Sgt Schultz

Clausen, Otah, and Carruth. Since Carruth is a "special case", I'd offer Little as a replacement assuming his trajectory remains unchanged.

It happens. As much as players liked Marty Schottenheimer and bought into his message, at the end of his run in Kansas City the team was undisciplined and completely off the rails mentally. I remember watching a MNF game when Derick Thomas and Wayne Simmons both melted down and thinking he had lost the team......which he had. I'm not sure if it is hearing the same message that clearly is no longer working, realizing the coach is a "dead man walking" with the team, or both.

You forgot the part where he turns around and whines to the ref if anybody touches him, gets near enough to touch him, or hurls and insult as he runs by.

Ah, yes, I forgot to factor in the fact that Hurney was actively trying to keep his job. I assumed it was just his usual hijinx, but that puts it on steroids and would explain the $20M/yr opening salvo. It kinda makes me glad it wasn't $30M.

Sounds like my cue to ruin that. I'm not a crack head, but people who read my posts do wonder sometimes what exactly I have been smoking or drinking. The only problem I have with Minshew is I think the only way he is leaving Jacksonville is via a trade, and the Jags will get better offers from teams looking for a starter than one looking for a backup/contingency. Don't get me wrong, if Minshew as available at a bargain price, that would be a good move. I thought there was a chance he would wind up here before the Darnold deal. But, Jacksonville is probably going to hang onto him until some team finds itself in need of a starter because theirs has gone down or is not quite as ready as the team had hoped. The most realistic option is whoever was 2nd or 3rd on the depth chart of a team that picked a QB in the top three rounds. That is not an illustrious list, either, but there are a couple of little-known guys that get good marks, are now expendable, and are probably better than our #2 or #3.

Teddy was brought in as a bridge QB who they thought might have a chance at stepping up and being a longer-term answer. But, his contract structure was such that after two years they had the out. If he was the answer, great, but if not, we move on. At least that was always my understanding of it. The move-on point was after 2021 and we torpedoed that publicly. The fact we overpaid is related, but a different issue. Somebody tells our GM (at the time) "okay, go get Bridgewater." He did. My guess is he did what he always did.....overestimated what others thought of the guy. He paid roughly $20M a year for a guy they could have probably had for $12-15M. He did have interest from other teams, but they were not likely to get anywhere near what we put on the table. But, our ex-GM is a guy that has routinely over-drafted or moved up to draft guys nobody else would have touched for a couple of more rounds. Do I think Hurney had a role in the decision to get Bridgewater......maybe. I don't think that is out of the ordinary. Do I think he had a major role in what we paid for Bridgewater.....absolutely. That falls right in line with his M.O. and history. He may have felt he had no choice, but the list of players he brought in or drafted that he may have felt that with and those went too high on is pretty extensive, especially if we talk about over-drafting or moving up to over-draft. The man had no concept of value, and still does not.

Forwarding this to Dan Snyder and Jerry Jones. I may forward it to a few others, later.

The people (assuming they are not bots) involved in this thread may have some strong opinions, but I have not known them to get crazy, even when people (assuming they are not bots) got crazy with them. Now there are some others who, if they join in the fun, will get the thread locked.

Ultimately, the way things are structured, it was not Tepper's decision. The difference between Tepper and Snyder is Snyder was the one who reportedly wanted Haskins, and by golly, they were drafting Haskins. Despite the fact that the people hired to know about that stuff didn't want him. Tepper may have wanted Fields, but when the people he hired to make those calls made them, they drafted somebody else.

We haven't had a decent backup since Andersen was a decent backup. Even then, had 2019 happened and Cam went down in week 2 with Andersen on the sidelines, he was not likely to steal wins from the jaws of defeat for 14 or 15 weeks. He was able to fill in for a few sets of downs or even start every now and then and give us a chance. The problem is our roster was almost all holes before last season. The difference between a playoff berth or not was not going to be "if only our starting QB hadn't gone down." I don't think it is this year, either (which is a good thing looking at who is in the QB room). But, there needs to be an upgrade, probably by this time next year and that is if Darnold works out. It just has not been the squeakiest wheel we have. My guess is we will keep an eye on cuts, but I am not sure who will be available that would give us a warm, fuzzy. There are a few potential guys who would be more of a warm, fuzzy than Walker and Grier, but that does not take much.

I agree, they knew Lawrence was unattainable. I don't think I heard anything about them having interest in Lance, but that does not mean they didn't. It seemed like once the Wilson ship sailed, they looked at door #3 which happened to be Darnold, in their estimation. I hope their evaluation was correct.

For all the pining over Fields, does their passing on him mean they don't value the position, or that their assessment of Fields doesn't agree with ours? Everything I have read leads me to believe they only interested in two QBs of the "big four," at least at pick #8: Lawrence or Wilson. Once they figured out they were going to have no chance at them (or at least no chance without selling their souls to move up), they made the deal for Darnold. Their assessment was that Darnold was their next best option. That is not necessarily a lack of appreciation for the position, it was a talent assessment. Eight teams passed on Fields after Lawrence, Wilson, and Lance were taken, for whatever reason. You could probably argue the Niners passed on Fields, too, since they took Lance. Fields was apparently not the consensus home run pick a lot of us thought. He may prove people wrong (an added challenge in Chicago), but the Panthers were not the only ones who did not have him graded high enough to be a top 12 pick. Once Sewell was off the board, I would have looked at Fields and Slater as the pick. Apparently the Panthers didn't agree with me on either of them. It doesn't mean they don't value the positions, it means their assessment of those players was different than mine. Considering they have a small army of scouts and people in the room when their draft board is put together, I can accept that and not try to draw conclusions from it other than "they don't agree with me on this guy." FWIW, Hurney didn't agree with my assessments, either. That, I feel pretty good about.

You have a problem with speeches? Sometimes, they serve an invaluable purpose....

Essentially, the message is that leadership earned by performance and reliability. I agree, he is approaching Darnold as if he is a rookie....and that is how he should approach him, IMO. "Learn to do the job well first" as opposed to "you already know how to do the job well now lead us to the promised land" which is I think the trap he may have been tangled in with New York. I honestly think that is setting up almost any young QB or failure. The advantage Darnold has is he has seen the speed and performance level of the game for a few years now so that should not be a surprise. But, he did not see much of NFL-quality from his own side while with the Jest. There is a nuance to the missed OL assignment comment. The QB having to make that right has to be the exception, not the rule. No QB will pull that rabbit out of the hat when they face that problem too often. Not Montana, not Elway, not Brady. The replays of the two Pats-Giants Suberb Owls or our own effort against the Broncos shows what happens to even the best QBs in that situation. No matter how it is sliced, the OL still has to be competent and limit the mistakes that make their way to the QB. I think Rhule and staff understand that. I don't think their predecessors ever quite figured that out. Something like this a couple of years ago would have sounded like a preemptive excuse for poor OL play.

I'm spouting this from memory, and in a vacuum the numbers probably don't mean much. The league average time to release was right at 2.75 seconds. Darnold's was 2.85 seconds. Teddy was right about 2.6, I think, and if I remember right he was fourth or so. I remember his time was in line with but a little faster than Brees. I say the numbers don't mean much in a vacuum because a QB with a strong, clean pocket for 2.75 seconds is a lot different than a guy running for his life to get it off in 2.85 seconds. For comparison, Mayfield's was the longest at around 3.2. If my memory is correct, Mahomes was a shade under 3. Haskins was the fastest, I think. Of course, you don't need much time to make a lousy decision.

As the fans chant, J-E-S-T Jest, Jest, Jest. Or something like that.

I think this is the worst case. We went through that scenario with Cam coming off the injury in 2019. We needed to see if he had regained his health/throwing velocity before committing to another contract. Then a different injury hit and that became impossible, at least on the timeframe the team had. No injury this time around, but still an evaluation. Darnold going down early would make that next to impossible. As somebody said, Darnold playing well enough to for us to flirt with .500 is not a bad scenario, assuming he shows enough that coaching staff concludes he is on an upward trend and has not yet approached his ceiling. It was pretty obvious with TB that the staff saw what they believed was his ceiling. Darnold is not really any different than a newly-drafted QB, except that he has a few years of seeing the speed of the NFL game first hand. A lot of people underestimate how different that is. That should allow a quicker evaluation.......assuming he does not get hurt early. Given he is coming to the end of his rookie deal, the evaluation has to be made quickly. But, I am not sure that does not go on with any young QB these days. More is expected sooner, and that is why the hit rate for even serviceable NFL QBs appears to have gone down.

If the OL is fluid, that would be an improvement over the last couple of years where they offered about as much resistance as a gas.

It is an over-simplification, but the easiest way to explain it is NFL contracts are like a series of one-year contracts, with the signing bonus attached to the front end of year one, almost as soon as the ink on the contract dries. People confuse the salary cap mechanics and the contract transactions.

Eh, not sounding stupid at all. I rarely start new topics, myself. When I am on the main Panthers Forum page, I see a blue button above the current topics, on the left, that says Start New Topic. Or, on this page, there is a similar button marked Reply to This Topic, and next to it on the left is a link to Start New Topic.

I haven't figured that out yet. It looks like it is the first thing people get here in their ascent up the ladder, so I guess it is a rite of passage.

I noticed the change, and wondered why the Huddle was giving me the clap under the avatar. I'm not too worried about the changes one way or another.

This post should be deleted, the poster banned, burned at the stake, the ashes collected and given to SpaceX to ship into space. How dare anyone try to inject facts into one of these discussions. Bad, bad, bad SizzleBuzz. You should know better. You may just have shorted out some tinfoil hats.

If Darnold gets hurt what do we do? The same thing we did last year if TB would have gone down. Or the year before when Cam did. Or the year before that. The backup QB position here has been rather barren since Anderson was last able to step in and guide the team......and that tells you the level we have historically been. At least Anderson was competent as a backup to finish a game or even make a couple of starts. Right now, it doesn't make much difference since we are "not there yet," but at some point, it will. RGIII was ruined in one playoff game by Shanahan. He used the "he should have told me if he needed to come out" approach when his knee was obviously being held together by a single tendon. Foles might be okay if we were close, because I think he can fill the role Anderson did. Maybe Walker can be that, but I don't think he is there yet, either.

I've been sitting here thinking "talk to me in late October."