Panthers free agency preview from The Athletic

[Mr. Scot]

Pretty good read (subscription required)

A realistic look at 18 possible free agent targets (of all flavors)

Don’t look for the Panthers to kick off free agency this week with a big spending spree, as Matt Rhule and Scott Fitterer have tempered expectations for a team that remains in a rebuild. Acquiring the Texans’ Deshaun Watson would certainly speed the process. But the Panthers have needs besides a franchise quarterback.

“We’re not just one player away,” Rhule said last week. “We’re in a situation where we have to keep building our team. … We have to be really targeted.”

With Christian McCaffrey and Shaq Thompson restructuring their contracts last week, the Panthers have about $30 million in cap space, although Rhule said it’s effectively $13 million after accounting for rookie contracts and the $7 million the team will set aside for in-season moves.

The Panthers made a $13.75 million commitment to right tackle Taylor Moton last week, and there will be teams that come out of the gates with wallets open this week. But with the salary cap shrinking to $182.5 million, expect to see a number of players take one-year contracts so they can hit the market again after the new TV money kicks in.

It sounds like this is where the Panthers plan to do a lot of their shopping, beginning with Monday’s start to the legal tampering window.

“We’ll talk to a lot of agents starting on Monday and see where the market is,” Fitterer said. “However, this might be one of those years where if you just wait and are patient, you might be able to get quite a few players in that middle class who get pinched by the cap. Even though we’ve created a lot of cap room, this is not a year we’re going to go wild spending money. We’re going to be very judicious in how we go about this.”

The Panthers will home in on specific position groups and figure to be most active during the second wave of free agency.