MasterAwesome

I'm glad the Dillon Johnson book hasn't been shut. His one half of a preseason game has the potential to induct him into the Panthers' HOF alongside David Gettis, Marvin McNutt, and Brandon Wegher.

Lucky for you, my steamy Derrick Brown fanfic "A-Gap Penetration" will be released this weekend.

All right Panthers' conglomerate...I usually go to bat for you as much as anybody, but maybe we can consolidate our multiple Derrick Brown features into one thread/article?

I'd say Chuba is definitely worth a late round pick. He should be the feature back early on, and if he performs well in that role, I could see the Panthers bringing Brooks along more slowly just to spell Hubbard.

I'm sorry but this is just such a confusing response to what I posted. Who are you trying to convince that Bryce was part of the problem? I don't think I could have made it any more clear in my post that I acknowledge he was. I actually explicitly stated my position and asked the other guy to express what was unreasonable about it, so I'll ask you the same.

The whole "our o-line/WRs/coaches were actually good last year" Revisionism World Tour some of y'all are going on recently, is a level of sunshine and rainbows that would make even Bryce apologists blush. You would think we had a talented playoff-caliber team whose success was thwarted single-handedly by Bryce. Yet ironically those of you who recently want to downplay our o-line/WR/coaching struggles last year are the same people who argue we have the worst, least talented roster in the NFL...so which is it? Simply put: do you agree that o-line/WR/coaching last year were net negatives? If so, then this petty squabbling about whether they were worst or bottom five or bottom ten is a silly distraction. The position of the fans you're referring to is simply that every facet of our offense was a mess (including Bryce) and that it was such a dysfunctional symphony of a dumpster fire that it's hard to apportion what percentage of blame goes where, and that this season will largely clear that debate up. Which is basically exactly what @Icege outlined above. Can you articulate why you find that position to be unreasonable?

I don't understand your argument. If you acknowledge that stats would look worse on 30+ yard passes than 20+ yard passes, then wouldn't they be better off using 30+ yard passes if they're trying to make the bolded argument that you're saying they're trying to make? Those passes from 20-30 yards that you wish to exclude, are actually helping to make deep passes look much more successful on paper.

Matthews has been on the Active Roster since last Thursday.

Did you jump ship to NOLA, @TheSpecialJuan ?

Not sure that we need to develop new creative convoluted ways to argue that Bryce had a really poor year statistically when that is so obvious and universally accepted. Unless you think anyone has ever touted Bryce’s production last season? Also Matt Moore’s 7.2 YPA that year is not “lol”, that would’ve put him in the top half of NFL starting QBs this past season. On par with Hurts/Love, and above Mahomes.

“Win now” vs “rebuilding” has more to do with money/contracts/assets than simply age of roster. Even rebuilding teams need vets to help develop the younger guys. I don’t think there’s anything inherently contradictory about a team who is rebuilding/“retooling”, but has the 3rd or 5th or w/e oldest roster. It’s not that reductive.

The difference between the youngest and oldest team in the league is 2.1 years. Doesn’t seem all that significant.

So why did we not just sort our 90-man roster by height and just sign all of the tallest players then? Why did we keep 5’10 Diontae Johnson over 6’2 Terrace Marshall Jr.? I mean, he did say “it’s a big man’s league” after all…

And as our resident deep pass expert, what’d you think about this throw?

Huddle: “we’ve got the weakest roster in the NFL” Also Huddle when we cut our 9th string RB: “WTF!!!!”

Sirianni is the idiot for resting his starters in both games already. No wonder the Eagles have sucked since he took over.

Word.

Almost like I’m giving my opinion…that tends to be what you’re giving when you start something off with “I think”. Bro, you trying to hinder my dialogue?? Attacking my opinion during a criticism about allowing differences of opinion is next level irony.

“Let’s define our positions so we can move on” - then you proceed to define my position for me, in the most absurd and cartoonish way possible. I think everyone understands my position except you for some reason. You already misstate my position in the first six words (hint: I don’t think there’s a “correct” call one way or the other) and then from there you venture into some weird fanfic territory. You don’t come across as someone wanting to have a productive discussion, which is something I appreciate about someone like @strato who I’m sure agrees with you on 95% of your opinions but can engage with the substance instead of the weird performative posturing.

I think those people complaining about playing vs. resting starters stems from a combination of two things: 1) impatience and desire from a fan standpoint to watch our guys play. This one I understand and relate with - I’ve been without real Panthers football for 7 months and would much rather see the starters out there and I’m super curious to see how they look in a game situation. 2) simply sheer resentment for the team. I get it and I can understand why fans are resentful after how awful we’ve been. But resentment leads to irrational behavior. You ever experience a growing resentment towards someone? All of a sudden the way they breathe, the way they walk, a simple question they ask you, just occupying the same space can be extremely irritating. It’s not a rational emotion to be triggered by anything and everything someone does. That’s what it comes across as, when some of you attack everything no matter how trivial it is. Yes I agree we’re awful, so that seems like more the reason to save our energy complaining about things that matter…?

Even though this has absolutely nothing to do with my argument, I’ll play this game with you. We’re not supposed to compare ourselves to good teams, so how about we compare two good teams to each other? Sean McVay has won a Super Bowl and been to the playoffs 5 of his 7 seasons - he’s a hell of a lot more accomplished than DeMeco Ryans. He doesn’t play his starters in preseason. So what conclusion am I to draw from that? Is McVay therefore correct and DeMeco is wrong? See how dumb and pointless this argument is?

Yeah exactly, I was gonna mention that too but I was already venturing into tl/dr territory. People have no problem comparing us to good teams when it serves their point. But when it detracts from their point, it’s “we shouldn’t be comparing ourselves to those teams”. Frank himself even specifically pointed out Demeco Ryans thinking playing starters was a good idea, clearly to make a point that that’s something good/smart teams do. But when it’s something good and bad teams do in a roughly even split, then it seems like it’s a pretty poor indicator of successful philosophy and rather just a function of personal coach preference.

I don't know what you expect here. You guys argue things like "no successful team/player does ______" and when you're presented with an example of so-and-so successful team/player doing that very thing, then you say "oh are you seriously comparing us to that successful team??". Yes, that's the point...? All we have to go off of so far is Week 1 of preseason (we don't know yet what Canales is planning for weeks 2 & 3). And there were several other teams who rested all/most starters in the first game: Rams, Ravens, Dolphins, Giants, Lions, Eagles, Jets, Buccs, 49ers, Cardinals, Cowboys. There are some really good teams in there, but I know we're not supposed to ever draw any comparisons no matter how minor to the good teams, so I've bolded the meh teams whose comparisons you will hopefully accept. The point is that good and bad teams rest their starters in the preseason - that has very little correlation one way or the other. Yes I understand and even agree that we might have particular incentive to play starters based off of last season's struggles and having a lot of new additions this year (roster and coaching staff alike), but I'm just pushing back on the notion that resting starters is some unheard of thing that is unique to us (i.e. we're the "only team that thinks preseason is useless").

That is a sizzling hot take if you've seen this video.

It's a shame that Jaycee Horn has been riddled with injuries cause he really could be a superstar fan favorite if he can just stay on the field. He's really the full package: talent, charisma, leadership.