LinvilleGorge

This was my big concern about Bryce in terms of his actual play, not regarding his measurables/pure talent level concerns. Watching him play at Bama he was throwing to a lot of wide ass open receivers. I just didn't see a lot in his play that I could take and directly translate onto an NFL field. It really seemed all the analysts fell into a deep group think echo chamber and convinced themselves that this QB savant was going to overcome all of his physical talent shortcomings simply by being so brilliant. I've never seen such a physically limited QB prospect completely dupe the football world and it baffled me at the time and still baffles me today. All the struggles we've seen from Bryce in the NFL seemed very predictable based on his college play.

When it comes to NFL prospects I really don't care. Yeah, all things being equal I'd prefer the UNC prospect over all others. But ultimately I just want the best prospects and the Panthers' results on the field clearly show we haven't been doing a great job of identifying the best prospects.

I mean, he has a point when it comes to Clemson and the Panthers. Clemson has been by far and away the biggest producer of NFL talent within the Panthers' viewing area during the Panthers' existence and to not draft a single Clemson prospect during that time? Pretty bizarre. It'd be like the Falcons having never drafted a UGA player.

There's some okay-ish college games on this evening for us to get our football fix. Boise State vs. South Florida ECU vs. NCSU Nebraska vs. Rutgers

That dates back to my college days and their turn toward "idiots screaming the dumbest hot takes at each other" programming. ESPN was a helluva lot better when it was basically just live sports and a neverending cycle of SportsCenter. My dorm TV was pretty much on ESPN 24/7 back then and then came the hot take bullshit.

The league will never agree to it because it would make it painfully obvious which team's were actually driving the revenue for the league and the owners of those teams would start wanting their fair share of the cut versus an equal share.

It really seemed to me that the wind went out of Frank's sails when it became obvious we were drafting Bryce. Bryce didn't fit his system and he knew it. I don't know if we led him to believe he'd have more input on the QB decision or if he just thought he'd be able to get in the room and be more convincing, but either way that was a combo that was never gonna work out.

Cam had lost his ability to throw deep from the shoulder injuries and CMC was really the only receiver we had on the roster who fit what we had to tailor our offense to in order to adapt to Cam's new arm. We'd built an offense around running the ball and downfield passing. A better coaching staff would've been evolving the passing game to be more balanced but we had a pretty limited offensive coaching staff and they had a cheat code at QB.

I honestly don't think that was as true as most believed. Cam was a very efficient passer in Norv's system and again in his year in NE. I think we hurt him in his development and as an overall QB trying to tailor TOO much to his unique talents. The read option should've always remained a staple, but after year two the passing game should've evolved into a more typical modern day NFL passing offense vs. an obsession with chunk play deep ball setups.

This is all most of the "Bryce haters" are saying. Sure, you have a few who remain all the way out on him but most of us are somewhere between "doubtful but willing to wait and see" and "cautiously optimistic". Personally, I find myself flip flopping between those two stances. Prior to the preseason games I was more on the "cautiously optimistic" camp but after we looked like rotten steaming hot garbage all preseason it's tough not to fall into the "doubtful but willing to wait and see" camp.

The part the true believers don't want to grapple with was that "the best of times" Bryce was still basically a mid-tier starter and that might be generous. If he doesn't continue to progress from there then we're cooked as an organization. It would be QB purgatory. He'd basically be just good enough for the organization to be afraid to move on but not good enough to compete as a legit contender. I'd rather he flat out bomb than be the guy he was after the benching. I don't want purgatory. All I want from Bryce this season is boom or bust, please nothing in between.

To put it in perspective, this is a deep ball thrower. Notice how the efficiency basically has minimal drop off regardless of range. This is Bryce Young The other QB is Joe Burrow.

Tepper needs to see himself all the way out of football decisions. Tepper the businessman would've already fired Tepper the VP of Panthers Football Operations several times already. He needs to look himself on the mirror and see that and do that.

Yep. Tepper has shown a very quick trigger finger on coaches and I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a reputation of him being very heavy handed in terms of his input on personnel decisions when it matters to him. Not exactly a situation that folks with options are gonna be chomping at the bit for.

Gonna be interesting to see how that works out for them in the NIL/portal era. Not sure high level NFL prospects are going to want to sign up.

The biggest issue with Tepper shopping for new GMs and HCs is that we are stuck shopping in the garbage bin and I think he found that out in the last go round. Anyone with other options simply didn't want to consider the Panthers until other options were exhausted. And I don't think simply outbidding the other owners is an option. Pretty sure Dave got a stern talking to after landing Rhule simply by offering a contract that the Giants weren't willing to touch.

Are you really going to pretend that SCar's overall pool of talent vs. Clemson's is even a debate during the Panthers' existence? I mean, I'm a huge UNC fan but I'm not going to humiliate myself trying to make that argument.

If Bryce flops it's 100% gonna be Sellers in '26. LOL But you're right, this organizations fascination with SCar prospects and utter disregard for Clemson prospects is just bizarre.

Uh oh. @CRA gonna crash out. LOL

You can rollover unused cap. How much is a mid-round pick really worth in cap space? I wouldn't want to eat much.

I'd rather have Renfrow as insurance. My concern isn't Coker, it's XL. If XL doesn't step up, I'd put Coker in that role and Renfrow in the slot and keep it moving.

I hope he pans out I just didn't see anything out of him during preseason and it seemed like all the talk about him looking good on camp pretty much evaporated once the pads went on.

Coker for sure. I see him sliding into AT's role. I didn't see much out of Horn and would've rather kept Renfrow.

Well, now the Renfrow release makes no sense. Even if the hammy was lingering just put him on PUP while he rests up.

You're right about the butterfly effect but wrong about the source. David Tepper is the butterfly's wings. Hiring Matt Rhule was a downstream effect