kungfoodude

Agreed. I am not sure it would be regretting moving on from Teddy as much as moving to Darnold that they would regret. The writing was on the wall with Teddy. Even if we go 0-17 with Darnold, would 5-7 wins with Teddy be better?

I don't think the hope in Darnold is nearly as overrated/overblown as our hope in the offensive line. As bad as Darnold is/was, the sum of the current Panthers OL is probably a lot less.

I believe you mean, "Let's see if he can stay healthy."

Yeah, there is no reason to go nuts until we have more of our core secured.

There has to be some mutual interest for either of them, IMO. I doubt Rodgers is going to play anywhere other than Green Bay or a Cali based team. If he was traded somewhere else, he'd likely just retire. Wilson has mild ties to the area but his wife is unlikely to want to stray too far from the West Coast given her industry. Also, I don't think Wilson is very serious about wanting to leave Seattle. I suspect that is very much more a case of him voicing some general frustrations rather than him trying to force a trade. While we have turned over a new leaf as a franchise, I don't think you will see us be much of a prime location for many big free agents or NFL stars until we show some stability and success. It's a process to get there and we are very much in the infancy of it.

Rodgers and Wilson are looking for wins or locations. I don't see us on their potential location list nor on their list for ready to win now teams. Watson is a possibility but probably a rather slim one at this point. Just depends on how serious it gets for him. I think legally he comes out fairly clean because he has access to the rich people justice system but the court of public opinion isn't so kind.

I am going to start judging regular people in real life on their sack production.

He is just staying on his message for whatever reason.

Seems unlikely we would be able to land him, even if he were available.

Hence everyone's continued frustration with our inability to put together a decent OL during most of his career. Imagine having this weapon with huge gaps being blown in the defense by our OL? The sad thing is, we aren't that far away from having a dominant offense.

Well he was an "ordinary" guy that had over 1000 yards of offense and 8 TD's for us. Like I said, if we keep running the wheels off of CMC, the bill is eventually going to have to be paid(if it isn't already). We have too many weapons on this offense to be running the entire thing through a non-QB. That is going to have to change eventually.

I mean, we had a very effective guy in Mike Davis that we let sit when CMC played. That is ultimately my problem with the CMC situation. You invested this crazy amount of money in him but work him at an insane rate. We need him to last the entire length of his contract.

His usage rate in the three games last year was basically at Rivera levels. That is what is concerning. I get it, he is a fantastic weapon and he is the highest paid player at his position. But....if we don't control his usage better, it will eventually come back to bite us, if it already hasn't.

For the most part I typically lean towards the bulk of the end result of a player's career being weighted towards the player and not the coaching. I don't say that to diminish the importance of coaching, after all there is always more to learn and ways to improve. By that same token, most of the players in the NFL have gone through years of playing, being coached, film study, etc. I think that is why you have guys like Grier that don't succeed. They just don't have what it takes to be NFL players for whatever reason. You always want the best possible coaches but sometimes you can't get anything more from a player simply because they don't have what you are trying to get out of them. Some players have it, others don't. I am not going to get too excited about Sam until around midseason unless he is just clearly fuging elite level or horrifically bad. Same way I felt about Teddy last year when people were jumping for joy after the first few games and pointing to his elite completion percentage. So, even if Sam lights up the Jets or lays a fuging egg I am not going to get caught up in all the hoopla. I realize that will differ from roughly 95% of the Huddle but eventually you watch enough football, especially Panthers football, to try to temper your reactions until there is at least a worthwhile amount of data to discern something significant. As others have stated in various threads, the real nightmare scenario is probably a yo-yo edition of Sam Darnold, where he is just generally all over the map during the course of the season. At that point, you have to somehow figure out if the highs are high enough to still be excited about potential with the lows factored in. That's a tough one because we might end up suffering through two seasons of trying to figure it out. Frankly, I'd rather he just show up being regular Darnold bad and just move on after a year than have to deal with two seasons of "figuring it out." Strange as it may sound, really bad Darnold and really good Darnold are equally easy situations to deal with. At least you know what the path forward is once you know that.

Yeah but then why can't we get more out of PJ Walker or Will Grier? You can't coach everyone up, for a WIDE variety of different reasons. That's the thing, we don't KNOW that he is going to improve with any of the things we are doing that might be better than the Jets. I think it's gonna be pretty evident by about midseason what we have in Darnold. It's either gonna be really good or really bad.

I think he can improve but I suspect we will start seeing bad habits when the pressure gets to him in 2021. That isn't so simple to train out in a short period of time. Sometimes it just never happens for whatever reason or combination of reasons. We also have to appreciate that he really doesn't have much experience actually playing quarterback.

I think it is possible for the last couple of games that he was out when he "could" have played, that really doesn't seem like a logical leap. I seem to recall he may have mentioned wanting to play in the last game or two. Not 100% sure I remember that correctly.

RB is a high mileage position. The biggest concern wasn't really that CMC got injured, it's that he kept getting injured over the course of the season. He had three separate injuries in the 2020 season when he had not missed a game due to injury in his career prior to that. CMC has undoubtedly played at less than 100% multiple times(as most NFL players do) but that spate of injuries has to make you wonder if some of those injuries might have been the result of his usage rate. But, it's also possible it was a statistical outlier and just a cluster of bad luck events. I think his health this season will probably give us our answer.

I don't think that would go well with him or the team in general. That would have a pretty big negative impact on morale, IMO. These are very competitive people, after all.

I think Chinn is plenty motivated to be an elite player so I really do believe that all we need to do is keep him healthy and he is going to get better and better. Darnold we just aren't going to know anything about until the games start. I firmly believe no matter how hard we try to fix him, the problem is ultimately between his ears. That is really gonna be on him to fix.

Can the Carolina Panthers rely on Joey Slye? Nope. What are the Carolina Panthers going to do with Brady Christensen? Good question. How can the Carolina Panthers maximize Jeremy Chinn’s impact? Just keep him healthy. How can the Carolina Panthers keep Christian McCaffrey healthy? How about not use him like he is the only player on offense? How can the Carolina Panthers build Sam Darnold’s confidence? Maybe put a good offensive line in front of him, so probably nothing this season.

I am just not going to believe that we couldn't find offensive linemen in this past draft. Especially considering we needed almost every position on the line as both starters and backups. I hope we end up with all three of our selections in our two deep. At least that will make that a little less of a body blow.

If we don't go heavy OL in the 2022 draft(as we should have this year), I am just going to assume we don't care about OL as an organization.

He wasn't great but he was solid. Even with injuries he has technically probably outplayed his draft spot. It is just a shame he can't seem to stay healthy. I think he could be a two deep guy for sure. As the 4 Man Rush says, "Availability is an ability."

I think it would be the choice of most Huddlers but that has never particularly mattered.