LinvilleGorge

It's baffling. We've been blowing off preseason for years now acting like it's irrelevant and we'll just flip the switch come the regular season and take the league by storm. We've been approaching it like we're a contender year in and year out, not a team trying to claw ourselves out of the basement. Preseason doesn't matter if you're a contender with an established football culture and you're basically just trying to stay healthy and evaluate the bottom of your roster. That's not us. That hasn't been us for a long time. But we keep acting like it.

I've said numerous times during the Tepper era that the Panthers would honestly be better off making major decisions via poll on the Huddle and that's just fuging sad. LOL

Truth be told, if App had realized this NIL stuff was coming down the pipeline I don't think they would've ever made the leap to D1. I never like it for them anyway. I'd rather compete for titles in D1AA than compete for toilet bowls in D1.

Yeah, it's honestly a lot more volatile when emotions run high. Apathy is the overall general fanbase vibe in recent years.

Boise State of the early '00s might just be the most entertaining football team of all time. They always punched well above their weight class and when they'd play a big dog they'd let it ALL hang out. That Boise State/OU Fiesta Bowl might be the single most entertaining football game I've ever watched live.

Hell, you still had some fans grumbling about Cam during an MVP season. LOL

Yep, that's the normal pathway these situations take.

Burns also isn't half the player and we stupidly turned down two firsts for him a year prior from the Rams before the league realized that he had basically plateaued in the "good" category and was likely never going to make the leap to great. The Rams made their offer when the expectation was for him to become great.

Honestly the vast majority are somewhere in the middle. There's a few with absolutely no hope, a few with unbridled optimism and everyone else is somewhere on the spectrum of cautiously optimistic and hoping for the best while fully expecting the worst. I'm firmly in that last camp. LOL

Just the way it goes. As the team goes, so goes the fanbase. If you need nothing but positivity in your life then my suggestion is to bail on Tepper's Panthers. I find myself watching fewer and fewer games and giving up earlier in the season with each passing year. It is what it is. Don't let the floundering of his team negatively impact your life.

Hey @frankwand @Icege, how about y'all do us all a favor and put each other on ignore? Thanks.

This is what seven losing seasons and looking like trash in the preseason again looks like, y'all. Hate to say, it doesn't breed a lot of positivity. We had this exact same thread last year. Some folks left and started a Discord group. Maybe check it out. I don't know what else to tell you.

Because at 30 (he'll turn 31 on December 5th) he's likely to be past his prime before this team is ready to meaningfully compete all the while it's draining us of cap space and depriving us of draft capital to add younger talent. It's just not a smart move for this organization at this time, but it's the exact type of move we've been making the entire Tepper era where we're more than happy to shoot ourselves in the dick for the future while trying to squeeze 5-6 wins out of a 3-4 win roster. Just brilliant.

Well yeah, everyone would trade trash for treasure. That goes without saying.

This is like saying "yeah, I'd trade a double wide trailer, an '82 Firebird that's not running, and a scratch off lottery ticket for your mansion... oh, and I'm only willing to pay half the property taxes"

This would be straight out of the Tepper playbook. If we can't be good, then let's sacrifice the future to try to be the best bad team that we can be.

Please no. The last thing this organization needs right now is big money players on the wrong side of 30.

Yeah, we've known this for years. Have you missed the years of Hurney meatball jokes on here?

Yeah, continued gray area would be awful IMO. If Bryce looks mid and we win day 7 games... ugh. That feels like purgatory to me.

All I want out of this season is Bryce to show us he's the one or for Bryce to be complete ass and get us a pick that might get us the one. That's it that's all.

Does that work in the modern NFL? Let's be honest, if prime Manning or Brady could walk through your door and suit up today, how many current NFL teams aren't taking him over their current guy? Honestly, there might only be one.

Probably lingering effects from the illness that kept him out of practice.

Yeah, injuries are just part of the reality of the game of football but dammit, why can't we have nice things? Seems like every time we stumble onto an elite player guess who's gonna get derailed by injuries?

Evero supposed to be the next big thing. Rhule was supposed to be the next big thing. Bryce was supposed to be the next big thing. I think the thing is that David Tepper just keeps falling for hype trains. This guy is going to try to trade EVERYTHING for Arch Manning. LOL

Yep. Plenty of us said it at the time. Edges started flying off the board and we made a panic move to over-draft an older prospect who hadn't done much producing.