kungfoodude

He'll get traded for a 2023 second round pick and a 2022 4th round pick to New England. Caserio is a plant.

Wait....are you saying that the NHL's Nashville franchise has on site massage therapy???

LB was a weakness even going into this season. It was the one area that wasn't addressed that well. Now, do keep in mind that the 2nd leading tackler in the NFL right now was technically signed by us to fix some of those issues....but we cut him.

I was told by @Snake that Taylor was a future HOFer after last week.

RTPM = Reaction Threads Per Minute Note: This is if he is traded to us OR to someone else. Bonus prediction: How many will claim they are done with the team if he is traded here or somewhere else?

Speaking for the non-UNC fanboy contingent, Howell is a good NFL draft prospect but he isn't a guy I would be thrilled about getting in the first round of the NFL draft. If it was the 2nd or 3rd round, absolutely. But that is sort of the way I feel about every QB in this draft at the moment. This is just a really, really weak QB draft, Howell being a prime example. In a stronger class, he is probably a lower 1st round to 2nd round guy. That's also why I really don't want any part of the QB's in this class as a whole. If you look at the past 15 years and especially the weak classes more often than not the entire first round class ends up being busts or backups. That is literally the way I feel about this class. Howell specifically, my biggest concerns are his throwing mechanics and playing in the offense he does. I view him as a project guy and not a day one starter. Well....that doesn't fit what we need at the moment. We need a day one starter.

Oh poo...

Well, we will never know since we didn't get him.

Fair enough.

Savior? We are just accurately pointing out that he is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better than Sam Darnold.

It was a 2nd, 4th and 6th. That is a lot more than nothing, which was what Darnold was worth. Turns out, the 6th rounder was the actual value. It wasn't low risk. All you had to do was look at film and see that. It was obvious. This guy is not an NFL caliber player. Not to mention, the history of reclamation bust QB projects is extremely bad. This was yet another in a pile of failures with almost no successes. Yes, you kept moving the goalposts during the argument. Look, it was a massive mistake. It was an obviously massive mistake. Why is there any need to even defend it?

Some rookies are just ready to play, especially these days. If it's me, I take a look at the Watson deal and I gamble on hardball with them. Get that price down to something reasonable(2 firsts, a couple of players and some mid round picks). If that doesn't work, hit the free agency wire now and find a veteran to bring in here. You have to stop this bleeding immediately. If all those options fail......it's tank time. The FO needs to start evaluating which players are going to be here for the future and probably move some guys to regain draft capital in 2022. Evaluate the draft, if there is a legit option for QB, consider them. If not, go pay someone like Tyrod Taylor or another steady journeyman QB to be a 1-2 year bridge. Not some proven bum like Teddy or Darnold. A veteran with multiple starts and one that can run the offense and take care of the ball. Build that OL through the draft and FA, keep improving the roster. Then it is just season after season of building the roster and looking for the opportunity. Perhaps it is via trade with another team, perhaps it is via free agency signing, perhaps it is via being very aggressive about trading up in the draft. That brings up a valid point, BTW. For those that want to go solely QB through the draft, the price for a pick like Trevor Lawrence would likely have been close to the value of Watson. So, when we talk about trading up for an elite QB prospect, that is also extremely expensive.

Well, it CAN be a long plan. Sometimes you just hit the guy right away with a top 5-10 draft pick. Sometimes it takes almost 20 years. I don't think I foresee this staff going the "trial and error" method because they can feel the heat building from ownership. That's why I think the Watson move is the most likely option. I don't think Tepper is happy with this losing and I think the coaching staff is realizing how badly they fuged up with the Darnold move. They put themselves in an impossible situation by trading for this bum and then not having ANY realistic backup options on the roster.

We aren't performing the worst in the NFL by most measures but I am not sure all of them have the extreme lack of OL unit ability that we do. I don't know that I wouldn't take some of those lower performing units at this point.

They did the best they could with their abilities(both older players at the time) but they were far from good. And neither of them was going to produce a playoff caliber team for us.

Well, that is how bad franchises eventually get their guy. You can also be aggressive and trade up to get your guy. There are a lot of ways to get better at QB without trading for Watson. To date, this staff has chosen the worst possible options available.

Can we blame them for lack of development on Teddy and Sam though? Those guys were known entities. I can definitely see the extreme lack of ability to evaluate QB's properly, that I will give you.

This next season, sure. But we literally only have one now. The OL is going to be a challenge whether we trade for Watson or not. We don't have much quality draft capital available in the 2022 draft, the free agency market is going to be very expensive and more importantly....I don't think people realize how bad our situation is on the OL. We don't just need four new starters, we probably need at least 3 capable backups, as well. You heard Fitterer already talk about it this season, he can't even get people to trade quality backup OL.

I was watching tonight. 5-0, baby! I was so pissed off at the goalie moves but this Anderson dude is making a believer out of me.

It isn't super hard to find OL talent in the first three rounds. It just seems to be for this franchise. Take a look at the OL drafted in the 1st through 3rd rounds of the last decade and you are going to see a LOT of All Pro, Pro Bowl and quality starters in that group. Panthers fans only believe this is difficult because historically we have sucked so royally at it.

You also aren't considering free agency or the ability to move players via trade to regain draft capital. Given the youth of our core, we will likely be making very tough personnel decisions in the next 1-4 years because we just can't simply keep everyone, although the Saints seem to be able to figure that out. Plus, we always have the ability to sign in free agency, as long as it isn't for more bums like Elflein and Erving. TB and Darnold have actively been harmful because they have actively lost us games. Franchise crippling has been the lack of OL investment over the past 20 years. That was franchise crippling. Getting a franchise QB is not something I would consider franchise crippling, unless he has some career ending injury. Then we are talking franchise crippling. Furthermore, this price we are all speculating on is almost certainly not real, unless Tepper gets all hot and bothered and we overpay like we did for Darnold. The Texans reportedly want this done by the trade deadline(Nov. 2). That pretty much cuts their negotiating ability down if they actually mean that. If that is a hard date, we may be able to get him far cheaper than they want for him. Or, that could all be pure BS and they are just trying to stir up a bidding war.

We don't use the picks on OL is the problem. Especially in the 1st-3rd rounds. That's literally why we continue to suck at OL. The defense is relatively deep in most areas outside LB.

So you want to go from one subpar center to a worse center? That is Teddy to Darnold. Picking OL in the late rounds doesn't work unless you basically keep doing it over and over. After about the 4th round, the success rate drops dramatically, as does the chances of getting a starting quality player. That's part of the reason we are in the mess currently. The Panthers have historically not invested high draft picks in OL. Corral and Willis are fool's gold. This is not the draft to get desperate and try to snag a QB in the first round. This is a very poor QB class. Spending money in free agency is fine in theory but for the $35 mil you would spend on Watson, you would be surprised how little that may get you in terms of elite offensive linemen. That market has exploded, even for interior players. We have to do something about the OL, so free agents will be involved regardless but trying to replace four spots solely in free agency would be prohibitively expensive and unlikely to be accomplished in one offseason. Trading Shaq is fine, in theory but we are already thin at LB so you make that position even more thin. Not to mention, I think that his contract would make him difficult to trade. The value we get in return is not going to be what we have invested, nor is it likely to gain us an upgrade. If you want to justify trading him for cap room, for sure, I can understand that. Robby would have some significant trade value because his contract is so cheap. We could get some value there. We could probably get some good value for Jackson in a tag and trade. We have to figure out what his market is going to be, though. He is the one guy on defense that has played really hard every game. Now, it's a contract year so you have to be naturally suspicious of production in those years but he does really seem to have matured and improved. He might be a guy I would be really reluctant to let go.

The Rams definitely have better coaching. You can fix the OL without 1st round draft picks. That's why our lack of investment in that area over the past 20 years is so fuging upsetting. You can get quality starters on the OL in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd round draft picks. At one point I posted an article here in the Huddle about how an analysis of draft picks showed that the highest success rate for any position in the first three rounds was OL. Now, you can also build through free agency, as well but that can get pretty expensive. Especially since the league is seeing a dearth of quality OL play.