10 best players on the roster right now:

[ColumbusCounty]

Right Now ...your top 10 ... and probably close to in order ...IMO..once again IMO..

CMC

Moore

Moton

Boston 

Short 

Shaq 

Bridgewater 

Burris 

Chris Reed or Curtis Samuel(if you factor in the over and under throws) 

 

I left out all rookies and last year's rookies.. not enough to form an opinion 

 

 

 

 

 

[jfra78]

2 hours ago, LinvilleGorge said:

Yeah, honestly that made it really set in. Once you get past our best 3-4 players it's tough to argue that we have anyone who would start for most other NFL teams. Ouch.

This is an exaggeration.  Those 10 players could start on many teams.  

[LinvilleGorge]

10 minutes ago, jfra78 said:

This is an exaggeration.  Those 10 players could start on many teams.  

Some here and there. Certainly not most.

[onmyown]

Don’t think we even have 10 good players. Also don’t know how you put Short or a rookie on that list. Explains why people are so disappointed all the time. I guess you did specify ‘best’ players.

CMC, Moton

Borderline:

Shaq, Burns, Moore

Don’t know if I can even name anyone else lol. One thing’s for sure, expectations need to need to be extremely low this season...or whenever football comes back.

Other than CMC and the new rookies you could literally wipe this team and start over and not be any worse off.

[TheCasillas]

10 minutes ago, onmyown said:

Borderline:

Shaq, Burns, Moore

 

lol.

[TheSpecialJuan]

CMC, Teddy, DJ Moore, Curtis Samuel, Robby Anderson, Taylor Moton, Okung

Tre Boston, Brian Burns, Kawann Short, Shaq Thompson, Michael Palardy 

[t96]

3 hours ago, stbugs said:

And yet we are going to spend $90M on 3 mediocre players in 2020 and 2021 and we also lost a 3rd and 4th round comp due to two of those players. Anyone here going to argue that Short, Bridgewater and Anderson are top players in the league and core to our rebuild? What a waste of a golden opportunity to get a franchise QB, load up on offense/OL in the 2021 draft and have a ton of cap space to splurge when our young D and young O have a couple years of seasoning. Oh and by 2022, when we are ready to ascend and spend all the extra FA money we have, Brady and Brees will be retired and Ryan will be 37 and still suck. What a wasted opportunity to try and compete now.

It doesn’t really hurt much to keep Short around. We don’t save much by getting rid of him and as disappointing and overpaid as he’s been lately he still clearly has the talent and potential and our D desperately needs playmakers. Unlikely he’s in the long term plans but I’ve seen much stranger things happen in sports. He could rebound and accept a team friendly contract theoretically.

Anderson was a great addition. I think he’s a legit #2 and the contract we got him on was great value. I could definitely see him sticking around as a core piece under Rhule and along with Moore give us our best top 2 wideouts since prime Smitty and Moose. 
 

The Teddy signing still confuses me. I’ll let it play out but I don’t really see why we made that move either and no I don’t see him as a core piece going forward.

[onmyown]

46 minutes ago, TheCasillas said:

lol.

Shaq is due more so to the money he just got paid. He is one of the highest paid 4-3 linebackers in the league. And including ‘3-4 linebackers’ he is 13th highest paid in the NFL. I don’t know what you all have seen from shaq, and not sure if losing Luke and having a desperate need that influenced this kind of money but I don’t see it. How good he is on this team vs. taking the rest of the NFL into consideration well yea I guess he’s one of the best but that doesn’t say much.

If people can drag down CMC for padding stats in garbage time, why does Moore get a pass? Except we know CMC can play outside of garbage time. Moore has yet to prove he can be a #1, his rookie year was decent but it’s hard to tell what exactly the Panther’s have in Moore. It’s also weird to me Moore all of a sudden played better when Smitty called him out telling him he needed to do more (no pun intended). As much as Smitty gushed over the pick, just this year he states he sees Moore as a solid #2. In any case he has a lot more to prove than one year of garbage time.

Burns desperately needs a sophomore year so we can see what he looks like when opposing teams actually take him seriously. His limited playing time as a rotational rusher his rookie year is not enough to convince me, just like Short’s one good year that heavily relied on Star eating tackles. And we all see how his contract has worked out so far. 

Perhaps I’m looking at this in more of terms of if these players are legitimately good or the best players on the Panther’s team. Being the best on this team right now isn’t saying much and isn’t worth a discussion IMO.

[TheCasillas]

8 minutes ago, onmyown said:

Shaq is due more so to the money he just got paid. He is one of the highest paid 4-3 linebackers in the league. And including ‘3-4 linebackers’ he is 13th highest paid in the NFL. I don’t know what you all have seen from shaq, and not sure if losing Luke and having a desperate need that influenced this kind of money but I don’t see it. How good he is on this team vs. taking the rest of the NFL into consideration well yea I guess he’s one of the best but that doesn’t say much.

If people can drag down CMC for padding stats in garbage time, why does Moore get a pass? Except we know CMC can play outside of garbage time. Moore has yet to prove he can be a #1, his rookie year was decent but it’s hard to tell what exactly the Panther’s have in Moore. It’s also weird to me Moore all of a sudden played better when Smitty called him out telling him he needed to do more (no pun intended). As much as Smitty gushed over the pick, just this year he states he sees Moore as a solid #2. In any case he has a lot more to prove than one year of garbage time.

Burns desperately needs a sophomore year so we can see what he looks like when opposing teams actually take him seriously. His limited playing time as a rotational rusher his rookie year is not enough to convince me, just like Short’s one good year that heavily relied on Star eating tackles. And we all see how his contract has worked out so far. 

Perhaps I’m looking at this in more of terms of if these players are legitimately good or the best players on the Panther’s team. Being the best on this team right now isn’t saying much and isn’t worth a discussion IMO.

You stated that Burns, Moore, and Shaq would be borderline starters. I'd be curious if you could name 62 WR's that are better than Moore, 62 LB's better than Shaq, 62 Ends better than Burns. 

There is a lot of you are overlooking: Check out YAC for Moore, Win rate for Burns, and Tackle win rate for Shaq. You'll see that these 3 individuals are the best in the league at this. So to say they are borderline starters, I'd rethink that. These guys on any other team, are cream of the crop. 

[onmyown]

1 minute ago, TheCasillas said:

You stated that Burns, Moore, and Shaq would be borderline starters. I'd be curious if you could name 62 WR's that are better than Moore, 62 LB's better than Shaq, 62 Ends better than Burns. 

There is a lot of you are overlooking: Check out YAC for Moore, Win rate for Burns, and Tackle win rate for Shaq. You'll see that these 3 individuals are the best in the league at this. So to say they are borderline starters, I'd rethink that. These guys on any other team, are cream of the crop. 

Borderline starters? I chose them as borderline best players on the team and used ‘best players’ as comparing them to the rest of the NFL, how big of sample size they have, and their money. Things things matter more than one year of an outstanding stat. Nothing about being a starter.

[stbugs]

2 hours ago, TheCasillas said:

Where are you getting 90m from? I counted 65m.  I dont think we can include KK short as a waste, that was a getts move, and at that time KK was the best in the game. No one could of predicted his injury fall off.

 

Also, TB has a built in out for us in his contract after this year and he is only 5million in dead cap the following year. We really are in excellent condition when it comes to cap space for years to come. Anderson is only on the books for two years. That means no dead cap space if he is released next year. These are all short term solutions that zero implications on our cap in the future. Our new cap guy knows wtf he is doing.

I’d count Short as a waste because we could spend another $27M on him the next two years (not dead cap or already accounted for).

The $90M in cap space is from Short ($27M for 2020/2021), $42M for Teddy and $20M for Anderson. Those two cost us 3rd and 4th comp picks as well as a lot of cap space.

Also, your bold is wrong. We can save this $90M and roll it over. Our cap situation isn’t bad but to say these short term solutions have zero future implications is incorrect. We could go for the top pick and have a lot more money to rollover and use like the Broncos did to sign Ware and Talib or the Chiefs signing Alexander and Mathieu when they were ready to compete not when they weren’t a playoff contender.

Saying they are off the books in 2 years seems like it would be a good thing for the cap, but why spend $90M you can rollover for bridges and waste good comp picks you could turn into Interior OL picks when we don’t have the team talent to compete now.

[stbugs]

32 minutes ago, t96 said:

It doesn’t really hurt much to keep Short around. We don’t save much by getting rid of him and as disappointing and overpaid as he’s been lately he still clearly has the talent and potential and our D desperately needs playmakers. Unlikely he’s in the long term plans but I’ve seen much stranger things happen in sports. He could rebound and accept a team friendly contract theoretically.

Anderson was a great addition. I think he’s a legit #2 and the contract we got him on was great value. I could definitely see him sticking around as a core piece under Rhule and along with Moore give us our best top 2 wideouts since prime Smitty and Moose. 
 

The Teddy signing still confuses me. I’ll let it play out but I don’t really see why we made that move either and no I don’t see him as a core piece going forward.

I’ll give you Anderson if the plan is to extend him and maybe let Samuel go. Why pay Short an extra $13M for a lost year? He sure wasn’t a great mentor to Butler, so what’s the point other than flushing more money away. $27M yo hope he signs a team friendly extension like CJ in 2022 when he’s washed up makes no sense to me. Cut bait and roll it over.

[t96]

9 minutes ago, stbugs said:

I’ll give you Anderson if the plan is to extend him and maybe let Samuel go. Why pay Short an extra $13M for a lost year? He sure wasn’t a great mentor to Butler, so what’s the point other than flushing more money away. $27M yo hope he signs a team friendly extension like CJ in 2022 when he’s washed up makes no sense to me. Cut bait and roll it over.

Pay him an extra $13M??? Pretty sure that cutting KK this year would’ve saved like $1-2M and had like $17M dead money cap hit. What benefit is there to freeing up that $1-2M? We can cut him after the year and save around $9M next year, which will almost certainly happen. 

 

I’m not necessarily advocating keeping him around longer but there have certainly been instances of players like KK who’ve had good and bad years getting steadier later in their career or with a new coaching staff, and it is definitely a possibility here. Let’s say he gets double digit sacks again and is willing to take a 2-3 year extension for reasonable money. You’d have to at least consider doing that or just keeping him through this contract.

[Shotgun]

CMC  is probably the only one on that list that is top 20 in their position. I do think CMC is the best back in the league though.