The Athletic looks at Darnold and Wentz

[kungfoodude]

9 hours ago, ickmule said:

Hope I’m wrong but I don’t see The frazzled Darnold overcoming that frazzled state. 

We will know fairly quickly. The OL situation is likely to be pretty rough in front of him. If he isn't able to overcome the decision making issues, it's going to be obvious.

Edited September 11, 2021 by kungfoodude

[kungfoodude]

27 minutes ago, Mr. Scot said:

Not contrarian at all...just cautious.

I grant the drafts look nice so far, but I also remember Keary Colbert looking pretty good as a rookie too. Will any of our current guys be like that? Don't think so, but you never know.

Dont take it as a downer though. There's plenty of reasons to be optimistic  It's just my nature to be a "wait and see" guy.

We have a lot of reasons to be that as Panthers fans. We have seen these scenarios play out many times before, both with splash rookies that quickly fizzled out and 2-3 year unproductive players that turned into Pro Bowlers.

Hence the reason I wince when I see this rookie class(or even the 2020 class) being lauded as our best in franchise history. Those kind of predictions rarely end up being the case, for us or any team.

[Tinamedina]

According to the huddle, you can't fix someone. You cant properly develop a qb.

[top dawg]

14 hours ago, kungfoodude said:

@OldhamA

Keep trying to tell you this. It's between his ears. He doesn't have any major mechanics issues.

Yep, that's why I started the thread the other day. Call me crazy, but I don't think I've ever seen a QB be inside his head so much as Darnold. I mean, you can see it on his face. I mean--not in a necessarily negative way--sometimes there seems to be a void. 

Perhaps it's just a matter of building confidence, and Rhule, Brady and Ryan seem like a good bet to fill the void, so to speak--develop Darnold into all that he can be.

 

[ncstatekwi]

15 hours ago, Mr. Scot said:

My jury's still out on all of those things honestly.

Is Sam Darnold going to be a great quarterback? I don't know.

Is Matt Rhule an NFL head coach? I don't know.

Is David Tepper a good owner? I don't know.

I'm hoping this season gives me some clarity on all of those things, and I hope the answers are positive.

We'll see.

[Tr3ach]

16 hours ago, Mr. Scot said:

My jury's still out on all of those things honestly.

Is Sam Darnold going to be a great quarterback? I don't know.

Is Matt Rhule an NFL head coach? I don't know.

Is David Tepper a good owner? I don't know.

I'm hoping this season gives me some clarity on all of those things, and I hope the answers are positive.

We'll see.

To be fair besides maybe the quarterback part, you really shouldnt know the answers for the first couple seasons.   If its instantaneous success then it could be carryover from the previous regime.  Our franchise has changed literally as much as it could the past couple seasons and as far as I'm concerned it's still not finished with the complete rebuild that they started but so far things look promising to me.

[glenwo2]

17 hours ago, Mr. Scot said:

Here: Can Carson Wentz and Sam Darnold be fixed?

The article includes an inside look at the process leading up to the Darnold trade. It jibes pretty well with what Albert Breer reported previously but also offers some new details. One specific item is that the initiative to pursue Darnold started with Matt Rhule.

Excerpts below:

The Panthers’ idea to pursue Sam Darnold happened in an unconventional way. In the lead up to free agency, Rhule and his defensive staff were studying a defensive player who’d played against the Jets last season. As they tried to focus on the defender in question, Rhule’s assistants kept getting sidetracked by the splash plays that Darnold repeatedly made. “‘[They] just kept on remarking, ‘Man, he makes a ton of wild plays,’” Rhule said. “And so, we went back and I studied a bunch of games. You just saw he made plays when there was an opportunity for them to be made.”

It was no secret that Carolina wanted a new quarterback this spring. The Panthers reportedly offered a package to the Lions for Mathew Stafford that included the eighth overall pick. After Detroit shipped Stafford to the Rams for a pair of first-round picks and a deal for Texans’ quarterback Deshaun Watson never materialized, Carolina was running out of options.

Like Wentz, Darnold’s 2020 tape was often hard to watch. He threw 11 interceptions and just nine touchdowns in 12 starts. Darnold completed 59.6 percent of his passes, bringing his career average to a lowly 59.8 percent. During his three years as the Jets’ starter, the only quarterbacks with at least 500 dropbacks who produced a lower EPA/dropback other than Darnold were Blake Bortles, Dwayne Haskins, and Josh Rosen.

Turning around a quarterback with that level of production over such an extended period would essentially be unprecedented in the modern NFL, but the Panthers’ staff believed that Darnold — who was only 23 years old during the 2020 season — still had room to grow. As Rhule points out, Peyton Manning was only 22 and had started 45 college games when he was drafted first overall in 1998. “Now, guys are coming out at the age of 20 and 21,” Rhule said. “And so, I just think you look at a guy at 23 years old and say to yourself, ‘Hey, has he had an opportunity yet to master his craft? Or is he just learning?’”

After Rhule approached general manager Scott Fitterer about chasing Darnold, the front office and coaching staff dove headfirst into their evaluation, studying Darnold as though he was a rookie QB prospect rather than a multi-year starter. They prioritized traits over polish, flash over the finished product. In their estimation, the physical tools that had made Darnold a top-3 pick in 2018 were still apparent. “Guys got a cannon, a quick release, all those things,” Rhule said. “It was just a matter of, ‘Hey, can we discipline his process and discipline his decision-making?’”

With the skill set no longer in question, Rhule moved his attention to whether Darnold had the right makeup to potentially make good on his immense talent. The reviews that Rhule got from coaches who’d worked with Darnold were exemplary across the board, and he also had his own experience to draw from. In early 2019, Rhule interviewed to be the next head coach of the Jets. As part of the process, he met with Darnold and left impressed by a 21-year-old quarterback who’d just finished his rookie season. “His focus and his mindset was so team, team, team,” Rhule said. “That stuck out to me. I had that one interaction with him and it was just like, ‘Hey, this guy has got his head on straight.’”

When the Panthers decided that it was worth inquiring about Darnold, they fortunately had a direct line to Jets’ general manager Joe Douglas. Carolina’s vice president of player personnel Pat Stewart had been a part of the Eagles’ front office with Douglas in 2018 and was able to get the ball rolling on the discussions. Fitterer got involved shortly after, and about a month before the draft, the deal was done.

Owners of the eighth overall pick, Fitterer and the Panthers figured a quarterback might be available to them in the first round. But in their minds, dealing lesser picks for Darnold allowed Carolina to land a young quarterback and chase an elite cornerback prospect in the top 10. The Panthers eventually landed on South Carolina’s Jaycee Horn, whose aggressive approach to the position aligned with what Carolina wants out of its corners. Misguided or not, the Panthers saw the Darnold-Horn combo as a way to potentially have their cake and eat it too.

Rhule says that after Darnold arrived in the building, the focus was less on tweaking his mechanics and more on rewiring his mindset for the position. In his time with the Jets, Darnold developed a nasty habit of trying to make the heroic play when the situation around him started to deteriorate. Carolina’s bet on Darnold is a bet on how the Panthers’ collection of receiving talent and Joe Brady’s offense can lessen the load on the quarterback’s shoulders.

 

Was it misguided, though?

4 hours ago, bigskypanthersguy said:

I want to hope.

However, I can't shag the nagging feeling that Tepper AND Rhule were bad choices and all of this is going to blow up in our face.

Let us both hope that feeling turns out to be nothing more than indigestion, my friend. 

[Khyber53]

17 hours ago, Mr. Scot said:

My jury's still out on all of those things honestly.

Is Sam Darnold going to be a great quarterback? I don't know.

Is Matt Rhule an NFL head coach? I don't know.

Is David Tepper a good owner? I don't know.

I'm hoping this season gives me some clarity on all of those things, and I hope the answers are positive.

We'll see.

This is where I am, across the board. If we can answer yes to all three of those things, and have that answer by this Sunday, then our schedule could lead us somewhere great.

We have a lot of weak teams for the first three quarters of the season sprinkled in with some mid-level contenders. We don't have really top tier competition until the final four games, with the Bills and two tilts with the Bucs (who may have already locked things up or fluttered out by then). 

There's an argument to be made that if it all clicks, we could be looking at 12-5 before this ends. If two out of three of those posits goes negative, we could just as easily be looking at 5-12. The thing about it is, we're going to know within the first four games what we have.

It's kind of exciting, but there's an equal mix of trepidation on my part. I'm not convinced of anything yet but I sure am hopeful.

[1usctrojan]