Evil Hurney

Flip it to some desperate team for their 1st next year

Crowd was just itching to get excited, then the WR dropped the ball.

The more interesting thing to me is that there isn't a single high ranking individual from the Texans or Colts expected to be in attendance.

Since when do colleges have more than 1 pro day ?!?!

It's basically a 2-year contract with a team option for a 3rd year. AAV if cut after 1 year = $15M AAV if cut after 2 years = $9.3M AAV if full contract (3 years) = $8.3M

The top FA WR are gone for $11M/yr this season. Anyone left in FA should cost less and is not viewed a long term WR1. Prudent teams will likely wait for A) FA asking price to come down, B) a WR they like falling to them in the draft, or C) another team to oversign/overdraft at WR and be forced to give a WR away (ala Amari Cooper). Spotrac has DJ Chark estimated for $9.5M/year and Mecole Hardman for $10.3M/year. Is that a reasonable pay rate for an at best WR2 (in the teams eyes)? Cap wise either can fit since you can always account for their paycheck in a later season. Also keep in mind that TE Hurst is a receiver signing. The team didn't have to pay WR prices though. It's one of the ways the Chiefs hacked together a useable receiving core; paying their top guy TE money.

Recent history suggests that a rookie TE has a very low chance of making an impact in year 1 compared to their cousin the rookie WR. If the Panthers were to take one of the top TEs they would most likely need time to develop; having the other TEs on the roster for "this season" shouldn't really impact the long-term thinking that occurs during the draft.

And as a fanbase we should enjoy the extra media attention. Part of the perk of trading for the #1 pick this early.

As others have said. The Vets job isn't to be a mentor. The reason you bring in a vet is to have a floor on the level of QB play for the season and give the rookie a minimum level of play to exceed before starting.

Here is a summary of historical dead cap usage as far back as OTC had it: These numbers are being reported as a percentage of the base salary cap for that season. As far as 3 year spans go, the highest average dead cap pct goes to: 1) Panthers from 2020-2022 2) Eagles from 2020-2022 3) Texans from 2020-2022 4) Saints from 2015-2017 5) Bills from 2016-2018 Regarding the restructures, they largely aren't a problem. The team trades roster flexibility for financial flexibility in the current season. This works out fine as long as they don't plan to cut (or in the case of DJ, trade) the player that season. They purposely didn't restructure DJ since he was part of trade talks. Over the life of the contract the team still ends up accruing the same cap hit . It just "looks" bad because most of the cap hit comes at the end. (2,4,24 instead of 9,10,11).

Since cap from future years can essentially be used in the current year, I find it more informative to look at a teams 3 year projected cap space to understand a teams cap health. https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/cap/2025/ A good example of this is the Saints who are already -$91M over the projected cap for 2024. Since there is no penalty for being over the cap in future seasons they can just wait until March of 2024 to pay that bill off with the 2025 and 2026 credit cards. As of this writing, the Panthers have 8th most cap space to spend over the next 3 seasons. Once Burns is extended the long term cap space will go down a bit.

I'd ask for next years 1st. I'd settle for this years 2nd and try to trade it to someone else for their 1st next year (ala Everette Brown). That is actually in line with what a team should expect (maybe a little low) based on the typical cost to move up in the 1st round.

I think there were 2 guys there covet (Stroud and Young), but the #2 pick wasn't for sale. Trading to #3 doesn't guarantee you those guys since LV or IND can jump to #1. Basically this could be the long way to get to pick #2.

Nice post. I also feel like the Panthers got off fairly cheaply in this deal. Quick math (assuming all picks are this year) suggests that the Bears valued DJ Moore as a mid 1st round pick. There were many over the past months that would have happily traded DJ for a mid 1st. Bears & Carolina Trade (treating future picks as end of the round picks) For context I assume Chicago got similar excess value as MIA got from SF in 2021. Calculation assuming future picks are treated as end or round picks this year below. EDIT: I think it's also relevant that AJ Brown without a new contract was traded last season for pick 18 and pick 101 ... pretty close to the value the Panthers just got for DJ Moore.

I'm leaning Bryce. If he was 2" taller and 10-lb heavier he would be the consensus #1. At least he doesn't have tiny hands.