S Fowler’s take Panthers had to dump Teddy Bridgewater, but will Sam Darnold really be any better?

[raleigh-panther]

nothing earth shattering but I always like Scott’s view on things as he is not a ‘homer’

My favorite quote 
‘Of course, in 2022, we also may be writing about the Panthers moving on from Darnold, just as they moved on from Bridgewater, just as they moved on from Newton. What this team wouldn’t give to have the QB problem solved! Maybe Darnold is the solution, but his Jets stats would argue otherwise.’

FULL COLUMN BELOW

Panthers had to dump Teddy Bridgewater, but will Sam Darnold really be any better?

BY SCOTT FOWLER| [email protected]

1 hr. ago

The Great Teddy Bridgewater Experiment ended as many “great” experiments do on Wednesday, with a tacit admission of failure by the Carolina Panthers and a quickie divorce on the eve of the NFL draft.

Signed amid pomp and circumstance a year ago to a three-year, $63-million contract, Bridgewater could only bridge the Panthers’ troubled waters for a single season before he got traded Wednesday. The Panthers were so desperate to get out of his contract that they will now pay him millions to go away. Carolina only got a sixth-round draft choice from Denver out of this deal, and will still be paying $7 million to Bridgewater this season (the Broncos will pay him just $3 million) as he relocates to Colorado for 2021.

In other words, it was an expensive divorce for the Panthers. The money part of it looks bad, and it is bad.

And you know what? Bridgewater wasn’t really that bad last season, especially if you only counted the first three quarters of games. This wasn’t the second coming of Jimmy Clausen. Bridgewater set an all-time completion record for the Panthers (69.1) in 2020. His teammates loved him. He won a league-wide sportsmanship award.
 

Carolina’s problems in 2020 went far deeper than Bridgewater’s 0-for-8 close-game performance in fourth quarters. Yes, he made a number of horrible last-minute decisions. But Bridgewater also got a bit of a raw deal: No Christian McCaffrey; a revolving-door offensive line; no help in a couple of games when he actually did play well enough to win.

Still, the Panthers needed to make this move. As I wrote two weeks ago, a Bridgewater trade would be the closest thing the Panthers could get to a win-win at this point. Bridgewater gets another new beginning — and he might actually start in Denver at some point — and the Panthers get to begin trying to extricate themselves from salary-cap jail once again.

The timing of the Bridgewater leak, first reported by NFL Network, was curious. It came only a few minutes after the Panthers had announced they were changing the surface at Bank of America Stadium from grass to artificial turf — a move that basically no NFL player, or pro soccer player for that matter, is ever going to applaud. Players universally prefer natural grass, believing it to be a safer surface.

Within minutes, though, that piece of unfortunate news got buried,overshadowed by the headlines from the Bridgewater trade.
 

The writing had been on the wall for this one since Carolina traded three draft picks for 23-year-old Sam Darnold — the strong-armed, inconsistent quarterback of the New York Jets — on April 5. Bridgewater’s agents were given permission to do the legwork of seeking a trade for their client, who the Panthers certainly didn’t want to pay $23 million to be a backup.

So the next step of the Panthers’ continuing, post-Cam QB saga is to select another one in the NFL draft sometime in the next three days. No matter where the new QB is picked (and it might be Justin Fields at No. 8 overall), he will be a lot less expensive than Bridgewater, who is still a $17-million dead cap hit this year for Carolina. The trade gave Carolina a net saving of $6 million, according to The Observer’s Alaina Getzenberg. In 2022, though, Bridgewater will be off the books.

Of course, in 2022, we also may be writing about the Panthers moving on from Darnold, just as they moved on from Bridgewater, just as they moved on from Newton. What this team wouldn’t give to have the QB problem solved! Maybe Darnold is the solution, but his Jets stats would argue otherwise.

As for Bridgewater:

Teddy, we hardly knew ye, and I mean that quite literally. 

Because of COVID-19 and the way reporters were understandably kept away from players this past year, I never actually said hello to Bridgewater in person over the entire season, much less shook his hand. I saw him only via Zoom. And in those many news conferences, I did gain great respect for the man and the way he handled himself after losses and in adverse situations, of which there were plenty.

I hope this trade works out for Bridgewater, and for the Panthers. I hope everyone involved gets their QB issues solved.

But given the recent history for all parties, I sure wouldn’t count on it

[BigTeddyFan]

A fair and balanced article.

Teddy was the scapegoat this season. Sam will likely be the scapegoat next season.

The real question is how many scapegoats will it take before other organizational changes are made?

[OneBadCat]

Tired of the excuses for Teddy. Franchise QB's deliver with 8 opportunities to win the game period.

[raleigh-panther]

If Darnold fails, and the Panthers  screwed up their chance to get a franchise QB this draft,  it’s a greater issue then the men selected to play   qB, it’s the men who put that QB in that position who are not getting the job done 

I do not see Fields dropping, the Panthers will waste a second or third round pick on Kellen Mond, Trask or the Stanford QB

 

 

[mrcompletely11]

I've said all along that Teddy wasnt that bad.  He had a crappy oline and no cmac.  I still wish Tepper would have not said anything and we could have just kept him this year as a backup. 

[electro's horse]

4 minutes ago, raleigh-panther said:

If Darnold fails, and the Panthers  screwed up their chance to get a franchise QB this draft,  it’s a greater issue then the men selected to play   qB, it’s the men who put that QB in that position who are not getting the job done 

 

 

how did the panthers screw up their chance to get a qb

other teams out maneuvered them, they got outbid for Stafford, and Watson has some....issues

like other teams try to win too

[Moo Daeng]

1 minute ago, mrcompletely11 said:

I've said all along that Teddy wasnt that bad.  He had a crappy oline and no cmac.  I still wish Tepper would have not said anything and we could have just kept him this year as a backup. 

I don't think he was as awful as he's depicted here. He was quite good in some aspects and lacking in clutch moments. 

Though the staff obviously was not satisfied at all.

[mrcompletely11]

2 minutes ago, Moo Daeng said:

I don't think he was as awful as he's depicted here. He was quite good in some aspects and lacking in clutch moments. 

Though the staff obviously was not satisfied at all.

He would have been the perfect backup albeit an expensive one but a good backup

[KSpan]

18 minutes ago, BigTeddyFan said:

A fair and balanced article.

Teddy was the scapegoat this season. Sam will likely be the scapegoat next season.

The real question is how many scapegoats will it take before other organizational changes are made?

Teddy sucked all on his own. Whatever happens with Darnold is unrelated to Teddy beyond the fact that Darnold succeeded him, and if Darnold is better or not is somewhat irrelevant to the decision to move on from Teddy. That needed to happen regardless.

I do agree with your premise that if Darnold fails to show any development, it's a large red flag for this staff and perhaps FO as well. Tonight will be very interesting.

Edited April 29, 2021 by KSpan

[raleigh-panther]

6 minutes ago, electro's horse said:

how did the panthers screw up their chance to get a qb

other teams out maneuvered them, they got outbid for Stafford, and Watson has some....issues

like other teams try to win too

I don’t care about other teams attempts to win 

Some coaches are smart enough to know what to do when they are in the QB lottery and some are not

playing WFT, you start Grier and your bench to ‘take a look at your starters’ and you ‘really really want to win, but you don’t 

start with that. Pro teams have been doing that for decades 

there are regular draft picks but in the modern era, QBs matter.  
 

Fowler  addresses the rest of it.  Brady’s red zone offensive play calls weren’t sterling either.  

Edited April 29, 2021 by raleigh-panther

[Tbe]

People still don’t get it.

Teddy was ok, but he was never THE guy. This team is going to churn that position until they find THAT guy. Taking chances and turning over rocks is what we have to do. Mediocrity is not accepted anymore.

Too many people think we should be happy and extend a QB because he *could* get us a winning season every now and then. Thats not the point of this game.

Lots of people will say our QB carrousel is a sign of org failure. It’s not. It’s what we have to do to.
 

Settling on a mediocre QB for years while we wait around for someone to drop in our laps 20 years from now is not an option. The media wouldn’t accept that approach from the patriots, but for some reason it’s what the panthers should do. 

Don’t accept that line of thinking. QB talent matters a ton. Coaching can only do so much.

Let’s continue being aggressive at finding the right person for that spot. 

Edited April 29, 2021 by Tbe

[Carolina Cajun]

6 minutes ago, raleigh-panther said:

If Darnold fails, and the Panthers  screwed up their chance to get a franchise QB this draft,  it’s a greater issue then the men selected to play   qB, it’s the men who put that QB in that position who are not getting the job done 

I do not see Fields dropping, the Panthers will waste a second or third round pick on Kellen Mond, Trask or the Stanford QB

 

 

We screwed our chance to get the Franchise QB when we beat Washington (I'm not complaining about it, it is what it is).  That said, I think Darnold has as much of a chance as whoever will be there at 8.  

[cookinbrak]

If there was an inkling of truth to that, Teddy should have put us in a position to win well before the 2 minute warning. 

[electro's horse]

7 minutes ago, raleigh-panther said:

 

playing WFT, you start Grier and your bench to ‘take a look at your starters’ and you ‘really really want to win, but you don’t 

start with that. Pro teams have been doing that for decades 

there are regular draft picks but in the modern era, QBs matter.  

oh it's this again

well the one coach that blatantly pulled a better qb to improve draft position last season was then fired, and that was a coach that recently won a super bowl