Mr. Scot

Some details on the "long super.impressive answer" we've seen referenced before... On March 22, the Panthers’ traveling party watched an impressive display from Stroud, one that might have been enough to prompt another look at his tape from the fall, and then boarded the jet for Alabama. That night, they went to Evangeline’s, a posh Tuscaloosa eatery maybe a mile from campus. As the food was coming, Caldwell asked Young to detail his process. He started by explaining a Saturday night, with his physical recovery from an SEC game. He went into Sunday, from grading the previous day’s tape, to diving into the next week’s game plan and trying to learn it well enough to present it to his teammates Monday. He kept going, and going, and, after about 10 minutes, he was in mid-day Tuesday and those at the table were looking at each other. Reich looked at pretty much everyone with a smirk. Tepper laughed. Young came off like a battle-tested NFL quarterback, not some wet-behind-the-ears college kid confronted with a hedge-fund billionaire and his table full of NFL execs and coaches. “It’s like you’re sitting with a 40-year-old man and the level of detail of his answers,” Fitterer says. “You could ask him a simple question, and he gives so much detail and thought to each question. It was pretty cool.” The next day, more of the same. Fitterer wanted to see Young’s arm strength in person, and that meant training on deep sideline routes and drive throws through the middle of the field. His arm was never going to be Richardson’s, of course. But what the GM and coaches saw was plenty. He could get the ball to difficult spots and change speeds like a pitcher to throw the right ball every time.

On the process of getting to the pick... By the time the Panthers got to the combine, they’d done enough work on tape to be comfortable with at least two of the quarterbacks in the class (my sense is those two were Young and Stroud), and that gave Fitterer time to try to get ahead of the market on trading up. They had the ninth pick. As we chronicled in March, Fitterer and Bears GM Ryan Poles met at Lucas Oil Stadium, and at an Indianapolis hotel a little out of the way (the Hyatt) from the normal NFL hustle and bustle in the city, which Poles had booked to keep his meetings quiet. As the week after the combine wore on, the Texans first came strong, and it looked like the Bears would deal twice, with Houston coming up to No. 1 and Carolina to No. 2. But Fitterer kept after Poles, the Texans got cold feet and the Panthers got to the top of the draft. Fitterer didn’t want to give up a third first-round pick, and Poles’s desire to get a receiver to help Justin Fields (and get himself a better read on his young quarterback) led the teams to agree to a deal with two first-rounders, and second-rounders this year and in 2025, and DJ Moore going to Chicago. And at that point, while Fitterer didn’t have a decision yet on whom he’d take, he did have a leader. “Coming out of our February meetings with scouts, Bryce was probably the leader,” Fitterer says. “But we had committed to keeping an open process and we really did. It’s not just like b.s. We really did go into this like, This is such an important decision for our organization. Let’s not lock in [on someone] in February and say ‘This is our guy.’ And so we went through it. … There’s some really impressive guys. There’s some real guys in this quarterback group. “But the one thing about Bryce is he just was so steady all the way through the process, and every time we sat with him was like, S---, this guy’s special.” And yet, again, Fitterer, Reich and their staffs resisted calling the fight any earlier than they had to. Stroud would make a run at it. Richardson, who had some similarities to Josh Allen (whom Morgan was with in Buffalo), did, too. So Young would have to keep checking boxes.

Also from the article... As the 2022 season quickly came undone and coach Matt Rhule was fired, Panthers owner David Tepper had periodic conversations with his football people on the direction of the team and what was next. They’d make decisions to trade Christian McCaffrey and keep Brian Burns, and the process started to inform them on where they were. They had a stout defense with a young cornerstone. The offensive line had come together to drive a run game that dominated with Steve Wilks as interim coach. What was missing was obvious. “I think once we traded Baker [Mayfield], and Sam [Darnold] came back [from injury],” Fitterer said Sunday. “Sam actually played well this past year. But you have two swings at it, you have high hopes for both Sam and Baker when they got here and, at a certain point, I remember talking to Mr. Tepper and [assistant GM] Dan [Morgan] and we’re like, We gotta just draft and build our own. Even if Baker hit or Sam hit, it was going to be a lot of money to renew these guys, and how do you build a team properly unless it’s like a top-five quarterback? “How do you really build a team properly to support him? So we thought the rookie way was the right way to go, to draft and develop, and fix the problem rather than taking swings here and there. … Eventually, you just have to draft and develop your own guy.”

From the article: Fitterer sauntered into Reich’s office and matter-of-factly spit it out. All right, man, the GM said jokingly, who are we taking? Both smiled. Reich started laughing. Yeah, it’s Bryce, Reich responded.

Our old punter is apparently still in the league (I didn't know)

Condoleezza Rice has been rumored to be in consideration for that job for years.

To be fair, and with the disclaimer that I'm definitely not a Rhule apologist, it looked that way to a lot of us. Remember the absolute euphoria when we traded for Stephon Gilmore?

List definitely makes sense...

Defense has a couple of challenges built in, the first of course being that we're switching to a new system under a new DC and some of our players (like Gross-Matos )may not fit very well. But on top of that, there's the analysis that some of what Evero has done in the past doesn't necessarily fit with traditional position concepts. (Jourdan Rodrigue talked a lot about that in her analysis of him) So you have to ask where you put the guys that may or not not fit the new scheme In a depth chart that doesn't necessarily correspond to traditional roles and rules? Good luck with that

Not too familiar with LSU guys but yeah, that's possible.

I'd agree

Most of the big stories out today are about fifth year options, cuts, etc. Here's one that's not though, and one that might be kind of important.

Also within the NFC South...

In reality we've gotten quite a bit of behind the scenes information from those years since Rhule was fired. Hell, there was a fair amount of it out there even before that happened, and what's come out since has pretty well jibed with what was known before. Bottom Line: When you have total control (which Rhule had from the beginning) you're not a "convenient scapegoat".

Speaking of Jaguars and fifth year options...

Bills just got a decent runningback... Post draft is when stuff starts happening because teams know who they've got now. (or perhaps more importantly who they didn't get)

I wish

I'd imagine there qre probably a fair number of Rhule era "WTF" stories we still haven't heard yet.

Technically they didn't specify what team it would be for

Side Note...

From Mike Kaye... Although Henderson has made the occasional highlight play for the Panthers, he has yet to carve out a permanent starting role in the secondary. He will look to earn that job under his third NFL coaching staff this season. While Henderson’s option was declined, he could still earn a second deal with the Panthers with a strong 2023 campaign. The Panthers passed up the opportunity to select a cornerback in this past weekend’s draft. The squad also failed to bring in a veteran cornerback during free agency. Both decisions put Henderson in prime position to earn an important role in Evero’s system. Reasonable to guess that Evero had input on those decisions as well.

My elementary school showed us that movie when I was in third or fourth grade. Found aspects of it a little dark at the time

It makes more sense though to place blame for things that actually happened.

Could turn out that way. The quotes I've seen only said that we weren't necessarily going to fill all 90 spots. If there was a rationale given, I didn't see it quoted.

I'd expect they'll at least get to more than 85.