kungfoodude

I will be surprised if we ever have a HC and GM in a stable scenario that are also on the same page while he is the owner. Tepper is a finance bro. They thrive on chaos to create opportunities.

I don't really care about your post at all. I just saw the direction of the discussion and this snippet from an article I read earlier in the day was a good spot to put non-Panthers info. I mostly don't care about the players personal lives. That's off the field/personal poo. Not really any of my business. I also don't know him personally so what would be the point of congratulating him outside basically attempting to draw attention to myself like so many in the social media/internet realm.

If we are going to obsess over ex-Panthers, here is a good one from the ESPN poll of NFL execs and personnel guys, this is the outside top 10 list. Just like CMC, he is who we thought he was. It's amazing that so many people get fanboy syndrome for these guys assuming it is the team holding them back. That's the minority of the cases in our history. It's basically poker "bad beat" syndrome. How soon we forget the reverse, all the guys we let go that tanked hard afterward.

I think the leash will be short, regardless, if he has another "comfortably" losing season. By that I mean, not really ever a threat to be 9-7. People forget that Tepper's track record is getting losing HC's out of here ASAP. The chances of him stomaching more than 3 losing seasons is almost zero.

The bad part is the pivot from Bryce could result in another coaching change, IMO. If we dive into another one of those, I think the downward trend will actually steepen.

Yeah, this is all projections of how it will turn out. Inevitability this list will look ridiculous in a full 2025 sesson hindsight, most likely. Still, I am pretty surprised that so many bristled at being thought of as having very, very lowly ranked WR and TE units. We literally have been for years. All you have to do is just have things stay the same and those are immediately bottom 5 units. It is easy to see why one would be reticent to have lofty expectations in the preseason. Gotta show it first when you are a perennial cellar dweller. That's just life at the bottom.

That's fine but you are just ignoring his logic behind because you just simply don't like it. That's your prerogative, certainly, but it doesn't invalidate his perspective. I would say if you weight the groups similarly to how he does, it's very hard to justify us being outside the bottom 5. On paper our WR group is easily bottom 3 in the NFL and our TE groups is probably bottom 5 too. As good as our RB corps is, for a "weighted towards WR" ranking of WR/TE/RB groups, it's very hard to justify anything outside the bottom 5. I don't see any reason to dispute it at all. These guys have to go out on the field and prove they are better than that. Nothing special about that scenario for a boatload if very unproven players. It just is what it is.

I am not gonna subscribe but I just plain don't believe we have had many offers.

I don't believe this at all.

His PPG actually did go up a little in Colorado. We will see. I still sort of believe we saw pretty close to the peak of his abilities last year. Not wishing him ill or trashing him in any way. Just tend to believe we did sell high and correctly so.

Well, other teams also had an offseason. I honestly agree with him. Right now I have way more faith in Coker ascending then I do XL. I think it's the TE/WR group dragging us down. Plus he does mention that the list was made with WR's very much valued more than RB's and TE's(I understand the thought process). In that context, we have a very aging AT, two "wait and see" second year players(one leaning bust) and a rookie. I really think this is a very fair rating, on paper and in the offseason. Quite frankly, aside from the aforementioned and aging AT, this is a bunch of guys still trying to prove themselves. Then when you go to TE, it's easily a bottom 3-4 unit on paper. That is probably being extremely generous. RB is where we make our hay. Probably a top 5-10 unit. But....he mentions early in the article that he doesn't value the RB units as much. So, really, it's the weighting of the skill positions that is what really fugs us.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/45679684/ranking-nfl-teams-wr-te-rb-groups-2025-season-best-players-playmakers-offense

Necas is great to watch but I firmly believe we were correct to sell high. I would be very surprised to ever see him come close to the clip he was scoring at during his time here last season.

Trading KK is still probably a tall order. He has a no trade list and even with the cap going up, not many are going to want his salary for the minimal returns he offers. Ideally, he had a "breakout" year early this season and then we can sell high like we did with Necas.

I agree. Blake seems like the classic Cane type of player. He is one I would be very reticent to part with at the moment.

Gustavsson would be insane. I think we would have to break the bank to afford that move. Which, I don't think is necessarily a bad idea. Ultimately, Freddie isn't likely to be around more than a couple of seasons more. We can all agree that unless they have a fleet of sports psychologists working on Kochetkov, he will never be capable of getting his head on straight enough to compete.

Watch them hire some even bigger buffoon.

I think a lot depends on health and if T-Mac pulls targets away from him. Hopefully, we can get both T-Mac and Sanders cooking. If AT doesn't drop off, that would make for some potentially formidable receiving threats.

Okay, so I can say it a little more nicely that he was "barely productive in his rookie season." There is zero comparison between these players accomplishments in their rookie years. Quite frankly, given what we have seen from XL so far we would all be very lucky for him to end up as a top 15 WR in franchise history. Cam's talent was very evident, significantly less so for XL. It's obvious that he is an athlete and very much less so that he is a football player. Don't get me wrong, I am not rooting against him because that doesn't help us at all. The pick is already spent for better or worse. I am just firmly in the camp that doesn't really think he will pan out. I also think he will firmly be entrenched as the 3rd or 4th option by the end of this upcoming season. Hope he proves me wrong.

He leans goon/enforcer, which we haven't had in a minute. I do like that.

Oooh. I hadn't been updated on that.

He's a lil fella. But, he is a Rod/Cane guy for sure.

You know Burns already re-signed, right?

I mean....Little Monster, maybe.

I will say that the past 2-3 offseasons have been pretty confounding and/or underwhelming and they turned out pretty well. I will withhold a lot of judgement for that reason but....I don't love it.