BrianS

It's a shame we kept trying to make him a position-less player instead of telling him his rookie year "Hey man, we need you to put on weight and play LB".

Been trying to say this for months now. Our defense was among the worst in the league last year in the one stat that actually matters: scoring. Know what we were dead last at? Taking the ball away. We had 11 all year. Sure, we had big injuries on that side. Yes, it was Evero's first year here. I accept all that and am willing to watch and see how we do this year. But bottom line, our defense was not good last year. We are simply the victims of a narrative people want to run with that it was good.

This is where your thinking goes off the rails. Evero didn't have a choice. He was under contract. Each coach has a contract with the team. Unless the team releases him from that contract, he can't go anywhere except to a higher job. For Evero, that meant getting a head coaching gig. The Panthers were the ones who made the choice to keep Evero. Not the other way around.

This was the right move, letting him go. 9 million per year is too much to give a guy with a career 142 tackles and only one year where he was available for every game.

That's true, the problem is the team tells us they think Bryce is the answer. If they were saying he's not, then by all means, pick 39 this year looks fine. But yea, next year looks pretty bad for QB. So, it's BY this year, and barring a historic turnaround, a bridge next year.

Well, yes, context does matter. Of course it does. And you may have not looked carefully enough at it, even though you posited the question right off the bat. Why would other execs pump Bryce up? It's simple: If the Panthers stay bad, it's good for them. It's competition, nothing more. Hopefully the Panthers org isn't listening to the outside noise. Hopefully they don't make more excuses after this year. BY had a rookie season on par with Zach Wilson. Yes, that ZW. If he turns it around this year, great, let's go. If not, cut bait.

He does seem like a good mid-round prospect. He looks like he's got his dad's deceptive speed. The guy didn't really run fast on the watch, but man did he catch a lot of deep balls. We do need a deep threat, but at the same time I question whether we have a QB who can throw those routes.

Didn't see this posted, so here you go. Nicole Tepper, Dave Canales and Luke Kuechly guest appearances.

This is the same issue I have with a lot of players, and not just in football. "Player X is great! He just needs A, B & C to unlock him." Bull(*@%. Great players don't need other players around them to play great. Did Peppers need someone else before he could be who he was? No, of course not. Even Rucker, who was that other DE for a lot of Peppers time, he had 9 sacks the year *before* Peppers arrived. He was always REALLY GOOD. Yes, having a lot of good players on the team makes everyone look good - probably better than they really are. But great players just find a way. That's what they do. Burns has shown us he's good. Not great. And he's asking for great money. That's the rub here.

This is all about leverage, nothing more. Possibility 1: OF COURSE if you're the Panthers you say all the right things about wanting a long term deal. That's the only way to maintain his value if you actually want to trade him. If you say to the league "No, we just want to trade him" his value instantly plummets. Possibility 2: If you really do want to sign him, but you also want it to be a more friendly deal, you non-exclusive him. Which we did. This allows him to go talk to other teams and find out what THEY might pay him. No matter what happens, this is the right move.

The topic name would be considered cruel and unusual punishment in some countries. I was coming in ready to declare Dan Morgan the greatest GM in our history.

You know what's worse? These are college students. You can't make this stuff up.

If Rattler is there in the 3rd, I would be really hard pressed not to turn in the card. Difference in arm talent between Young and Rattler is night and day.

"Oh, hi Dan! Didn't see you come in! We were just discussing some of the roster problems the Panthers have."

The biggest problem we have is a lack of talent across the roster. We're old and bad. This is what happens when you draft exceptionally poorly. Also, this is what happens when you give away too many picks. We need to simply draft BPA for a few years - with the exception of round 1 - and see where we end up. If we draft well, we should end up with a much deeper and more talented team. All of this assuming we can stop convincing ourselves in the summer that we're a playoff team.

I don't see any team looking at Justin Fields body of work in the NFL and going "Yep, that's $40 million worth of QB". I liked Fields coming out. I'm not sure how much of his lack of production is the fault of the Bears. What I do know is that he's not done enough to warrant a payday yet. You don't pay the 29th most accurate passer $40 million per season. You just don't.

I think "hope" is a more accurate way to state this. We have no basis to think he was a dissenting voice, but we can hope that he was. That pretty much sums up Dan Morgan for better or worse: Hope.

No we didn't. The separation of our WR's was largely equivalent to some very highly rated receivers like Justin Jefferson, CeeDee Lamb, Jordan Addison, Stefon Diggs and Rashid Shaheed. One of our problems was that our QB didn't view that separation as "open", when in fact it was "NFL open".

The question you have to ask yourself about Sam Howell is whether you believe you can fix his decision making. He has the tools, no question. But if you can't fix the decision making, he's not an NFL QB.

We don't have anything like the third most space. It's more like 15th, with a bad and old roster that needs far, far more than one superstar receiver to make it competitive.

The real problem with this roster is the one that I never see mentioned. Our roster in 2024 (as it stands now) is the second oldest roster in the league at 27.23 years old. We are bad, old and frankly still a little strapped for cash. We have to fix the roster with young players, not keep throwing money at marginal players who are probably over the hill. Pay Brown? Yes, that's a no-nonsense move that we need to make. Luvu, probably, if he's asking for reasonable money. But Burns? No. Go look at the stats and be real about it. His production doesn't support his valuation of his abilities.

Zach - not Russell.

Then let me present you with some alternate data. Here is reality. BY was the 31 ranked passer by completion percentage.

Burns is Charles Johnson. He is Mike Rucker. He is not Julius Peppers. Treat him accordingly. If trading him can give you two assets you need, then trade him.

What does "open" even mean? It ranks CeeDee Lamb's "Open" stat as 85 and Mingo's as 21 despite the fact that they had nearly exactly the same separation. I don't like things that obfuscate statistics behind rankings. Smells like Madden to me.