vorbis

fact of the matter is, due to the overall dysfunction with the franchise, any stated strategy or plan for dealing with something along the lines of hiring new football leadership is going to be looked at by both fans and by football talking people as the wrong move, or worthy of healthy skepticism. and it will remain this way until the franchise finds some sustained success.

Byrd already has an injury settlement. he's off the roster/IR.

wonder if this means the writing is on the wall to some extent for Brandon Smith. because he seems tailor-made to be competing for a backup LB spot in the middle.

damn

In this period of optimistic offseason puff pieces, I enjoyed this timely catch-up with Tommy Tremble from Mike Kaye. https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/nfl/carolina-panthers/article276127776.html it's easy to focus on Tremble's comments about this year vs last year, and god knows there's a lot of material to mine there. but I'm just appreciative that he feels equipped to develop his game under Reich/Brown/Lilly. he definitely has the physical tools to succeed, and now he's hopefully getting the coaching he needs to take his game to the next level.

people should definitely make enormous-scale conclusions about a single play in OTAs I don't think this has ever backfired before honestly

I agree, hella players had to have been involved but... Cook on his current deal is barely even an asset in the NFL trade market. Cousins... it's just not going to move the needle. it doesn't add up IMO. even Justin Jefferson, as good as he is, top 2-3 WR in the entire league, not going to bridge the gap between #1 and #23. and I doubt they'd just throw him in a trade like that after a very successful season.

to get back on the ostensible topic of the thread, something about this Vikings wanting to trade up (to #1??) story is fishy to me. teams can only trade max 3 1st round picks in one deal, if I recall correctly. and they were coming up from what, #23? huh? that's not remotely feasible. we're missing a piece of the puzzle here.

this guy's videos have gotten quite sloppy over the years. this one is pretty surface-level. can't be an expert in every NFL position, I guess. and yes, his voice is annoying. not the end of the world, but combined with getting simple details wrong (Ekwonu was not the 2nd tackle taken last year in the draft, for one), it's just not particularly interesting content.

I think the main concern is just him having the core strength to slip out of tackles in the pocket like he did at Alabama. whether that results in added weight is kind of immaterial. as long as he can maintain the play style he had in college, he should be good to go.

it's obvious the Panthers valued Johnson highly at that point in the draft, and made the move they felt they needed to to get him. the more drafts I watch, the less attached I get to how *I feel* about how the draft is going to play out. I don't watch film of hardly any of these prospects until they're drafted by the Panthers, so I'm not going to pretend I know better than an entire department of professional scouts and "league observers." so to me, a lot of the talk about "he would have been available at $X_pick" is just noise. whether he's "worth" the pick at 80, also, is really only an insightful query relative to the snapshot most people have in their heads of the draft order before the first pick was made. the only thing that matters now is how he plays. I kept looking at this, scratching my head. he had such a weird RAS profile: he was a 2-way player for Oregon in 2021. would practice on offense and on defense. he's been moved around the defense quite a bit during his college football odyssey. that to me says multiple coaching staffs have looked at Johnson and said, here is a great football athlete. let's figure out how to get good results out of these talents and traits. in that sense, the Panthers are only doing what the coaching staffs at Miami U and Oregon also did. he only settled into a role this past season, and his production went up significantly. and this weird-ass RAS profile tells me, here is an explosive mover who doesn't have the refinement right now to perform well in agility drills. so the RAW is real. but so is the underlying physical ability. Dom Capers has a history of finding pass rushing talent, and front-7 talent, in the dustiest corners of the draft and free agency, going back to the early 90s with the Steelers. so with him and Ejiro Evero, I feel like Johnson is set up to have the best chance to carve out a career and a second contract for himself. I'm concerned about the mindset and attitude of a guy who would smack the **** out of a fan who was being a dick on the field after a hard-fought loss in a rivalry game. it just is what it is. maybe the fan deserved to have the **** smacked out of him, but if you're getting caught up in that, maybe you can be manipulated and/or baited on the field by strong-willed opponents. I'm less concerned about him being an unfinished product as an older draftee, given his physical ability, kind of weird path during college football, and the coaching situation he's coming into. I'm also less concerned about the circumstances of the Panthers seeing a run on pass rushers in the 3rd round, and moving up to get a particular guy who was one of the last sitting on a particular tier. that's just tactics of the draft.

it's fun having a GM who is ready and willing to move around during the draft. both because it makes watching the draft more fun and exciting, but also because (to me) it shows a GM who is comfortable with the relative values they put on players, and feels empowered to move around to extract as much roster value out of the draft that they can.

good stuff, thanks for compiling OP.

if I'm running a cognitive test company that works with NFL teams, I'm thinking that tightening up my "information disclosure" policies would be a big part of the viability of my company going forward. plenty of perfectly competent quarterbacks who might feel reluctant to even take this test next year, for worry of the information getting out despite whether or not they feel it's to their benefit.

the shtick with Bob McGinn's prospect rankings (which are VERY thorough and often go against conventional narratives in insightful ways) is that he polls scouts from all over the league, and grants them anonymity. he includes their thoughts verbatim in his rankings, where he puts prospects into tiers. I think most of us can understand how the anonymity approach can be really interesting, but also how it can be weaponized or misused to rapidly change perceptions of a prospect in the week leading up to the draft. maybe the truth is being told, but maybe a team feels like if they can make a prospect slide on draft weekend, they can get a good deal out of it. the thing is, we just don't know which is which, thanks to the anonymity thing.

Bob McGinn has released Wonderlic scores of quarterbacks every year going back to the early 2000s, including many times where he was the first person to reveal said scores. every year some player gets outed as having a bad score and the whispers get louder in the last week before the draft. about as often as not the information is being revealed by Bob McGinn. it's my least favorite thing about his prospect rankings every year. I get why he does it but yes, you should absolutely expect him to leak this kind of stuff. I hate that this is being released right now, and the manner in which it is being done. it smells like a hit job in the days leading up to the draft. just gives me a feeling in the pit of my stomach that someone is being torpedoed. Stroud has the tape of a top pick. for all the talk NFL teams do of "the tape is what's important," they often seem quite happy to have a standardized test to fall back on to make judgments that supersede tape.

insider source tells me that AR absolutely killed it at Kingdom Hearts

the whispers are already deafening that Bryce will be a Panther. not sure today's news of the visit-cancelling changes anything. that being said, I'm so pumped for Bryce Young to be a Panther. I think he's going to be a great one.

being a fan of the team who's going to draft a quarterback #1 in the draft is just about as exciting as it gets as an NFL fan without winning or playing in the super bowl, and I see many fans who are intent on making that into something to be stressed about, and talking themselves into doom scenarios if it doesn't go the way they want to.

I really like the trade down 5-10 spots for maybe another day 2 and day 3 pick option. give Evero lots of bullets to beef up his defense for the playoff push. as for positions, the Panthers have a glaring opening at nickel CB. I know they've talked about Chinn as the big nickel and Rowe has experience there, but Evero's eyes lit up when talking about the importance of the nickel position at his introductory press conference. it's clear they have a high value on that position.

VP of Football Ops is not necessarily a football-centric position (though it may seem so from the title). it could be anything from coordinating travel to managing stadium operations to arranging media appearances, coordinating charity endeavors, etc. it's perfectly reasonable for someone with a long tenure in communications for the Panthers to ascend to that kind of role.

idk anything about these OL prospects but "Steve Avila" is an ass-kicker type name for a lineman.

I'd even go a step further and say that if you're an NFL team at the top of the draft and the difference between Bryce Young and CJ Stroud ends up being that you determine Stroud is not "easy to coach" then to me that's a sign that you didn't do the work you needed to do. there are plenty of differences between these two quarterbacks just in terms of onfield play, more than enough for you to make the determination that's right for your team.

"not an easy guy to coach" is some really flaky criticism on the level of "fake smile" IMO. any decent coach is not gonna care if Stroud has his own opinions about how things go and in fact you want that critical thinking in the room, especially at the quarterback position. you had better be able to reach a player of his level if you're an NFL coach, is what I'm saying. I agree with everyone saying the timing and the mouthpiece for this criticism warrants scrutiny. it's pretty clearly a hit job with a goal of having Stroud drift down the board until team X can justify trading up or picking him in their slot. it's transparent. happens every year. if Stroud goes #1 he'll have earned every bit of it.

even a player who cons his way into the hall of fame is a home run pick at #1, and that ain't Brees.