Smart moves....

[saX man]

14 hours ago, DamnItJake! said:

Plus we are in cap hell!!

Actually, quite the opposite.  We're carrying a lot of dead cap for 2020 (48 million) but we're using that to restrict us from taking any valuable talent for 2020 so we can rebuild.  You need to carry a certain % of cap and we were clearly not looking to add any huge contracts yet so a quarter of our cap is filled with dead money.  

We'll have $60 mil+ to spend next offseason.

[Sgt Schultz]

1 hour ago, saX man said:

Actually, quite the opposite.  We're carrying a lot of dead cap for 2020 (48 million) but we're using that to restrict us from taking any valuable talent for 2020 so we can rebuild.  You need to carry a certain % of cap and we were clearly not looking to add any huge contracts yet so a quarter of our cap is filled with dead money.  

We'll have $60 mil+ to spend next offseason.

At some point, dead cap space starts determining who stays on the roster when they have not earned the spot.  Constantly chasing those "one or two players" will eventually put you there.  It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of extending/restructuring current players, signing FAs to be those "one or two players," watching it fall short, rinsing, and repeating (without the rinse, really).  Then one day something happens and the can can't be kicked down the road any more.

I don't think we were there, but I do believe we were headed in that direction.  What they have done so far to correct that make the cap numbers in future years look pretty good.  But, Hurney is not done yet, although he may be wearing a training collar this time around.

[stbugs]

18 hours ago, LinvilleGorge said:

We only have one DT on the roster and he's over 30 years old and coming off of a season ending injury.

Well, I lied. We have two. The other is Woodrow Hamilton. He's appeared in two games in his career, both of those games were back in 2016.

In this rebuild Short should be released but we are going to pay him $14M for another mediocre year because we have to since we basically threw away our 2, two 3rds, 4th and 5th instead of using them on interior OL and DTs when both of those were deep last year. I just don’t understand how Tepper and Rhule can look at Marty objectively and say that we need him. We just blew 4 comp picks that we desperately need (regardless of people who say they don’t matter, lol) in guys we need to fill in the roster for guys we let go. SMH it’s like a double whammy. Lose starters and lose the compensatory picks that all teams but the Texans and us use to reload. Thank goodness we signed studs.

[stratocatter]

It is probably welcome to analytics. Doing things differently. We are the test tube babies for that I think. It would be fun if it works and we compete with no name value type players. I don't know how well that will really work in the NFL though.

[MHS831]

20 hours ago, musicman said:

What the Panthers are doing in signing all these "no name players" to 1 and 2 year deals is to give us total freedom in the upcoming draft. Then, if they play good, we keep them. If not, we draft those positions next year. But going into the draft NOT needing 1 position leads to drafting BPA or trading down when some team needs our pick and we get more picks to drop. 

If people complain they are "no names" think of draft picks, they haven't done anything and most are a crap shoot. Taking a vet who's young with some upside is very smart. Even if half the new signings work out, we did great. 

I like what the Panthers are doing. Don't give a bunch of money to one guy and everything revolves around them. Don't even think about it when he gets hurt. Have a team with a lot of really good players but no superstars. Even the depth will be strong. Positive moves going forward. 

Very smart post.  Big name free agents look great on paper, but they rarely pan out.  Build your base.  Give players who were underappreciated on other rosters a chance to ball. 

[musicman]

3 hours ago, Sgt Schultz said:

What the OP says might well be true.  The first thing I do when we sign somebody is look at their age.  The vast majority are 27 or under.  That was exactly the age I said that if I spent last year as a Panther, and I was older than, I would be concerned about my tenure on this team.

We spent the last few offseasons with the assumption we were just a couple of players away.  The penalty for continuing to build a roster in that manner is the players you are counting on get older, get hurt, or just decline.  The roster was aging out.  Add the penalty of dead cap space which is almost inevitable, and you have where we are right now.  Newsflash: we are not the first team to ever make that mistake. 

The only way to avoid aging out and rebuilding periodically is by continuously replacing players before they hit the decline.  Fans criticize those moves, but fans play the short game.  For 20 years, the Pats have been in a mode of continuously replacing players, with the exception of Brady.  And by all reports, Hoodie wanted to replace him a couple of years ago but was stopped by Kraft.

Which brings us to Cam.  Last year was a crusher.  Had he returned sometime in the second half of the season to prove the injuries, particularly the shoulder, were history, we could have either moved forward with him or gotten something significant for him in return.  Given our OL, he might have gotten killed if he tried, but I digress.  None of that happened. 

So, we enter a rebuild (Hurney and others may say otherwise, but it is what it is), and we face starting it with a QB essentially on a one-year contract in an unknown state of health.  On the surface, the one-year thing is not horrible, but it elevates the QB position to a short-term need.  Not THE need, but a priority.  Swapping one year of Cam for three years of TB at essentially a “fixed price” buys us a year or two before we have to look seriously at QBs, unless TB goes down to injury.  Is TB better than Cam right now?  Nobody knows, but Brady believes TB fits his system, which is something.

Fans are reactionary.  As a group, we tend to play checkers on the chess board.  We want immediate results, which is often at conflict with long-term success.  Will all this work?  Who knows?  It may not, and it almost certainly will not in 2020.  I don’t believe it gels in 2021, either, but moving on from the false belief that we are a couple of players was just digging a deeper hole. 

One of the best posts I've read. Logical and well written. Thx

[Sgt Schultz]

15 minutes ago, musicman said:

One of the best posts I've read. Logical and well written. Thx

Thanks.  I promise, I won't do it again.

[SmokinwithWilly]

20 hours ago, WarPanthers89 said:

We let a 30 year old MVP QB go for nothing because we screwed up the situation so bad. We are going to end up not even getting a 6th round pick for him. 

The Cam situation is the worst possible scenario for the team. He needs a physical to be fairly evaluated, but no one can. The Panthers have to move forward because free agency isn't going to stop and wait. Unfortunately, after that video he posted, you can't trust him when he says he's ok. No one is going to give him 100m or more based on his guarantee when they can't assess him. It is sad we are going to get nothing, but I dont know how it was really avoidable.

[TheMaulClaw]

On 3/20/2020 at 6:48 PM, Jesse said:

To piggyback off this, why would we sign any big name free agents? If we're at least a year from competing, why would we throw a lot of money at someone if they won't net us any wins? 

 

 

That is better then buying a 5000 dollar couch for an apt by the train track.

[TheSpecialJuan]

[top dawg]

On 3/21/2020 at 11:22 AM, top dawg said:

Roberts, Kirkwood, and Cooper (the last of which I fully get) are all WRs which makes me scratch my head a little bit considering that this draft is deep at the position, but they know their plan. It could be that they simply plan to tackle offense with FA and  defense with the draft. That should make some people happy. 

Don't forget Teddy, Okung & Devalve either. We're heavy on offense in FA, and unlike some of you, I see where we could work with what we got on offense, even from this point. If we acquire Robby Anderson, I could see us going all defense in the draft!

Yes, I'm quoting myself, bitches! Read my post! I told you guys a month ago that I could see us going all defense, and that's exactly what happened!

There was a plan all along! You might not agree with the plan, but at least you should no longer be scratching your head and asking, "What in the hell are we doing?"

[MHS831]

Benito Jones to Dolphins