WhoKnows

Pretty much anything, like going to Five Guys, beats the Panthers in the past 5 years.

Wake me up when this team wins some games or makes it to the Super Bowl. I’ll gladly skip Uncle Kracker, but something tells me Unc will be in a nursing home before we’re back in a SB.

You’ve watched this team the past few years, right? There has been almost nothing football wise to be proud of so I’d go concerts and events too. Look over the past 5 years of Panther football. What’s your proudest moment only from Panthers football? Maybe the game where we had a chance to make the playoffs but Evans torched us for 3 long TDs? Sam Darnold? Young’s 2 interception first game? Horn actually playing 2 of the last 3 games of 2023 after only 1 and 0 of the last 3 games of 2022 and 2021?

Huh? The Burns impact wouldn’t have made them Super Bowl contenders in 2022. They finished worse than us. They also rolled over $450k in cap to 2023. They would have had to make changes as Burns’ 5th year option was more than their 2023 space. I think McVay might have hung them up as well. Considering their poor 2022 season and the fact that they’d be missing their 1st and 2nd in 2023 and both 2024 and 2025 1sts, he might have decided not to come back. The 2023 draft the Rams had was fantastic. They got 4 above average starters. I don’t think I’m wrong to say that not having any cap space and not having pick 36 could have easily changed their draft from fantastic to decent. If the Rams didn’t have that draft because of the Burns trade, they easily would have been a non-playoff team. Burns absolutely would have had less impact on their team than 4 plus starters, two of whom had as many or more sacks than Burns in 2023.

So true but these discussions are so shortsighted. Don’t be like the people who were so worried that we couldn’t replace Burns with one of the 1sts in the Rams deal, that they didn’t want the deal. Hint, they were absolutely wrong. If we keep or trade Burns there is no need to make some instant decision. We are a shitty team. We were a couple plays away from being the first 0-17 team. Thinking back to the Burns deal, Fitterer was completely shortsighted. The Burns deal was about being able to keep CMC and Moore and get all the ammo we needed to make a trade up for a QB or surround him with a great TE and 2nd great WR. Idiot Fitterer unfortunately thought he could replace CMC and Moore with Sanders and Chark/Mingo. Same thing here, stop worrying about instantly replacing Burns if we trade him or getting him help if we extend him (which sounds ridiculous to get a $30M guy help). Use those picks to get the best players available at any spot because we are so far from contending. Also, draft to the strengths of each draft so we continually get plus value from our picks. 33 is a freaking sweet spot it seems for WRs. Heck, given the Bills, Ravens and Chiefs all could go WR, we might think about trading up if there is a Brian Thomas sitting there and you have him ranked really high.

I hope you are right. We’ve kind of blown a series of top 10 picks (Iky, Horn, Young x2), that we need top picks and turn them into picks like Cam, Luke, Peppers and Gross.

Like @kungfoodude, I didn’t like spending so much money on guys who were never good or a guy not close in talent that we signed to replace CMC for basically the same amount of “new” money. We put lipstick on a pig in the offseason. CMC and Moore would have cost us around $30M in 2023. We spent that $30M on Sanders, Hurst, Chark and Houston in 2023 and well, we got poo for it and poo in trade value.

It at least saves the roster bonus for this year. Gotta love Fitterer, the gift that keeps giving. We basically paid Thomas and Hurst over $16M for 2023. Basically, we had TE 2 (Hockenson) cost for TE 32 play. SMH.

Only the “you aren’t an NFL GM” or “how can we possibly replace Burns” idiots couldn’t see the fleecing we could have done to the Rams. Heck, we’d probably have a better 1st. They found a solid starting G at 36. We might have messed up their entire draft. With 36, players we could easily have traded up to 33 before Tennessee to get La Porta knowing that after the Waller and Hockenson trades, Detroit and Oakland were going TE since it was a stud TE class. They both did. Add in 2 more firsts and $30M in cap space for two solid FAs and we get way more talent than just Burns. It’s a shame because it was laid out perfectly and Tepper/Fitterer fumbled it away. Anyway, the what ifs suck balls. We better nail this draft and next year’s.

GB offered us their 2023 1st (I think it was #15) for Moore at the same time as Burns’ deal. Should have taken both trades and CMC so that we could actually tank 2022 and naturally get a top 3 pick not #9 where we forfeit our team to trade up for the wrong QB.

You guys do realize that pre-2023, Tennessee was 30-20 in the lot prior 3 seasons and in the playoffs 2 of 3 years. They traded AJ Brown before 2022 and fuged up the 1st round pick meant to replace him and went 7-10. Tennessee didn’t become a contender in 2023, but going to the 2024 Panthers isn’t even close to going to the 2023 Titans. Didn’t work out for Hopkins but we have 6 straight years of losing under our belts not just 1 year of losing. Titans had 6 straight winning seasons before 2022.

So what you are saying is all those 2024 1st round picks are the same as 2023 2nds might have been wrong? Man, what this team could have been if Fitterer was shown the door with Rhule and a competent GM was hired that saw that we needed a rebuild. Could have easily had two firsts this year and two firsts in 2025 to allow us to maximize a really good draft. SMH. A perfect rebuild scenario was right in front of us had we only had an owner who was worth a damn that wasn’t blown away by guys like Hurney and Fitterer enough to give them an extra year.

How many times is a good young player available in FA? I’m not talking a trade like Tyreke Hill or AJ Brown where they left before their big contract, I’m talking about guys like that being available in FA. Luvu was a bargain bin FA like Mario Addison. Let’s not talk about our every decade FA bargains. That’s like assuming there will be an undrafted Norwell in every draft. I’d almost consider Luvu and Addison draft picks because we got both of them before their first 4 year deal was up. Signing players released in their first few years in the league to minimum contracts to see them develops is not what I was talking about. Signing Luvu to a minimum deal and having him play well is a great bonus but it’s akin to drafting a good starter in day 3. My point was that worrying about Burns $24M cap hit is about signing Hurst, Sanders, Houston and Corbett. To me that’s trying to get the final puzzle pieces to a playoff contender and that worked out great for us since we were so close to contending LOL. We don’t need to restructure Moron or extend Burns to fit the Luvus/Addisons of the world before they develop. There’s also way more bargain bin guys who get cut in training camp.

I love it but don’t think that’s possible. It’s PFF so their ratings are mainly on the college PFF scores not rankings after the senior bowl and combine.

Why is this an important season? We barely got 2 wins last year. We aren’t fixing this team in one draft and FA. If we try to do that in one season we are basically repeating the last 6 years of futility. This is an evaluation year to see what pieces we have that are worth long term (Iky, Horn, Mingo and Young and the 2024 draft). Anybody not long term should be marketed if we can get something for them. Also, FA is not where you add talent to a rebuilding team so the cap space shouldn’t be a concern. FA is where you should be adding the last pieces to the puzzle. We haven’t even unboxed the puzzle yet. If we are doing tons of restructuring so we can spend money now, we’ll be on a new coach and GM in a couple seasons. We need two successful drafts, before we worry about cap space and we are already missing 2 of our 4 top picks so we have to nail the drafts like the Rams did last year with no 1st.

It doesn’t surprise me. Remember Fitterer described how Young was his favorite the year before. Fitterer has been very Hurney like in falling for people and having blinders on. I think there was still a consensus in the shop that Young was the overall favorite. Reich said as much right after the draft. He and Fitt had their love in about like Young to start their process and to finish. Thomas Brown was the guy who introduced the point guard discussion in February before the draft, the same topic that Tepper parroted after the draft. It’s still laughable that people think whatever Nicole thought was going to have some bearing on the final decision. I argued with a couple people who actually said they thought Nicole made the pick. It was and still is Fitterer, IMHO, who was the biggest fan of Young.

Lapped? Fitterer slit their Achilles before the race started and moonwalked his ass across the worst GMs to ever exist finish line. Ryan Poles and Joe Douglas were there to thank him again for saving their jobs and making people forget their horrible picks. John Lynch couldn’t make it because he was at the Super Bowl. He sent a very nice arrangement.

Well, honestly, he was right about Norman’s worth. He never can close to 2015’s career year and he certainly wasn’t worth the money the Redskins gave him. You would have hoped we could have gotten more value via trade, but no one in Washington was happy with that signing when it was over.

It really isn’t when you look back at Fitterer’s 3 year stint. We will likely have given up more draft value for Sam Darnold, a guy who was likely released after the draft (to avoid paying 5th year), than we will get back for Burns. When you look back at all the shitty trades/non-trades, draft picks and FA moves, it’s not surprising at all that we fittered up with Burns.

See my post above. Priority is meaningless in this draft. We can’t get Bowers and the Texas TE is not good enough for 33. The rest are day 3 guys. Amazingly our biggest need at WR matches the strength of the draft. Let’s just hope the game changing WR isn’t snagged by the top teams who pick right before us that have WR needs as well.

TE isn’t a priority because there’s basically 1 good TE. TE should have been a priority last year when our top of the 2nd round pick was in great distance to trade up for La Porta or take another TE who will develop. People mention that TE from Texas and he’s not even close to as good as the TEs last year and we’d have to take him at 33. Believe me, if we do that, we’ll be talking about the WR studs we missed. Also, we had Hurst, Tremble, Sullivan and Thomas and they combined for about half the yards as Thielen. Chark and Mingo was very meh and they were 2 and 3 in yards. The TE from Texas isn’t solving that issue. A legitimate WR next to Thielen and Mingo would absolutely have a much bigger impact. I’d love to have a great young TE but unless we find some George Kittle day 3 gem, we missed the giant TE boat last year because Fitterer had some sort of amazing visit with Mingo and reached again.

Dalton isn’t that good. With 2 more wins we’d still be picking 2nd (maybe still 1st as our SOS would be weaker). 3 more wins and we are still 4th. Heck, 4 more wins and we’d still be picking 5th. Dalton is not improving this team to 7-10 or better, not a chance. We still lost the game he played in by 10. You might be forgetting that we won the first overall pick by a landslide and of course Fitt traded it away. The one time that tanking for the top pick went perfectly.

If we don’t draft a WR at 33, I’ll be really disappointed. There’s good OT depth but I don’t see a top guy falling to 33. We could get a WR at 33 that would normally be a mid first pick due to the WR class depth. We have to take advantage of draft value especially when it’s a huge need. We fuged up last year going Mingo instead of TE in a monster deep class.

D Rob looked bad IMHO. The couple drills he did looked really stiff and his explosiveness was non-existent in the 40. Slow time (worst for DEs) and his 10 yard split was slow. Reminds me of Zach Allen and his numbers are similar. Allen went top of the 3rd and has been OK.

If the Panthers don’t exist, Darnold is released after the draft/before 5th year option is guaranteed.