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While I appreciate those of you who start threads and keep up with the news, I sometimes start a thread because I do not have a clear picture of what Huddlers think about this or that. So, I share my random lunacy with you to get your reactions. Unless I missed something, there has been very little noise in the areas of restructuring, re-signing, rumor mongering, etc. from Panther headquarters. That either means we have a top, triple, pinky-swear secret or two, or we simply are not headed for a big splash. So since I had psychology in college and made a B-, I feel qualified to look at things from Morgan's perspective. First, his primary target last year was to pay Milton Williams a ton of money. When Morgan did not get Williams, he immediately reverted to enter a bidding war with Tershawn Wharton, eventually signing him to a 3-year, $45m contract. Was this impulsive? Everyone pretty much had Williams coming to Carolina, and at the last minute, the Pats, big spenders in 2025, took Williams from under Morgan's nose. The Pats made the Super Bowl and the Panthers reacted by signing a bust. In almost an equal number of snaps, Williams had twice the pressures (seen above) and twice the sacks (4 to 2). And in the aftermath, he signed another DT (Brown III), ultimately spending the same amount of money as Milton Williams cost. These may or may not be related, but in the words of the great Dave Gettleman, "I'd rather have a quarter over two dimes." Is that what happened? You could argue that we had 2 needs, but we did not get an elite player--we did not make that splash--instead, we signed 2 mediocre players. Maybe we signed Moehrig because S is not that coveted position that a losing team in a small market has to overpay to attract. Who really knows? Morgan is still a young executive. So this is what I think he learned: 1. Everyone knew about Carolina and Williams as we entered the tampering period. So did the Patriots, and they walked into the saloon at the last second and bullied him out into the streets. Morgan got embarrassed, I would think, because he gave away leverage, it seems. New England simply waited for Carolina's offer and outbid them. They held all the cards, and they had the cash. They had tons of cap room and Carolina did not, so Morgan had to know better than to raise the stakes vs. the guy at the table behind a huge stack of chips. He folded. That happens. Maybe he should have been more secretive, maybe he should have gone all in. But losing Williams to NE is probably not where he made his biggest error. Immediately chasing Wharton was his biggest error, it seems. 2. Since they were not quiet about it, Morgan reacted quickly, as if to save face and fill this huge need. Then signed Brown III. e grabbed a defensive lineman from the same DL Chris Jones plays on--who do you think got the focus when teams played the Chiefs. Wharton had Brown here, you could argue, but in KC, Wharton had the benefit of knowing that most of the time, the opposition was coming from behind--that makes reads very easy. Wharton had good numbers in a perfect environment. So it looks as though it is possible Morgan made 2 mistakes. He showed his cards with Williams, perhaps, and overpaid for "Plan B" by not reading the fine print. As a result, we got 2 poor to mediocre DL when we could have had a DT to pair with Brown. 3. Morgan settled down in free agency after that act of desperation, agreeing to terms with Moehrig, a S we needed. (3 years, $51m), and Patrick Jones (Edge) to give us pass-rushing depth Behind Gamecocks Clowney and Wonnum. Then the draft came along and he grabbed two rookies. To save cap room, he released Clowney, who went on to get 9 sacks and 40 pressures in Dallas to save about $8m in cap room. He could not have foreseen that, or the Wonnum and Jones II injuries, but one has to wonder how often he regretted that as the season unfolded. One could argue that the defense was better, but how much better would it have been if Morgan had not made some choices that backfired? So for now it is quiet. To me, that could mean that Morgan learned a lot from last year. -
By raleigh-panther · Posted
Mike Kaye from the Observer also projected this Round 1, No. 19 Monroe Freeling, OT, Georgia it makes sense The most expensive position after qb is typically LT …a promising rookie, replacing a severely injured LT waiting on a lot of money for the second contract, plus an aging RT who has missed a bit of time, sure helps a lot …particularly when the little fella’s decision is coming if the wagon is going to be hitched to one of the historically small QBs, that line best be as good as possible -
I think Proctor will go later than a lot of people expect. The history of players his size is not good. So I’d say Miller goes ahead of him. But I’m just guessing here
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