UNCrules2187

Can you imagine Bryce ever making a throw like this in his career?

I actually think the offensive infrastructure is in a pretty good place, the problem is the QB isn't an NFL level talent. The scheme was good, the line gave the QB time, receivers were open. Bryce airmailed open receivers and it's on him to identify the nickel blitz and slide protections, shift his RB to the blitz side, and audible to a hot. He did none of those things.

Just waiting for the inevitable Jaycee Horn hamstring injury that keeps him out 10 weeks.

https://x.com/tompelissero/status/1833155725914169465?s=46

My prior post notwithstanding, and I'm under no illusions he's amazing, but the fact that Justin Fields was had for a 2025 6th round pick in hindsight is a trade the Panthers may have wish they made. Go with Bryce as the unquestioned starter, sure, but at least there would be a contingency in place to evaluate the rest of the roster if Bryce's first month of the season was a colossal faceplant. Fields isn't great, but at the very least he can make plays with his athleticism and throw the ball 40+ yards down the field.

@CRA I owe you an apology. I thought being super upset at Canales/the team for not playing the starters much in the preseason was overblown. And I still don't know how much that would've changed things given how much of an abject disaster this team looked like yesterday, but it's clear as day they needed more live reps together.

I don't blame Morgan for not bringing in any competition for Young. When the franchise has invested as much as it has into this specific QB, you throw him out there and let him sink or swim. So far, he's sunk, and I think the writing is on the wall at this point, but you play out the string and give him until at least the midway point this season to show something. The franchise has to be absolutely sure he's a complete dud before giving up on him. But make no mistake, he will not be the starter (and may not even be on the roster) come kick off of game 1 of the 2025 season.

The Hurst and Sanders deals seemed terrible from the get go and lo and behold, they were. Hoping the deals made this offseason pan out much better.

I mean I think it's a moot point because I don't think the Panthers were ever planning to cut him. He's a solid RT, has never missed a game, and they clearly like him given they've restructured his contract every single year since signing him to the extension. I think more likely than not they sign him to a something like a 3-year extension after the season so he's on a 4-year deal and replace his 2025 cap figure with something more manageable. But let's say they do want to cut him after the season. While yes, the cap savings aren't as much as they could've been, they can still save $13m on the cap (vs. $18m pre-restructure I believe). So really, it was a no brainer move to get into cap compliance.

You're not interpreting this correctly - his salary for 2025 is not $35m; that is his cap figure, it's an accounting figure. Here's a simple way to explain why it's gotten to that figure. When Moton signed his deal off the franchise tag in 2020, it became a 5-year, $85m deal with a $15m signing bonus. This is a simplified breakdown but still works for illustrative purposes, but that's $17m/year with $14m in base salary and $3m prorated signing bonus. Every year since Moton has signed that deal, the Panthers have restructured his contract to bring his $14m base salary down to the league minimum (typically ~$1m) and take the rest of the base salary (let's say ~$13m), convert that to a signing bonus, and prorate it over the remaining life of the deal. Think of it like this, Moton cap figures at time of signing are $17m every year. Then in 2021 they restructure his contract and bring his 2021 salary down to $1m and prorate the other $14m in base salary over the remaining 4 years so they add $3.5m ($14m/4) to his cap figure every year that's left. His 2021-2025 cap figures become $20.5m. In 2022 they do the same, adding another $4.67m ($14m/3 years remaining) to his 2022-2025 cap figures bringing them to $25.2m etc. In all this time, Moton is not "earning more salary", he's earning the original amount on his contract, it's just being accounted for on the cap at the new figure because of the base salary proration.

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