If they leaned hard into a rebuild, this would be much easier to swallow

[Beast_3000]

3 hours ago, hepcat said:

The expectations also came from Steve Wilks going 6-6 with Matt Rhule’s roster. Wilks made this team look competent again for a little while. We thought now that we have this “all star” coaching staff and the #1 overall draft pick, we would improve. Instead, all of a sudden we suck ass again. And to top it all off we don’t have a 1st round pick next season.

I was against hiring Wilks just because of the mistakes he made in the Tampa game after building a lead, but if I had know what a disaster this season I would have said otherwise. Hiring him, signing Darnold to a 1 year deal, trading Burns, and going after a QB in 2024’s potentially legendary QB class was the move 

Yep great post. It amazes me how no one acknowledges how Wilkes gave us an identity as a tough nose bust you in the mouth team. Yet he we are half a year later and we can’t stop the run and our offense looks abysmal. 
 

Sadly so many of us thought the grass was greener on the other side, but I can  tell you this patch of poop ain’t it.

[hepcat]

1 minute ago, Beast_3000 said:

Yep great post. It amazes me how no one acknowledges how Wilkes gave us an identity as a tough nose bust you in the mouth team. Yet he we are half a year later and we can’t stop the run and our offense looks abysmal. 
 

Sadly so many of us thought the grass was greener on the other side, but I can  tell you this patch of poop ain’t it.

It’s also even more telling that Wilks is coaching for the 49ers along with former Panthers Sam Darnold and Christian McCaffrey who all might get Super Bowl rings this season. 

[33inNC]

2 hours ago, Wundrbread33 said:

So I liked what Wilks did last year, and he gave the team a spark, and made football fun to watch again. And he was far from perfect, but simply an imperfect upgrade from Rhule. It was more of the old school pound the rock and play defense style, but that matched with our lack of talent at QB. Made sense. 
 

But I understood moving on, especially to a more offensively minded staff, and once Evero was hired, I was happy that we didn’t neglect the only positive (yet imperfect) thing about our team: defense. 
 

And that side of the ball remains good enough to win football games. 
 

I am just absolutely stunned by this offense right now. I didn’t expect greatness, but competence. The coaching staff has been praised like crazy, so I expected more. 
 

But through two weeks, I am not seeing scheme adapted to players, but, ONCE AGAIN, players seem forced to do things they aren’t great at. Sanders is being run up the guy like CMC was, on obvious run downs. WR screen are being run for Theilen, instead of far more YAC able players. 
 

There is no motion or misdirection, or rather very little of it. Laviska does special things with the ball…manufacture touches for him in space. I see other teams do this all the time. 
 

Stretch Sanders outside so he can use his footspeed. 
 

We paid for a TE. Get him the ball. 
 

 

I am just stunned, but it’s not like I watch Colts games the last few years, so maybe that’s on me. 
 

 

 

This guy gets it. See how CMC seems to be thriving in SF?  Stop trying to put a square peg in a round hole and let the players do what they do best. 

[Knaakedup]

44 minutes ago, FuFuLamePoo said:

Not taking that Burns deal will be looked back on as one of the worst decisions in franchise history. Imagine how different we would feel right now if we currently had a 2024 first and two 2025 firsts in the cupboard 

EXACTLY

[Beast_3000]

2 hours ago, CRA said:

Biggest issue is we did go rebuild.

the Panthers just didn’t want to use that language to the fanbase that hasn’t seen a winning season in a long time and coming off Rhule.  They wanted excitement going into this season.

 

Nah I have to say I disagree. Ownership and the front office really believed they were close.  The Panthers underestimated the job Wilkes did with Matt Rhules leftovers. Tepper and Fitterer felt if Wilkes could go 6-6 with Baker, PJ Walker and Darnold, without a training camp, or his own personnel, then a competent rookie could potentially make us even more competitive. Setting yourself up in the preseason to say you’re really close to being competitive isn’t a smart move unless you truly believe it. 
 

Tepper and Fitterer dropped the ball by letting Wilkes go. Despite Wilkes stubborn mistakes against Tampa, he did an exemplary job, considering the circumstances he inherited. 

[The Lobo]

7 hours ago, hepcat said:

Oh yea Arizona might have interviewed him but they were clearly looking for a tank commander and damn he may have been a decent choice running a dodo bird offense 

I will say, it feels like they have been more competitive than this team. 

[mrcompletely11]

9 hours ago, Jackie Lee said:

Yeah Seriously should have went with Steichen. He's actually on an upward trajectory

But but but the bad zoom interview 

[Cary Kollins]

Some measured calming of expectations when talking about Bryce in the preseason would have been smart. Instead the staff, and they were probably just being honest, kept telling these glowing stories which made it seem Bryce is the second coming of Peyton  Manning, setting him up with sky-high expectations off the bat.

[mrcompletely11]

https://theathletic.com/4887450/2023/09/21/bryce-young-panthers-ankle-injury-andy-dalton/

 

There’s no sense in rushing back Young if he’s less than 100 percent. This was always going to be a rebuilding year, and getting a week (or more) to take a breath and heal up probably isn’t the worst thing. Dalton said there are two trains of thought on that.

 

LOLOLOLOLOLOL  what happened to the build up the roster and drop the qb talk we've been hearing from the team, what happened to the we can win this division talk from the team?   LOL the fuging season is over after 2 games.  Unreal.  So now we are rebuilding?  Of course we are.

 

Thomas brown said young got hurt in the first half so theres that

[top dawg]

10 hours ago, Jackie Lee said:

Yeah Seriously should have went with Steichen. He's actually on an upward trajectory

To hell with Steichen, Wilks and Reich, Jim Harbaugh was the get, and Tepper ran him off (probably because he didn't want to give Harbaugh control).

[CRA]

52 minutes ago, mrcompletely11 said:

https://theathletic.com/4887450/2023/09/21/bryce-young-panthers-ankle-injury-andy-dalton/

 

There’s no sense in rushing back Young if he’s less than 100 percent. This was always going to be a rebuilding year, and getting a week (or more) to take a breath and heal up probably isn’t the worst thing. Dalton said there are two trains of thought on that.

 

LOLOLOLOLOLOL  what happened to the build up the roster and drop the qb talk we've been hearing from the team, what happened to the we can win this division talk from the team?   LOL the fuging season is over after 2 games.  Unreal.  So now we are rebuilding?  Of course we are.

 

Thomas brown said young got hurt in the first half so theres that

It's called PR.  It's a business.  This team has been a nightmare for years now and was just coming off the comedy show Rhule era.  They can't tell the fanbase we are blowing up a bad team, rebuilding and will continue to suck in the near future.   So they say a bunch of bologna about competing. 

- all new coaches

- all new schemes on both sides of the ball.

- trade away CMC for draft picks

- trade away DJ Moore for a draft pick 

-  that's literally trading away the entire offense 

- draft and intend to start a rookie QB from day 1. 

- fill your roster with short term castoffs from other teams on O

I mean, I still boogles my mind that some people didn't see this as a rebuild because of some presser where Frank said they wanted to compete and win.  It's an offensive league.  Just becaues they opted not to trade Burns didn't somehow make this not a rebuild lol.  You can't trade away everyone.  That's not a rebuild.  You still need some basics.  Like a functional defense when you are doing a ground floor rebuild of your offense. 

[CRA]

9 hours ago, Beast_3000 said:

Nah I have to say I disagree. Ownership and the front office really believed they were close.  The Panthers underestimated the job Wilkes did with Matt Rhules leftovers. Tepper and Fitterer felt if Wilkes could go 6-6 with Baker, PJ Walker and Darnold, without a training camp, or his own personnel, then a competent rookie could potentially make us even more competitive. Setting yourself up in the preseason to say you’re really close to being competitive isn’t a smart move unless you truly believe it. 
 

Tepper and Fitterer dropped the ball by letting Wilkes go. Despite Wilkes stubborn mistakes against Tampa, he did an exemplary job, considering the circumstances he inherited. 

The Wilks Panthers were not good.  There was nothing to build off of.  We weren't coming into this season building off that.   

The one time the Wilks Panthers stepped on the field with an actually good team that got smashed into the ground.  Game over in a couple minutes into the first.  They weren't playing modern football.  It was an anomaly of 1960s era football matching up w/ some of the worst run defenses in the game. 

 

 

[Zaximus]

I respected Wilks but I still believe going a different direction for a coach was correct.  Was Reich the correct choice?  We will see about that.  I feel there may have been better choices but we'll find out.  Like others mentioned, we made the first mistake by not trading Burns for all those picks.  The second mistake will most likely be trading up for Young and trading Moore.  This may change, Young may end up being great, but I still think it may have been better to wait and see who was there at our pick and if there wasn't a QB we felt good about, just take BPA and play the waters with the QB class the next year.  

I still don't regret trading CMC, it was the smart choice even though I know we all miss him.  But as anything hindsight is 20/20 in all this.  As fans, we have no choice now but to throw all support behind Young and Reich and hope they figure it out. 

[fjblair]

It's much uglier than I expected and Tepper is a dud.