tukafan21

the very long didn't read version of this is....... If there is a QB worth trading up for at #1, we would take them ourselves If there isn't a QB worth taking at #1, then we can't bluff that we're taking one as nobody will be dumb enough to think we're passing on said QB because we have the worst QB situation in the league. Just because you want to do something doesn't mean other teams will want to get fleeced, there's only one Panthers team out there, and we can't fleece ourselves unfortunately.

This is a perfect post... to show how you can't seem to stop viewing things from a Madden GM viewpoint. Just because teams are in the market for a QB, doesn't mean they are going to make dumb trades to move up to #1 to take one in a draft where none of them are worthy of doing so. The first issue is you point out how teams will be in the market for a QB, but seem to forget that we literally have the worst QB situation in the entire league right now. So you can't bluff taking a QB at #1 while trying to trade the pick. This isn't a Bears/Fields situation where there is a legitimate argument to him still being able to be a franchise QB if you gave him weapons and that you're open to trading the pick to give him another season. If we're trying to trade the pick, every team will know we have no interest in taking a QB at #1, and thus nobody is going to make a trade with us to take the QB, if they wanted a QB that badly, they'd target the #2 pick knowing we're taking a non-QB. Beyond all that, the real issue is that this draft is much closer to 2022 than 2023... That was a draft where some mocks had guys like Pickett or Willis going in the Top 10 because teams needed QBs and they tend to overdraft them so people predicted it happening, even though almost every draft expert admitted they don't have 1st round grades. And in the end, teams weren't stupid and the first QB taken was late in the 1st round, unlike in 2023 when teams reached for players that nobody actually graded that high. And what's the result of that as of right now? the 2023 #1 and #4 picks have already been benched for geriatric backups and the current narrative is that teams need to stop taking QB projects high in the draft. Your example is basically like playing poker, showing that your hand is a pair of 2's and bluffing by going all in, your bluff is going to get called because they know your hand. Sure, some of these QB's could end up panning out as great NFL players, but none of them have shown to be worthy of taking with the #1 pick yet, let alone making a trade to move up there to take them. We literally are showing the league right now how horrible that idea is, to think a team is going to then make that type of trade with us is just asinine. If we hadn't made that trade in 2023 and showing the league right now how bad a trade like that is to make, then maybe a trade would be more feasible, but we're unfortunately showing the other 31 teams how dumb of an idea that is in a draft with QB prospects who don't grade out that high in the draft. Then you say you're good with taking these guys at #2, if that's the case, then you just take them at #1 instead of forcing a QB or DE pick that isn't the right decision. Making a pick based on the history of who gets drafted at #1 is just beyond dumb. Realistically the only way I think we can trade back because someone wants a QB is if they are as dumb as we were 2 years ago (seems unlikely) or we get lucky and the teams at #2 and #3 fall in love with only 1 QB and are willing to overdraft them, so we're able to convince one of them to swap picks to take them before the other team. Which yes, if that happens, you do it, but talking about that situation is pretty much pointless as it seems unlikely to happen in a year without a clear cut #1 QB, let alone that QB being worth trading up to the #1 pick to take them... because again, the key point to all of this, is if there was a QB like that, we would just take them ourselves. It's basically the 2023 draft all over again, except we're not the Bears with a QB who still could pan out, so we have no leverage in trying to trade the pick. I'd say best case scenario of a trade would be moving back a couple picks and picking up like a 3rd rounder to do so, I don't think any QB in this draft will garner another 1st or 2nd round pick to move back a few slots. Which if that's the case, I'd rather just take our #1 guy on our board than risk them getting taken before us if we move back to the 3-6 range to pick up an extra mid round pick.

I think the decline is more just the need for QB’s and DE’s, but there really just won’t be a blue chip prospect at those positions in this draft. T-Mac will be a Top 10 WR within a few years and a very real chance of being a Top 5 WR by his 2nd contract, don’t over think it, take the true outside #1 WR game changer and call it a day.

Oh and btw, the last time a non QB, DE, or OT has gone #1 overall, it was when Keyshawn went first. So again, basing our selection (assuming we can’t trade back) on recent history of positions of other #1 draft picks just makes no sense. You take the best player for your needs, which for us and with who is likely Top 10 picks, I very strongly believe to be T-Mac. It’s how you build a roster in today’s NFL, get the impact skill position players in place, then find your QB so they have those weapons from their first snap, not the other way around like we tried with Bryce

You say this as if trading back would be no problem at all But if we’re at #1 and there isn’t an obvious QB for us to take ourselves, the. It’s going to be difficult to trade back. As even just signaling we want to trade back will tell teams we’re not taking a QB, and if that’s the case, if a team sitting at 2-5 in the draft wants a QB, they have no motivation to trade with us since they’d know we weren't taking said QB. They’d either just stay put or trade into #2 for cheaper to get the QB since we’d clearly be taking someone else. So yes, trading back would be ideal, but it’s easier said than done since there probably it won’t be another team out there as dumb as we were last year to make a bad trade. Of all the players projected to go in that Top 10 area, T-Mac literally might be the best fit for us, so just take him if we can’t trade back, don’t force a pick in the end just because it’s the #1 pick T-Mac, Legette, Brooks, Sanders would be a dangerous young group of weapons for any QB we can replace Bryce with

Aren’t you the same person who has been advocating to take Hunter at #1 overall? Someone who is more than likely going to be a CB in the NFL, a position that I don’t think has ever had someone go #1, because they never should be taken #1 I think over the next 10 years or so, there will be a bunch of WRs who go #1 overall with the way the game is shifting to being which a passing league. Unless you have a Mahomes, which nobody else does, it’s near impossible to contend these days without a true elite WR Really, QB, DE, and OT are the only positions to get drafted #1 overall over the last 20 years or so. Just not sure there is someone at those positions worthy of us taking first overall if we have the pick, and if we can’t trade back and have to make the selection there, I think a true elite WR is exactly what we need to take, it’s been our biggest hole for a long time.

Big difference in taking WRs in the 2nd (or last pick in the first) and hoping they pan out, and taking the top WR in the draft who is going to go in the Top 10 at worst and very possibly Top 5 based on team needs. Nobody was saying Legette, Mingo, or TMJ were going to be can't miss prospects, but I think every draft analyst will be saying T-Mac is going to be such a prospect. They're not even comparable situations.

I'd go with that WR from Arizona, can't think of his name though

If we take Burden over T-Mac I'm burning all my Panthers gear and finding a new team, that would just be so dumb to pass up the 6'5" true outside #1 WR to take the 5'11" guy who is going to play most of his career in the Slot.

And even then, they're grading all these QB's as mid 1st rounders at best, if not 2nd rounders It's just flat out not a year to draft a QB, no matter how bad we need one. There will be 3-4 QB's minimum in next year's draft that will all be graded higher than any from this year

T-Mac has Top 5 position potential by his second contract, not going to be many players with that kind of potential in the draft and it’s one of our biggest positions of need. Having an elite WR can change an entire offense and he’s the best in the draft. WRs with his combo of size/speed/hands are near impossible to find, don’t over think it, take the best offensive player in this draft and be happy

Yep, and he's admittedly had some pretty bad statistical games, but anyone who's watched the games can tell you it's not because of him. The offense has been a mess under this new staff and our QB has been pretty bad all year, all that combined with teams double and triple teaming him most plays because we have nobody else who scares anyone, it's limited his chances. Even having said all that, he's still at 982 yards thru 8 games this year, but stats in his favor or against him aside, he's going to be a Top 10 pick at worst, very possible Top 5, and he'll be the first WR off the board, I'd bet my bottom dollar on that. Given it being such a position of need for us, he's my pick no matter what, although if we did end up #1 and could trade down a couple spots and still be sure to get him, I'd of course like to do that to get more assets as well.

T-Mac having himself a game, 10 rec, 202 yards, 1 TD, with a few highlight reel plays and should have just had a TD pass as well on a crazy play but our QB dropped the ball when he would have walked backwards into the end zone (would have been his 2nd impressive pass of the day as they ran a flea flicker earlier that he ran all over before making a solid pass). He's the pick, I don't care if we're at #1, he should be the pick, he's going to be a STUD in this league for the next decade plus. It's a hole we haven't been able to fill since Smitty, it will help whoever our future QB is, he's just flat out the pick.

He turns 29 this offseason, he has 2-3 years left in him and he's never really been an elite WR outside of the few times a season he flashes the potential. At some point you hav to accept what he is, someone with talent who isn't a #1 on a contending team and is probably a 3rd receiving option on that type of team. There's no reason to give him the $20+ million a year it would take for us to re-sign him with where we are at as a franchise. As I've said a million times, draft T-Mac with our First round pick instead, get a better WR on a rookie contract and 8 years younger with the potential to be a Top 5 WR in the league. So if we're not going to re-sign him (like we shouldn't), then there really is no reason to not trade him for whatever we can get as there are some WR needy teams who think they can still contend this year. I'd also trade Thielen for the same reason, think we could actually get more from the right team for him as him in the slot could be more helpful to teams than Johnson on the outside.

This is a bad idea, when he bombs out there, it's going to ruin any potential trade value he still had.

Sure that's a fair argument as well, but once it was clear the team had quit on him and we didn't have a good roster in place to begin with, the smart thing would be to just embrace the suck for one season and use it to kickstart the re-build with the #1 draft pick without needing to make a stupid trade to get there. Of all the dumb decisions this franchise has made over the last couple years, that trade was by far the worst of them as we were already a roster without a lot of talent and we traded away our best offensive weapon and multiple high draft picks in a bad QB draft, just dumb and compounded a multitude of other issues.

It was firing Rhule mid-season, I was infuriated when he did it and it was the first domino that lead to us being here right now. We weren't going to win games with him as the HC and Tepper knew it so he made the move, but it was cutting off his nose to spite his face. If we kept Rhule all season, we end up with the #1 pick of the draft all on our own, which means even if we still took Bryce, we still would have kept DJ and all those draft picks. If we still take Bryce, he's still awful and we end up replacing him with the QB heavy draft from this past season since we would have still had our 2025 1st. If we went a different way and took Stroud, pairing him with DJ and whoever else we built the WR room around (which likely would have included Tank Dell, as remember, Stroud went to the Texans after they took him and asked them to draft Dell as they had built up a great chemistry working out together before the draft).

Oh I absolutely buy the rumors as they've been handing out huge contracts lately and haven't won the SB yet on their QB's rookie deal and are somehow even worse this year (yes I know injuries play a factor). Being great at evaluating talent only gets you so far, if you don't win the SB and are saddling yourself with serious cap issues in the very near future, it's not going to help a GM keep his job. I think Lynch is in far more danger of being fired than Shanahan because of those contracts, far too much smoke about ownership being unhappy about the Williams and Aiyuk contracts for there to be no fire.

Except there have been lots of reports that it's a SB or bust season for Lynch as ownership hasn't been happy with the contracts he's given out because of what it's going to do to their cap situation in the next few years. If they aren't at worst in the NFC Championship game again, he's 100% getting fired and there have been rumors that Shanahan, for as great as he's been, will end up being tied to Lynch's fate. They have to make panic moves right now or it's going to cost them their jobs. I'd be shocked if they don't trade for a WR before the deadline, whether it's one of our guys or someone like a Mike Williams who is clearly available, who knows, but they'll get someone.

This is their year to try and win the SB, they're going to have to pay Purdy after this season, who knows what CMC's future will be (assuming he can get back this year for the playoff run), and their overall cap situation is going to get ugly soon. Trying to replace Aiyuk with Jennings and Pearsall and thinking that's good enough to help turn around a struggling team in their final year of their best SB window would be criminal.

If we're not on the phone with the 49ers about Deontae and/or Thielen than we're doing something wrong. Both of them would be great players in that offense and they now have a huge whole at WR after losing Aiyuk.

No high end HC candidate was ever going to seriously consider us, we were always only going to be looking at re-tread HC's who no other team would give another shot to or the young guys who weren't ready for it yet and saw it as their chance to jump the line Most of the pieces on this team were bad coming into the season and there's been a ton of injuries on top, I don't really blame Canales much. At worst he's going to set up a better culture in the locker room with his up beat attitude and it will get it in a better place for the next HC after Canales is dumped following next season. That's another reason I'm against drafting a QB this year, we can't fire Canales after 1 year (as NOBODY would want that job). Give him year 2 with a gap starter or young current backup (my vote is Hooker from the Lions) to see if he can do anything, if not we get a new HC with a Top 10 pick to choose his own QB.

I still think we should try and see if the Lions will trade Hendon Hooker With his and Goff's age, they don't need him as Goff is clearly their QB for the foreseeable future right now and I thought he had a ton of potential, if he didn't blow out his knee at the end of his season, he probably would have gone in the 1st round. Take T-Mac with our first pick to pair him with Legette and give Hooker the starting job the entire season. Either we find a diamond in the rough and he can be our QB moving forward or he's going to be bad enough that we get a Top 10 pick in a QB loaded draft with a true outside #1 going into their 2nd season and hopefully one of the better #2 WRs in the league for said rookie to have as his weapons. T-Mac, Legette, Brooks, Sanders has the potential to be a dangerous set of young weapons for any QB to step into

is he a QB? no? so yes, obviously i'm on board with that pick then do you even read my posts or do you see it's me and just want to talk about whatever you want to talk about?

Drafting a QB in a bad QB draft just because you need one is exactly how you get stuck in NFL purgatory This team isn't a QB away from competing, there is no circumstance that we should be drafting a QB in the first round this year, I would legitimately trade completely out of the first round this year than take a QB in the round with the prospects at the position this year