavy offense in a league that is shifting heavily towards the pass. Now that he's correcting his ineptitude, people find that outrageous? I don't get it. I'd much rather Rhule walk back pretty much everything he said and did the last 2 years since it was pretty abysmal rather than stick to his guns for the sake of being consistent.

I didn't mind the call. We made them use their timeouts, which forced them to abandon the run that was killing us. Brissett had done nothing pretty much all game and we came an atrocious roughing the passer call and a rookie kicker knocking in a 58 yard fg from winning the game. Plus we gave up a sack/botched snap the one time we possibly tried to throw it in the red zone. Imagine we give up a sack on 3rd down and make it an even tougher kick for Pineiro whom I wouldn't trust past 40 yards. You could certainly argue for going for the end zone but I don't think that was a clearly flawed decision at all.

Here's the thing, what makes more sense? A) Baker and the team as a whole were still acclimating to so many new pieces and a new offensive scheme and needed time to adjust to a real NFL defense and then finally got in a groove to end the game Or B) Baker played how we expect him to play all year in the 1st half and through luck, sudden lapse in defense, the will of the gods or some combination of the above, he played way beyond his potential in the 4th quarter. Call me an optimist but I am going to let myself believe A until I see evidence to the contrary. Guess we'll find out against the Giants which half was the fluke.

Bill Simmons picks the Panthers to make the playoffs. His points include Baker being a big upgrade, McCaffrey is a top rb if healthy, Matt Rhule teams tend to have a big jump in year 3, we have a talented core on defense, McAdoo should be an upgrade over Brady and we have an exploitable schedule (Cleveland with Jacoby, Arizona without Hopkins). The guy on the other end of the debate is skeptical mainly cause Matt Rhule hasn't shown he is an NFL caliber coach, which is fair to say the least. Nice debate though. Hope you enjoy.

An overriding issue is that laypeople way overvalue day 3 draft picks. The truth is, once you get to the 5th round and later, the difference between a draft pick and an undrafted free agent is usually eye of the beholder. You need to have enough cheap talent to build a complete team and afford your stars, but whether that comes from your 5th rounder (Nixon) or 7th/UDFA (McCall/Hoskins), it's really irrelevant. It's stupid to hold onto a player just cause you invested late draft capital over a better performing player on an even cheaper contract.

I'm a little surprised Nixon was the odd man out but the bottom line is we signed a player at a position lacking depth to play a role that needs shoring up (run defense), while cutting a player at a position where there was already something of a logjam. Maybe it's a little early to give up on a draft pick but at the same time, if you're getting outplayed by players drafted later than you, I don't think you're entitled to a roster spot. Practice squad makes sense, where they can still see if his career can be salvaged without wasting a premier spot on the 53. You'd like to hit on your 5th rounders but the truth of the matter is they rarely get 2nd contracts.