The Case for(or Against) Drafting/Signing a TE

[kungfoodude]

38 minutes ago, raleigh-panther said:

Woukd be a great addition You know the issues

from my prespective, 2 things the Panthers must do

1. Edge or pass rushers

or 2 oline

or 3 oline

or as Andy Reid says, when in doubt, draft a lineman

it is time   That oline is troubling plus a small person at QB 

they  

1. Can do a lot better than mayes at center,

2. and lewis has had injuries all season.
3. Moton should not have  been resigned long term,

4. corbett is a shadow and will probably be released 

5 and Christianson coming off Achilles  

6 and the kicker, would be Ickey’s contract if they decide to keep him

INMO rookie and contracts will be needed to offset all that 

I think OL is a pretty low overall concern but every single offseason there should be an attempt to upgrade through the draft.

Edge rusher there are no easy answers, IMO. If a truly elite prospect falls to us in the 1st, that is fine. This draft seems to be much more heavy on 3-4 DE's or 4-3 DE's than it is on elite EDGE guys. You just have to keep plugging away every offseason and hope it works out. I don't think it's worth trading a ton of draft capital over at the moment, despite being a crucial roster weakness. Do the best you can and build a better roster and maybe eventually we will be in a position to be making a Parsons level trade.

[kungfoodude]

2 minutes ago, strato said:

I understand that a capable OC is desirable but I also understand, or think I might, the dynamics with the staff and maybe I’m wrong but I do not see Canales firing his offensive right hand guy without significant pressure from Morgan or Tepper to do so. 
So that, in addition to Canales stating pretty definitively, that he was keeping play calling.  
 

I don’t know what you do in that circumstance. It would need to be important enough to you to make it worth firing Canales to get your OC play caller. 
 

To that, if Canales not being good so far at play calling (and we only have the one year in TB to factor with what we have see here), is accepted as a given, it is only fair and honest to consider what an impediment having to construct and administer an offense around Bryce Young’s game would be to an OC. I would say it is a big complication, big surprise there. 

You won’t know about Canales 100% until you remove Bryce from the equation and get him a clean slate to create from - without the Bryce restrictions. 
And yeah you will likely end up without a top notch high flying offense. But it still *could* be much better than it is now. In the right hands. 
So that is potentially what we’re looking at.

I suppose we could keep Bryce and bring in a college style coach and design a Bryce rollout offense or something and see if that helped. I am not in favor of that, probably the last thing I would want. 

We could do nothing, which I am not in favor of. We could fire Canales and keep Bryce (my least preferred option). We could get rid of both, which I would begrudgingly accept but would lament the interruption of the continuity that a 3rd year would provide. 
You could get rid of Bryce and get a couple of new QB prospects in here, vets, drafts, whatever… that would be my choice. 

I am afraid I know how it’s gonna go. All I can really say about that is, there has not been a single time in three years that I looked at the upcoming game and felt like we were gonna win because we have Bryce Young playing QB. Because of what he could do with the ball in his hands. Not once. Sure there have been a handful of games that he was part of the reason we won, a couple he was a big part, but not enough times to feel like that is my expectation. At best, it is cross your fingers and hope for good Bryce. 

Well, I think the answer is pretty clear if you AREN'T the David Tepper Panthers and that is that you move on from Dave Canales. But, if we were able to be in that situation we wouldn't have ever hired such an unqualified and ill suited HC. 

For us, I would think we just try to improve this roster talent so that when we inevitability move on from Canales that we might be a more attractive option.

That's also taking a lot of liberties with assuming Tepper isn't an insanely meddling c*nt like he has been so far and it doesn't remain a bottom 2-3 NFL head coaching job.

If that last part never changes, well.....you just sort of accept your lot and try to suffer through the ride until Tepper is no longer here.

[strato]

9 minutes ago, kungfoodude said:

Well, I think the answer is pretty clear if you AREN'T the David Tepper Panthers and that is that you move on from Dave Canales. But, if we were able to be in that situation we wouldn't have ever hired such an unqualified and ill suited HC. 

For us, I would think we just try to improve this roster talent so that when we inevitability move on from Canales that we might be a more attractive option.

That's also taking a lot of liberties with assuming Tepper isn't an insanely meddling c*nt like he has been so far and it doesn't remain a bottom 2-3 NFL head coaching job.

If that last part never changes, well.....you just sort of accept your lot and try to suffer through the ride until Tepper is no longer here.

Yeah, I neglected the Tepper variable in the Canales factoring. Why we have him. And it isn’t as much because he is Morgan’s buddy as it is we were turned down or just got a ‘not interested’  so many times we had to have Somebody… so Morgan being familiar is a factor yes but only after pretty much all other options were not going to materialize. 
We don’t even know, it may have been better to get him than the next option at that point. Which turns Dan into getting a save rather than fuging us with hiring his buddy. 
 

[kungfoodude]

6 minutes ago, strato said:

Yeah, I neglected the Tepper variable in the Canales factoring. Why we have him. And it isn’t as much because he is Morgan’s buddy as it is we were turned down or just got a ‘not interested’  so many times we had to have Somebody… so Morgan being familiar is a factor yes but only after pretty much all other options were not going to materialize. 
We don’t even know, it may have been better to get him than the next option at that point. Which turns Dan into getting a save rather than fuging us with hiring his buddy. 
 

Yeah, don't forget how insanely embarrassing that hiring cycle was. It was the who's who of candidates turning down even an interview.

Then you hear that they thought Steichen was a bad interview despite clearly being a tremendously better coach in hindsight.

Welcome to the Tepper Panthers.

[DaveThePanther2008]

On 12/19/2025 at 9:07 PM, kungfoodude said:

In general, Dave Canales tends to target his TE's the least frequently of any position group(WR/RB/TE) during his three years of running an NFL offense. 

However, if you notice this percentage has crept up over time. 2025 is the first year that TE has eclipsed RB in target percentage.

Production has also gone up in 2025. This is a percentage of total output in each category.

Canales has always used a very TE heavy offense. In fact, on average his offensive formations are 2 or 3 TE sets roughly 80% of all offensive formations.

So, the question may be, with this uptick in total TE output, could an elite or top tier TE make a significant impact? I believe there is some evidence this may be the case. Here are a look at TE snaps and Cade Otten specifically. These are the snap percentages for all rostered TE's in every Dave Canales offense.

The bolded cell is Cade Otten's whopping 96.46% of total snap counts in the single year he was in the Dave Canales offense in Tampa. This was overwhelmingly his career high. His production was higher with less utilization in 2024, however. 

 

In conclusion, while I don't anticipate ever seeing a top 5 producing/Pro Bowl caliber TE performance in a Dave Canales offense, there does appear to be some evidence that an actual upgrade in our TE room would actually lead to increasing overall offensive efficiency. I think Otten's utilization rate does indicate that the splitting of time between our relatively even TE group would cede significant snaps if a far superior option were available. I believe this is an area we could(and should have this past offseason/draft) made a more concerted effort to get a dynamic TE threat, after the apparent failure that J. Sanders appears to have been.

 

Signing maybe, Drafting, I wouldn't do it.  If we're not utilizing a TE very much why waste a top pick for a position we don't utilize very well.  Plus, I think we need to give Evans some time.  He's has shown potential to be a really good TE. 

[strato]

3 minutes ago, kungfoodude said:

Yeah, don't forget how insanely embarrassing that hiring cycle was. It was the who's who of candidates turning down even an interview.

Then you hear that they thought Steichen was a bad interview despite clearly being a tremendously better coach in hindsight.

Welcome to the Tepper Panthers.

It is still an influencing variable when contemplating maki g a change. 
The first question in that circumstance is do you know making a change will result in an upgrade? You don’t always. 
You might have a pretty meager list of candidates still. I think getting rid of Bryce would be a huge unfug of the candidate list.  
 

I think Morgan and Tillis look good and the roster isn’t like it was then, you give someone a chance to get their QB maybe the list looks better. 

[kungfoodude]

5 minutes ago, DaveThePanther2008 said:

Signing maybe, Drafting, I wouldn't do it.  If we're not utilizing a TE very much why waste a top pick for a position we don't utilize very well.  Plus, I think we need to give Evans some time.  He's has shown potential to be a really good TE. 

I see it from both sides. If an elite guy is there, I wouldn't let a bad and likely short term head coach keep me from improving the roster. Any player we draft in 2026 is almost certainly going to outlast Dave Canales.

I think Evans could be decent but the fact he is losing reps to guys like Sanders and Tremble isn't good. He should be able to beat out someone like Sanders, for sure.

Could just be we have stupid coaches but it could also be he is just sort of a JAG like Tremble.

[kungfoodude]

7 minutes ago, strato said:

It is still an influencing variable when contemplating maki g a change. 
The first question in that circumstance is do you know making a change will result in an upgrade? You don’t always. 
You might have a pretty meager list of candidates still. I think getting rid of Bryce would be a huge unfug of the candidate list.  
 

I think Morgan and Tillis look good and the roster isn’t like it was then, you give someone a chance to get their QB maybe the list looks better. 

I think Bryce is genuinely a very minimal factor in comparison to Tepper. I mean, say what you want about Frank Reich but that was a respected coach in the NFL and for your owner to be so insanely disrespectful publicly to him probably eliminated a VAST swath of high caliber coaching candidates from probably considered us again or for a while.

I agree that there is no guarantee we will get better at head coach. It's just gonna be a matter of who is able to survive under Tepper long enough.

[strato]

9 minutes ago, kungfoodude said:

I think Bryce is genuinely a very minimal factor in comparison to Tepper. I mean, say what you want about Frank Reich but that was a respected coach in the NFL and for your owner to be so insanely disrespectful publicly to him probably eliminated a VAST swath of high caliber coaching candidates from probably considered us again or for a while.

I agree that there is no guarantee we will get better at head coach. It's just gonna be a matter of who is able to survive under Tepper long enough.

Good point about Reich. They fuged him hard and it seems like from the jump with the assembling of that dream team staff. I don’t think he had as much input as a HC is supposed to have in that scenario. 
The Bryce people played it as if he was a piker but he knew exactly what cards he was dealt in April 2023. 
 

PS yeah well if Canales makes year three without any Tepper blowups, and even better to me, if Tepper divorces himself from the QB, he is rehabbed significantly.  
 

It hasn’t happened but if you looked in 2023 and saw him standing back for three years, you would have been in a small group. Three years ‘sober’ might help him a little. And that money…. 
I think it would also be highly influenced by a perception of front office competency and stability. You get another good draft, an improved roster, a year of stability that looks it could carry over that rehabs this job quite a bit over where it was in 2024. 

Edited 3 hours ago by strato

[rebelrouser]

David Njoku (29), Dallas Goedert (30), Kyle Pitts (25), Foster Moreau (28) will all be free agents in 2026. There are a lot more of course (Spotrac list) but i didn't include anyone over 30.  We can't afford to use an early pick with all the holes we have.  I think our first three picks need to address edge, linebacker and oline so we shouldn't be drafting a TE until fourth or later and that will just get us another mediocre tight end. We don't need another one of those.  

[kungfoodude]

1 hour ago, rebelrouser said:

David Njoku (29), Dallas Goedert (30), Kyle Pitts (25), Foster Moreau (28) will all be free agents in 2026. There are a lot more of course (Spotrac list) but i didn't include anyone over 30.  We can't afford to use an early pick with all the holes we have.  I think our first three picks need to address edge, linebacker and oline so we shouldn't be drafting a TE until fourth or later and that will just get us another mediocre tight end. We don't need another one of those.  

I am not going to be very rigid on the "needs to be." We need to draft good players. If that means taking an elite TE over a middling EDGE or ILB, so be it. If that means taking an elite WR over a middling whatever, so be it.

I just want good players. I also remember a lot of butthurt over taking Luke back in the day because we already had good LB's.

Never pass on elite players. Ever.

[HeelsPanthersCanes]

18 minutes ago, kungfoodude said:

Never pass on elite players. Ever.

Kind of defeats your T-Mac vs Warren argument. 

There's one TE (McBride) who NFL GMs would take over Warren.  

There are at least 40+ WRs NFL GMs would take over T-Mac. 

[kungfoodude]

51 minutes ago, HeelsPanthersCanes said:

Kind of defeats your T-Mac vs Warren argument. 

There's one TE (McBride) who NFL GMs would take over Warren.  

There are at least 40+ WRs NFL GMs would take over T-Mac. 

I mean, listen, I get that you are a hopeless Warren fanboi but this is just a completely ludicrous argument. Literally everything you said in that post is extremely laughable.

[heel31ok]

4 hours ago, kungfoodude said:

I think OL is a pretty low overall concern but every single offseason there should be an attempt to upgrade through the draft.

Edge rusher there are no easy answers, IMO. If a truly elite prospect falls to us in the 1st, that is fine. This draft seems to be much more heavy on 3-4 DE's or 4-3 DE's than it is on elite EDGE guys. You just have to keep plugging away every offseason and hope it works out. I don't think it's worth trading a ton of draft capital over at the moment, despite being a crucial roster weakness. Do the best you can and build a better roster and maybe eventually we will be in a position to be making a Parsons level trade.

Ol is always a priority never low 

overall concern.