UNCrules2187

They are not “paying him $35 mil next year”. This is all $ he was already making, just cap gymnastics to take the base salary in the years down and prorate over the remaining length of the contract. In other words he’s not making more $ from the original contract extension signed in 2020, they have just been taking his base salaries down to the vet min for a player of his years of experience each year and converting the rest to a signing bonus that gets prorated over the remaining years on the deal.

Unless they added void years to Moton’s deal, he’ll have a cap hit of nearly $39m next season in the final year of his current deal. I’d assume an extension coming after the season if he maintains his level of play.

I took Brooks very late in my draft last night but that's because my league has IR slots so figured he'd be a good one to stash. I think Hubbard will be a decent option for the first month or so but only in deeper leagues (12+ teams) or if you load up on WRs early and have slim pickings at RB left late. Honestly you probably don't even need to draft Hubbard and could pick him up as a FA prior to the Week 1 games. Diontae is really the only "draftable" Panther with Brooks as a stash candidate as mentioned above. Everyone else shouldn't be touched/better options available.

When you get up to the void year, you either have to extend the player and replace the void years with real years, or (more commonly), the contract automatically voids and the entire remaining cap charge accelerates onto the cap the year the contract voids. So in the Dalton example, his contract is set to void after the season, and the remaining amount of the prorated bonus ($2.9m) will hit the 2025 cap.

Void years are basically dummy years on a contract for the purposes of spreading out the guaranteed money/signing bonus on the cap. For example, Dalton signed a 2-year, $10m deal last offseason with a $4m signing bonus. The deal was structured as a 5-year contract with 3 voided years tacked on the end to spread out the $4m signing bonus over 5 years rather than over 2 years. edit: here's an explainer - https://overthecap.com/creating-cap-space-by-extending-players-with-void-years

This should've shaved ~$1.69m off the 2024 cap number, so another ~$4.48m to go. They can shave another ~$2.1m by restructuring Dalton (he already has 3 void years on his deal to spread the proration over). After that, the best moves to make IMO would be either restructuring Corbett (saving ~$3.42m) or by extending Hubbard (since it's pretty much a given Sanders will be cut after the season) and Pineiro.

Can get that figure over $70m with a few simple moves (simple restructures of Brown, Hunt and cutting Theilen post 6/1, Sanders, and Wonnum).

If they truly want to leave Moton’s deal alone, they could squeak just under the cap by cutting Rhattigan and restructuring Corbett’s deal which already has a void year so could spread the prorated bonus over 2 years. Believe that would give us a dead cap figure of ~$5.6m for Corbett in 2026 which isn’t so bad given we’re projected to have gobs of cap space that year.

I THINK it’s by kick off Thursday night, but not 100% sure.

I'm just not quite sure what else they can do to get into cap compliance. Cutting Rhattigan frees up another ~$3m but still leaves them about $3m over the cap and typically teams like to have a few million of breathing room on the cap going into the season. I suppose they could extend Diontae but figure if that was going to happen they would've done that already. Someone mentioned cutting Ian Thomas but he's in the final year of his deal so that would all be dead money on the cap with no cap savings. More likely they'd cut Tremble as that would save ~$3.1m against the cap. Just not a lot of moves available besides a Moton restructure (e.g. cutting Woods saves $4.5m against the cap but I don't think they're planning on doing that). I saw they just waived Tyler Smith off IR but that only saved ~$470k.

Believe this is the 2nd to last year of his deal. He's under contract in 2025. I think they may opt to do a max restructure and add void years to the end of the contract, otherwise his cap hit next season would be ~$38m.

Look for the Panthers to do a simple restructure of Moton. Cutting Chaisson and restructuring Moton's deal to bring his base salary down to the league min this year will get the Panthers under the cap.

Week 1 close win. Go into bye at 6-4 (Ws at Saints, at Raiders, vs Falcons, at Commanders, vs Saints, vs Giants). Go 2-5 after the bye with losses vs Chiefs, at Eagles, vs Cowboys, at Bucs, and at Falcons, but manage to eke out the division at 8-9 (4-2 vs division) because rest of the division is also trash. Easy enough to predict 4-6 wins and no playoffs, figured I'd try something different.

Our kickers seem to be made of glass

Defense should play another series, looking like ass

We are playing a 3rd string C and a backup at LG. The starters are done. Absolutely no reason to see them again this close to the season.

Folks put way too much stock into “live reps” in the preseason. The preseason does not tell you anything. You can tell this because pretty much half the league isn’t playing their starters much if at all. Once the league moves to an 18 game season, they’ll cut another week off the preseason too. I’d wager that they’ll move largely to more of those joint practices with other teams and have no more than 1 preseason game within the next 5 or so years.

Do you ever get exhausted being this conspiratorial and overtly negative over something so meaningless? What do you think will be accomplished if the starters play 10-15 snaps/1-2 drives on Saturday? I already know your reaction if/when they do play based on how they fare. Play well and score “it was against a bunch of scrubs means nothing” play poorly/go 3 and out and sit “wow they can’t even do poo against a bunch of scrubs in 3 snaps!!!!” The team is bad with a new coaching staff and it’s going to be a long season. Median outcome is somewhere in the 4-6 win range. Whether or not the starters took a handful of snaps in the preseason is going to be have absolutely zero bearing on how the season plays out.

Hindsight is 20/20 though. It's a tough thing to balance when you do have an MVP level QB to use a valuable first round pick on a replacement for that QB instead of maximizing the franchise's window to win. Plenty of Packers fans shat on their FO for "wasting" a pick on Love instead of taking a playmaker for Rodgers to maximize his MVP seasons and get another SB ring. And there's no guarantee the next guy you pick is going to be any good either. The Packers scouted well, but as recently as before the past season plenty of folks were skeptical Love was going to be any good. If you miss on a guy like that, then all you did was piss off your MVP QB, not maximize the chance to win a SB with that QB, and end up getting nothing out of the pick too.

If this happens (he plays every game, has 5-7 INTs, is generally the shutdown corner the team envisioned him being when they drafted him) and he asks to be paid like the top CB in the league, the solution is easy - franchise him and make him prove it again. edit: actually they picked up his option so he's under contract next year anyway. Make him prove this season isn't a fluke before giving him a LT deal.

Bro this doesn’t matter whatsoever? The team website put out a puff piece in late August on a 6th string RB that got cut, big whoop. It literally means less than zero.

Legit none of these guys matter except for maybe Lamar and he was injured, not much you can do about that. Just reinforces why they’re being cautious about playing any starters in the preseason given the lack of depth / quality backups.

I feel like the division is pretty garbo so should be able to go .500 against Falcons/Saints/Bucs. That just means 3 more wins out of the 11 other games to hit the over (eyeing Raiders, Bears, Commanders, Broncos, Giants, and Cardinals games as ones Panthers should be competitive in). Won 2 games last year with probably the most heinous offensive coaching staff and offensive production in Panthers history and lost another 6 by 8 points or less. 6 wins with a hopefully improved OL and much better offensive coaching/skill players should be achievable IMO.

O/U is 5.5 juiced to the over at all the reputable books. Easy schedule. If Bryce isn't a total dud and Evero can make chicken salad out of chicken poo with the pass rush and secondary, 6 wins should be achievable. For Bryce's stats, all I'm asking for is 200 pass ypg and 1.5 pass TDs per game on average. If we can't hit those marks with this schedule, then it means Bryce is a certified bust, we'll have a top 3 pick, and one of Carson Beck/Shadeur Sanders/Quinn Ewers is holding up a Panthers jersey in April 2025.

I've got modest expectations. Hoping for meaningful improvement but nothing wild. 5-7 wins, 3500+ pass yards, 25+ TDs, cut the turnovers (INTs+fumbles) in half. If he shows that, I think he'll get more time.