Panthers GM Marty Herniay discusses drafting Newton & Jordan Gross

[MaineManPanther]

For those of you wanting to write off the otah pick as completely incidental in reference to injury, you'd have to ignore the fact that in that very same draft he picked a guy with known ankle problems 13th overall, drafted Bruce Nelson in 2003 knowing he had an injury that ended up being so serious the guy never laced a pair of cleats in the NFL, drafted Brandon Hogan understanding that it would probably take a whole year before he'd be at 100% off an ACL tear, etc.

Disagree. The fact that I think the Otah injury is incidental and not deserving of Hurney criticism doesn't mean I ignore or deny Hurney's other notable injury pick mistakes.

[frash.exe]

Disagree. The fact that I think the Otah injury is incidental and not deserving of Hurney criticism doesn't mean I ignore or deny Hurney's other notable injury pick mistakes.

Otah was the softest football player out of that entire class of tackles and scouts were aware of it then. It wasn't a glaring flaw at that point like it ended up being but it was a big enough problem that it at least raised the question. I've researched it many times so at this point citing this information is like referencing links to prove that the sky is blue.

[KintnerBoy]

:sleep:

[MaineManPanther]

Otah was the softest football player out of that entire class of tackles and scouts were aware of it then. It wasn't a glaring flaw at that point like it ended up being but it was a big enough problem that it at least raised the question. I've researched it many times so at this point citing this information is like referencing links to prove that the sky is blue.

I don't disagree, I've read it on more then one report. But his durability was not a notable aspect of any report I've read so I don't see how Hurney's can be blamed for the occurrence of Otah' knee injuries. This isn't comparable to Hogan or Nelson because they had legitimate and relevant injuries before they were selected.

[SevyDamus]

Thanks, I prefer to have this kind of conversation. :)

I completely understand the Stewart point - he's been injured a lot over his career. At the same time, we had cut DeShaun Foster and we weren't sure if DeAngelo could be a #1 back. I think the move really panned out the first two years, right before we fell off the deep end in 2010, and if you look at his first four years, he was a very solid #2. Right before he hit the injury bug in 2012, he had had a very good 2011 season - he averaged 5.4 YPC, got 761 rushing yards splitting time with DeAngelo and Cam, and also added 413 receiving yards. That's nearly 1,200 total yards on the season. Hurney's biggest fault here was giving him a massive contract instead of letting him walk - I think we were scared he'd be a Matt Forte-type player and go to a rival, but it just wasn't worth it to pay our #2 back that much money when we got Tolbert, who can basically do everything he does. As for Otah, we can agree it didn't pan out but I do think he looked very solid in 2008 though.

Hurney shouldn't have invested so much in the backfield, I agree. I think we could have gone with a D-Lo/Tolbert combo in 2012, which would have saved room to fix actual problems. This is where the loyalty he had backfired severely. For however many guys we managed to keep or bring in that way, when the players he liked started to decline (looking at Jake, mostly), he didn't know what to do and wasn't prepared. It's OK to like a player, but there's no reason we shouldn't have been looking at a new quarterback before Jake simply couldn't play anymore. There just needs to be a balance, and Hurney - like Fox - couldn't adjust to the times near the end.

I think we can all agree towards the end Hurney wasn't very good - this goes back to the loyalty point. He had so much faith in his players that when they started to fail him, he couldn't adjust. I was hopeful he was learning near the end when he drafted Luke (presumably as insurance for Beason and TD), but it didn't seem to work out that way.

I do agree Hurney was lacking in the draft. I think he was phenomenal as a first-round drafter, but he really didn't find that many late-round guys that panned out. It's a shame we never really got anyone worth a crap in the later rounds. At the same time we did make up for it by bringing in veteran guys who would contribute, like Gettleman has been doing. If Gettleman can somehow mix late-round successes with his free agent success, we could be very good for a long time.

At this point I agree, I'd take Gettleman. But I don't think we can discount the Hurney era entirely.

Well said. I would also add the coaching staff didn't help in a lot of cases especially when it came to WR & the development of them. Fox MO was defense & we always struggled developing depth at WR due to coaching,injuries, & his conservative style.

Lack of QB didn't help either. Hurney did some good things just happens the bad out weigh the good & his stupidity of giving out fat contracts to so many injured players with out any protection was pretty ridiculous.