Mike Kaye explains DJ Johnson pick

[Gerry Green]

I absolutely love this time of year. The Huddle draft experts come out of the woodwork to let us all know how good, or bad our draft pics were. It definitely makes for some fun reading. Now on to OTAs and mini camps, and everything else that leads up to the season. Cuz I got a feeling, yes, I got a feeling this year is going to be a whole lot of fun.

[Growl]

Just now, Gerry Green said:

I absolutely love this time of year. The Huddle draft experts come out of the woodwork to let us all know how good, or bad our draft pics were. It definitely makes for some fun reading. Now on to OTAs and mini camps, and everything else that leads up to the season. Cuz I got a feeling, yes, I got a feeling this year is going to be a whole lot of fun.

Hey man how are those Bryce young takes holding up 

[ladypanther]

Most people had been loving the new staff.  Now a lot of people seem to think they are incompetent.  Going to trust their eval.  Remember the last time the Panthers had a "freak of nature" on the D?

Evero sees something in this guy.  Last year's Denver defensive players loved Evero...said he made everyone better.  I am excited to see what he can do with our newest "freak".

[Swaggasaurus]

22 minutes ago, theinstrumental said:

"These picks don't matter anyway" is how you slowly, invisibly lower you chances of winning until you take yourself out of contention completely. We're short a third from the Corral trade and a fourth from the DJ Johnson trade, when according to the front office, a third and a fourth is the price for a guy who's so good that you just have to jump up and take him. A guy like DJ Johnson or Matt Corral!

Missed evaluations happen everywhere. Quantity does not always equal quality. To quote the horrible Dave Gettleman, “do you want a quarter or do you want 5 nickels?”

We might have missed out on a game changer by trading 132, but likely not. Review picks 39-80 and even the ones after and get back with me on your can’t miss guys

[CPF4LIFE]

So basically as of right now if Burns gets hurt we are screwed. Thats great. 

[Gerry Green]

2 minutes ago, CPF4LIFE said:

So basically as of right now if Burns gets hurt we are screwed. Thats great. 

 

Yeah, might as well mail it in right?

[vorbis]

it's obvious the Panthers valued Johnson highly at that point in the draft, and made the move they felt they needed to to get him.

the more drafts I watch, the less attached I get to how *I feel* about how the draft is going to play out. I don't watch film of hardly any of these prospects until they're drafted by the Panthers, so I'm not going to pretend I know better than an entire department of professional scouts and "league observers."

so to me, a lot of the talk about "he would have been available at $X_pick" is just noise. whether he's "worth" the pick at 80, also, is really only an insightful query relative to the snapshot most people have in their heads of the draft order before the first pick was made.

the only thing that matters now is how he plays. I kept looking at this, scratching my head. he had such a weird RAS profile:

he was a 2-way player for Oregon in 2021. would practice on offense and on defense. he's been moved around the defense quite a bit during his college football odyssey. that to me says multiple coaching staffs have looked at Johnson and said, here is a great football athlete. let's figure out how to get good results out of these talents and traits. in that sense, the Panthers are only doing what the coaching staffs at Miami U and Oregon also did.

he only settled into a role this past season, and his production went up significantly. and this weird-ass RAS profile tells me, here is an explosive mover who doesn't have the refinement right now to perform well in agility drills. so the RAW is real. but so is the underlying physical ability.

Dom Capers has a history of finding pass rushing talent, and front-7 talent, in the dustiest corners of the draft and free agency, going back to the early 90s with the Steelers. so with him and Ejiro Evero, I feel like Johnson is set up to have the best chance to carve out a career and a second contract for himself.

I'm concerned about the mindset and attitude of a guy who would smack the **** out of a fan who was being a dick on the field after a hard-fought loss in a rivalry game. it just is what it is. maybe the fan deserved to have the **** smacked out of him, but if you're getting caught up in that, maybe you can be manipulated and/or baited on the field by strong-willed opponents.

I'm less concerned about him being an unfinished product as an older draftee, given his physical ability, kind of weird path during college football, and the coaching situation he's coming into. I'm also less concerned about the circumstances of the Panthers seeing a run on pass rushers in the 3rd round, and moving up to get a particular guy who was one of the last sitting on a particular tier. that's just tactics of the draft.

[Stuart Smith]

6 minutes ago, CPF4LIFE said:

So basically as of right now if Burns gets hurt we are screwed. Thats great. 

We still have free agency and some money. There are always “finds” that do not get drafted. I expect the Panthers will sign quite a few. 

[OceanPanther]

14 minutes ago, ladypanther said:

Most people had been loving the new staff.  Now a lot of people seem to think they are incompetent.  Going to trust their eval.  Remember the last time the Panthers had a "freak of nature" on the D?

Evero sees something in this guy.  Last year's Denver defensive players loved Evero...said he made everyone better.  I am excited to see what he can do with our newest "freak".

I'll never understand why fans who are  sales people, truck drivers, doctors, lawyers, native American chiefs, think they can read a bio on a player,   watch 4 min video ,  written by a talking head, or twitter guy , and think they know more than professional coaches,,  who's jobs are on the line.  Yeah, they don't get them all right,, but they find needles in a haystack more they twitter guy does.  I don't think Johnsons a reach for a possible 3/4 defense.  Time will tell.

[ladypanther]

3 minutes ago, vorbis said:

I'm concerned about the mindset and attitude of a guy who would smack the **** out of a fan who was being a dick on the field after a hard-fought loss in a rivalry game. it just is what it is. maybe the fan deserved to have the **** smacked out of him, but if you're getting caught up in that, maybe you can be manipulated and/or baited on the field by strong-willed opponents.

I liked his statement about it when asked yesterday.  He made no excuses and learned from the experience.  Reich also addressed it, saying they had spoken with him about it.

This is what the oregon HC said about the incident:

“You realize that DJ was in a moment there in which he certainly wishes he would’ve acted different, but something was said that was pretty extreme to him that some people might act in a similar fashion,” Lanning stated.

“I certainly don’t condone the behavior,” the coach continued. “I know DJ wishes he could have that moment back. It’s an intense situation, but those things happen at times, and I know that he would handle it different if given the opportunity.”

[Mr. Scot]

1 minute ago, OceanPanther said:

I'll never understand why fans who are  sales people, truck drivers, doctors, lawyers, native American chiefs, think they can read a bio on a player,   watch 4 min video ,  written by a talking head, or twitter guy , and think they know more than professional coaches,,  who's jobs are on the line.  Yeah, they don't get them all right,, but they find needles in a haystack more they twitter guy does.  I don't think Johnsons a reach for a possible 3/4 defense.  Time will tell.

The internet makes everyone think they're a genius.

[Mr. Scot]

50 minutes ago, theinstrumental said:

There's no need to insist on ignorance in this situation. On the field it's going to look like we don't have a fourth-round pick that we would've had if we hadn't decided that we had to move up to get this guy. Plenty of publicly-available estimates exist that can tell you the value of a fourth round pick. We know what we lost immediately.

The only thing we don't know is whether this dude would've been there when we picked next. As it stands now, there remain several free agent EDGE guys, and an unknown number of dudes will get cut as camp progresses, and an even greater unknown could be available for trade for, say, a third- and fourth-round pick. We also know who was still on the board at our actual pick, and "big edge who tested well" describes Dylan Horton, Ade Adebawore, Isaiah McGuire...

It also reeks of the Seahawks' normal process from the past several years, which was to "get their guy" no matter what anybody else thought of them. It didn't work well for them, and they finally fixed it, but it looks like we're not going to do the same.

 https://twitter.com/benbbaldwin/status/1651930498350960640

Yeah, that doesn't actually make any sense.

Until we see actual results, all of it is speculation.

I don't really put a whole lot of value on speculation.

[Mr. Scot]

50 minutes ago, CRA said:

and it always gets weird where people act like football folks are mega geniuses that shouldn’t dare questioned by mere mortals…...  I mean, how could they ever do something dumb.   NFL is full of dumb people just like every other inch of society.  

I'd say this is weirder.

I'd add that the things We've read about our current leadership don't match up much with your suggestions.

Edited April 29, 2023 by Mr. Scot

[Harbingers]

27 minutes ago, ladypanther said:

Most people had been loving the new staff.  Now a lot of people seem to think they are incompetent.  Going to trust their eval.  Remember the last time the Panthers had a "freak of nature" on the D?

Evero sees something in this guy.  Last year's Denver defensive players loved Evero...said he made everyone better.  I am excited to see what he can do with our newest "freak".

It’s a sports form. If you don’t expect knee jerk reactions….