hepcat

Disclaimer - I would genuinely love to be wrong about all of this. I’ll be first in line to eat my crow if the Panthers magically morph into a playoff contender this season! —- While I am hoping for the best outcome this season, I am expecting the worst. I have a rational brain and can’t escape the sting of cold hard facts. The evidence that Matt Rhule is a fraud who swindled a naive new NFL owner making his first head coaching hire is pretty substantial. That evidence compounds itself every season Rhule remains head coach of the Panthers. What I’m getting at is, it’s pretty likely we’re in for another losing season. The schedule is much harder than in 2021 and I can’t see Rhule surviving another miserable year. Will Tepper show any ounce of humility and admit he made a mistake hiring Rhule? Rhule was wildly unqualified for the role of head coach of an NFL team. He never beat a ranked team at Baylor and lacked the NFL connections to build a proper NFL coaching staff. As evidenced by the high turnover on the coaching staff year after year. 2022’s coaching staff is a another group of misfit coaches from the college and NFL ranks. Unless Tepper wants to see PSL sales plummet into the abyss and all the fancy “fan experiences” he’s trying to bilk out of the fans go unattended, Matt Rhule will have to go. A seasoned NFL advisor will need to be hired to clean up the mess. And Panthers fans will be yet again left hoping for better days.

Numbers only need to be retired until that player is dead then no one cares or remembers them anymore

Way too early to take the weather report seriously

The team is definitely the most talented it has been since maybe 2018. I do credit Fitterer for using creative methods to put talent on the roster. Aside from the play at QB and the run defense, my biggest concern, as it has been every year under Rhule, is the coaching staff. Rhule’s staffs have been routinely overmatched by experienced NFL coaches. Many opposing coaches have lambasted them for doing “college sh*t”. This season it’s still a patchwork collection of misfit coaches from around the NFL and college ranks. It’s just become painfully obvious this regime is just throwing sh*t at the wall and hoping something sticks. Hopefully they got lucky and this group clicks.

The season is definitely going south

I agree. Tepper tried to murder the ghost of Sam Mills by discontinuing the Keep Pounding chant in the stadium, later saying they wanted it to be an “organic” chant but let’s be real how is there going to be an organic chant amongst 70k people in a stadium unless they’re saying “Fire Rhule”

It's interesting the Jaguars traded Shenault so late in training camp. He was their #2 receiver in yards and receptions last season. He did have 8 drops though and when you put on the tape, he struggles to get separation on the outside. I guess they just straight up decided Christian Kirk is taking his snaps and booted him out of town? Gotta give the big money guy his snaps I guess. Maybe their loss is our gain?

Looking at the schedule again, I’m seeing another hot start for the Panthers. I think McAdoo’s offense gets a boost early on because there’s no tape of it with Mayfield running the show. Defenses are going to be guessing against the Panthers for the first few games. Hopefully they can stack some wins against lesser opponents in the first few weeks. But the schedule gets brutal in the mid point of the season with a murderer’s row of games against legit Super Bowl contenders. It will be the make or break stretch of the season and I would not be surprised if the team has a 5th straight year of a miserable long losing streak. The crucial elements of the season will be staying healthy at key positions and the play of Baker Mayfield. If CMC can play at least 10-12 games, Mayfield gels with his receivers, and the offensive line holds up better than in years past, the offense should be able to score. The defense has a lot of talent but could be suspect in the run game. It will be important to hold leads, something Matt Rhule’s teams have failed to do many times. Phil Snow is not really qualified to be an NFL defensive coordinator and his schemes regularly get destroyed by solid offensive lines and NFL caliber QBs, so hopefully an increase in talent will either fix his wacky gap alignment scheme problem or having real NFL caliber coaches like Steve Wilks will help them call normal NFL defensive plays. Either way, if this team was playing the 2021 schedule, I’d say this is a borderline playoff team. But I’m struggling to see more than around 7 or maybe at best, 8 wins. I really don’t think they’ll only win 5 games again, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see another 5 win season. There’s some weird voodoo curse on the Panthers especially since Tepper bought the team. So, let us hope this year that curse is lifted.

Don’t we get a comp pick for Gilmore?

LOL what?????? I have to see a screenshot of that. For science.

Well he seemed like a nice guy and he had a great story. He's not a fat loser who got paid tens millions of dollars for a position he didn't deserve

Missed opportunity to talk about how the coaching staff is basically the island of misfit toys too!

Igo hosting the Huddle on servers overseas again. This is all somehow going to a Chinese data farm.

OP definitely needs to eat more fiber

Foreman was such a good signing. Dude was a freight train at Texas. I wanted him out of the 2017 draft. Injuries have slowed down his career but if he’s healthy he’s absolutely a #1 quality back.

Good number of these guys will probably make the practice squad

IMG_1795.MOV These GMC ads are f*cking awful. Taking up the entire page. @Zodget control of this crap.

That is what I LOVED about Steve Smith. He would bark all day long, and he'd back it up and then some. If Baker can do the same, he will have won me over. Right now, still very skeptical because I feel like there's some weird voodoo hex on this franchise and no matter how positive things look, the worst possible outcome seems to happen.

I mean I think any competitive person is gonna say that about their former team that replaced them with a sexual predator.

Damn that's actually good value for Daley, higher than where he was drafted.

If Fitterer got this dude for a 7th, that’s insane

What rounds? He was a 2nd round pick a few years ago.

What did we trade for him?

Ain’t no one replacing the guy Matt Rhule’s WIFE selected