LinvilleGorge

All I know is that we have to get an upgrade at WR in this free agent market. Tons of guys out there who are better than Jericho Cotchery and Corey Brown. Even if we plan on adding another WR early, we can't necessarily expect that guy to come in and make a KB type impact. Last year's WR class was truly historic in terms of their impact as rookies. It's not the norm. Not even close to it. There are a lot of veterans out there who would be an upgrade over what we have right now and the depth of the market should drive the some of the prices down.

If there's a guy there at #25 who Gettleman believes will be a good starting NFL OT, then I'm 100% alright with taking him.

Yep. Remember when Atlanta landed an aging Steven Jackson and everyone thought that was going to be their missing piece?

I actually wouldn't mind TB trading valuable draft picks to acquire AP. Sure, he may be a bear to deal with for a season or two, but he's a 29 year old RB who has been ran HARD his entire career. That tread has to be wearing thin. Panthers fans well know the dangers of big money RBs.

Virtually every aging NFL vet is in it for the cash. Ginn just got a decent deal from the Cards last year and despite washing out and getting cut, he probably thinks he can land another one.

Had an $11.5M cap hit this season and wasn't willing to take a pay cut. How much is he looking for? He's 32 years old. Gotta think he would've made more in Philly than anywhere else.

Yikes. Can't wait to see national media headlines on this... "Cam Newton Involved in Nightclub Shooting"

Somebody will offer him more money for longer than we'd be willing to offer. I'd LOVE to have him on a two year deal for decent money. Two years, $12M with $4M guaranteed? Fuging sign me up for some of that! He'll probably get at least double that guaranteed money though.

This. He got his big deal and failed miserably. Maybe he'll be hungry again now to try to earn another one. Carolina can also sell him on immediate playing opportunity and the fact that we have recent success signing vets on short-term deals and put them in a position to cash in after that - Ginn and Mitchell.

I would assume he's fine at this point. Wasn't there talk about him potentially being available for the Super Bowl had we made it there? I could be completely fabricating that, but I seem to remember some talk about it.

TB is god awful. The guy played pretty damn well for the Bengals. The Bucs just massively overpaid out of desperation, just like the Titans did with Oher.

Faster Jason Witten? You serious? Wow. That is truly hilarious. Witten is 3" taller and 15# heavier than O'Leary and his 4.65 40 would blow the doors off of O'Leary. Witten is a prototype NFL TE and a potential HOFer. O'Leary is a guy hoping that he'll make an NFL roster.

Would not be mad about it. Wouldn't be mad at all.

I honestly think it's very possible that weakside 4-3 OLB is where he's best suited.

It's my concern with Collins to be honest. I don't know if you take an in the box safety with poor ball skills in the 1st round. Now, Kam Chancellor is largely an in the box safety, but he also has the benefit of playing with arguably the best CB and best FS in the league. Having a true sideline to sideline center fielder like Earl Thomas playing on the back end opens him up to just wreak havoc and wreak havoc he does. I like what I saw out of Tre Boston last year, but I don't think it's any knock on the kid to admit that he's no Earl Thomas.

Yep, we were very interested last year, but if we weren't willing to give him that type of contract in the FA market last offseason, we sure as hell aren't going to trade anything to acquire that contract with Collins coming off of a bad season. Nor will anyone else. If the Bucs want out of that deal they're gonna have to cut him.

You wouldn't take a really good slot guy and returner in the 4th round? I would. The reason nickel CBs are so valuable these days is because there are a lot of high impact slot WRs out there now. If you can get a good one in the 4th round, I wouldn't even hesitate.

Honestly, I kind of see it the other way. Gettleman seems to want value over anything else in the draft. When a draft is deep at a position, it's probably inevitably going to push some prospects at that position a little further down the board than they may normally go. That's the type of situation Gettleman seems to relish. Last year's WR class was considered one of the best of all time and their rookie production absolutely lived up to the hype they got. At #28, Gettleman still took a WR even though it was the 5th WR off the board. We all know what KB did as a rookie. Once again, if a guy like Jaelen Strong is sitting there at #25, I don't think Gettleman lets him get away. This is another deep WR class, but after the top 4 guys, I think there's a big drop off to the rest of the field. I think Cooper, White, Parker, and Strong are about as close to sure things as you can get in the NFL draft. After those guys though, you have a mix of WRs who have speed but not great hands, have great hands but not great speed, have durability concerns, etc. I think those 4 are probably the top 4 WRs on just about every board, maybe not in that order, but those 4 guys. After those 4, I think boards are going to vary widely based on what teams are looking for in a WR.

Well, we all know that the Panthers are almost certain to draft some project out of a small school, so Lynden Trail certainly fits that mold. I don't like him though. He was supposed to have tremendous upside, but the workout numbers didn't reflect it. You also want to see small school prospects dominate at that level. 5 sacks in D1AA from a guy who is supposed to be a freak? How did he do at the Senior Bowl? Hell, did he even go? He was invisible all week according to most reports. I like Lockett a lot. He should be able to come in and inject some much needed speed into our WR corps, but just as importantly, be able to provide a much needed spark to our return game. We simply didn't have a return game last year. Bersin was essentially sent out there to simply fair catch the ball and he even sucked at that. I can't ever remember being so nervous during punt returns in my life. Forcing the other team to punt is usually a good thing. It was nerve wracking last year. In short, I like you're 1st, 2nd, and 4th rounders, but IMO you've taken two guys in the top 5 rounds who have a decent chance of going undrafted.

Look at all of his other measurables. They were BAD. If his hammy was still bothering him, he and his agents are idiots for having him go through the drills at the combine. He should've just shown up to get measured, did his bench press reps, and went through his interviews and gotten out of Indy and headed onto his pro day. His pro day becomes HUGE for him now. A lot of people over-hype the workout numbers. If a guy is expected to be a mid-4.4s guy and he comes in and runs a 4.4 flat or a 4.5 flat, that's fine. It doesn't change opinions on the player that he is. It's basically what was expected. Okay, he was slightly faster than we thought or he was slightly slower than we thought, but either way, our assumption of who he was as an athlete was basically confirmed. Especially if the other workouts were good. But, the opposite is also true. A lot of people on the other side completely downplay the workouts as irrelevant. That's just not true. Those workouts tell you what type of raw athletic ability a prospect has. That's important. It gives you some type of indication of how that guy translates to the next level. Look at O'Leary's measurables and try to find an NFL comp. The closest I can come up with is Henry Hynoski who is a quality NFL FB, but he went undrafted.

The combine only truly matters when someone performs way worse or way better than expected. That gets scouts' and GMs' attention and sends them back to look at the tape again. When a TE or H-back runs a 4.93...

Tell me how O'Leary translates to the NFL and how that's worth a 3rd round pick. That's all I'm saying here. If we were talking about him in the 6th or 7th, I'd be singing a totally different tune.

I don't care what you want to call him, he's a terrible NFL athlete. That's not going to change. His best attribute by far is his hands. I'm not saying Tolbert is great. You seem to be hung up on that. I think there's a good chance he'll be cut. Hell, we don't really use him. Hence why I think its dumb to draft a poor athlete in the 3rd round who will likely rarely be used. What makes h-backs dangerous in most offenses is the match up nightmares they cause. O'Leary isn't a good enough athlete to do that.

O'Leary is one of those guys who was a productive college player who really gets hurt by the combine when the truth about his athletic ability gets exposed. Not every good college player translates to the next level. There are a handful of those types every year. No one expected O'Leary to run a blazing time, but I think most people expected him to run in the 4.8 range. Running 4.8 flat wouldn't have hurt him. Barely breaking 5.0 hurts him. Hurts him bad. In college, O'Leary gave up athleticism but made up for it with skill. In the NFL, he'll be giving up a TON of athleticism and those far more athletic guys will have a lot more skill than those he went up against in college.

Nobody has said Tolbert is fast. He's not. But, he's fast compared to Nick O'Leary. For the record, he has three 100 yard rushing games in the NFL, but they were all for the Chargers. I know for a fact that Brad Hoover had at least one 100 yard rushing game for us. He was very rarely called upon to carry the ball for us, but back in '00 when we just flat out ran out of RBs he started at RB for us and carried the ball 24 times for 117 yards in a win vs. the Packers. Tolbert ran a 4.75 40 coming out of college. Brad Hoover reportedly ran in the 4.6s. O'Leary barely outran the fastest offensive linemen at the combine this year while weighing about 50 pounds less. That's why I have serious questions about him being an NFL caliber athlete. O'Leary was... 17th out of 18 TEs in the 40 (4.93) 7th out of 12 TEs in the 3 cone (0.55 seconds behind 1st place, only 0.22 seconds ahead of last place) 6th out of 11 TEs in the shuttle 10th out of 10 TEs in the vertical (tied with two other for last at 30.5") 9th out of 11 TEs in the broad jump (2" ahead of last place) 4th out of 14 TEs in the bench press (Yay!) Now, keep in mind, this is considered one of the weakest TE classes in recent memory and Nick O'Leary is clearly one of the, if not the worst athlete at the position in the class. If you want to classify him as a FB, fine. FBs are very rarely drafted anyway these days. The numbers add up to a guy who will be a late round draft pick or possibly even go undrafted. That's just the truth. Drafting this guy in the 3rd round would be insane.