A professional opinion (not mine)

[PanthersATL]

happened to run into an active NFL employee for a different team today. Verified the person via a quick Wikipedia search - figured I had a chance to chat quickly with someone with no vested interest in the Panthers directly, but enough NFL experience on a number of teams to warrant having a Wikipedia page of their own.

I purposefully kept the conversation we had very short and high level, for various reasons. 

i was looking for a different perspective of who fan disappointment should be targeted towards during a season with the ups and downs we’ve had this far, from somebody outside our organization who would have some professional perspective.

Total conversation lasted two minutes, maybe three max. They were very nice in sharing their thoughts for just a minute or two with some random NFL fan, and I appreciate their taking the time for the conversation.

-=-=-

what they told me boiled down to this:

• start with the owner
• then the coaches
• then the players

if a player is unable to be coached, it may not be the players fault in executing the plan… it could be that the plan was flawed, or the plan for that player was flawed. Every player wants to win, they may be hampered by what they’re being told to do. And, there are always some players that just can’t be coached, or be coached by that particular coach/set of coaches.

similarly, the coaches may also be hampered in what they want to do by what ownership is requesting/demanding.

Good news? It seems to suggest we’re not totally off base with some of the threads we have going on around here.

[Waldo]

100% correct.

Tepper brought in Cam. The poop rolled down to Rhule now and he and his staff took it right in the face. 

[Cdparr7]

I’ve made a very decent but not extraordinary living managing projects, specifically start ups and construction.

It boils down to clear expectations and holding people accountable.

If your expectations are clear and not being met, you see what resources that person or group needs.
 

You still don’t get the results you want, you move on and force change. 

Cam was the “resources” stated above. Probably the only reason Tepper put on a fake smile. You can’t keep asking for poo and giving the same results.

[kungfoodude]

I have been a part of countless large corporate entities. Whenever there is widespread chaos or dissatisfaction, it is almost always problems with upper management. 

[hepcat]

The biggest problem with the Panthers the last 2+ years is the mismanagement of the QB position plain and simple. I'm not sure if that boils down to Tepper or the current coaching staff but the failure is on both. A franchise QB allows you to compete even with a sub par roster or coaching staff, and it opens the draft up to pick the best player on the board.

But until you find that franchise QB, you have to keep throwing sh*t at the wall until something sticks. The Panthers were not doing a good job of that. Signing a guy like Teddy Bridgewater was a move that should have been paired with drafting a QB even if it was in the late rounds. Bridgewater was a failure but they didn't learn from their mistake and traded for another bad QB in Sam Darnold and passed on a few viable QB prospects in Justin Fields and Mac Jones. The most mind numbing decision was drafting a cornerback in the top 10 which is a luxury position to pick that high in the draft for a team searching for a franchise QB.

So I can't tell you where the failure lies exactly but there's plenty of blame to go around for the failures at QB. That have all lead to bringing Cam back to save their jobs and keep the fanbase from eviscerating them for their ineptitude and stupidity. 

[CRA]

Just now, hepcat said:

The biggest problem with the Panthers the last 2+ years is the mismanagement of the QB position plain and simple. I'm not sure if that boils down to Tepper or the current coaching staff but the failure is on both. A franchise QB allows you to compete even with a sub par roster or coaching staff, and it opens the draft up to pick the best player on the board.

But until you find that franchise QB, you have to keep throwing sh*t at the wall until something sticks. The Panthers were not doing a good job of that. Signing a guy like Teddy Bridgewater was a move that should have been paired with drafting a QB even if it was in the late rounds. Bridgewater was a failure but they didn't learn from their mistake and traded for another bad QB in Sam Darnold and passed on a few viable QB prospects in Justin Fields and Mac Jones. The most mind numbing decision was drafting a cornerback in the top 10 which is a luxury position to pick that high in the draft for a team searching for a franchise QB.

So I can't tell you where the failure lies exactly but there's plenty of blame to go around for the failures at QB. That have all lead to bringing Cam back to save their jobs and keep the fanbase from eviscerating them for their ineptitude and stupidity. 

once they made the move to part with Cam and add Teddy it set us on one path that made sense.  You draft a QB.   

They didn't.  

[ThPantherFan]

1 minute ago, CRA said:

once they made the move to part with Cam and add Teddy it set us on one path that made sense.  You draft a QB.   

They didn't.

Nail on the head.

[hepcat]

1 minute ago, CRA said:

once they made the move to part with Cam and add Teddy it set us on one path that made sense.  You draft a QB.   

They didn't.  

Their failure to roll the dice on a rookie QB makes me wonder if Joe Brady was the one that was hesitant to work with a rookie. Maybe his lack of experience made him want to work with a QB that already had some experience. I don't know. But it doesn't make any sense. Especially in the 2021 draft when you had two QB prospects that were worthy of the pick.

[Jackie Lee]

1 minute ago, hepcat said:

Their failure to roll the dice on a rookie QB makes me wonder if Joe Brady was the one that was hesitant to work with a rookie. Maybe his lack of experience made him want to work with a QB that already had some experience. I don't know. But it doesn't make any sense. Especially in the 2021 draft when you had two QB prospects that were worthy of the pick.

I dunno, this coaching staff picked up so many project/developmental players like they're some kinda football whisperers, yet they haven't even figured out how to do their own jobs yet. Bit off more than they can chew. I dunno if they could be afraid of drafting a QB when they declared they could fix Darnold and get him to buy into this so called "culture" we've yet to see emerge

[Khyber53]

3 minutes ago, Jackie Lee said:

I dunno, this coaching staff picked up so many project/developmental players like they're some kinda football whisperers, yet they haven't even figured out how to do their own jobs yet. Bit off more than they can chew. I dunno if they could be afraid of drafting a QB when they declared they could fix Darnold and get him to buy into this so called "culture" we've yet to see emerge

Pretty much spot on.

[hepcat]

6 minutes ago, Jackie Lee said:

I dunno, this coaching staff picked up so many project/developmental players like they're some kinda football whisperers, yet they haven't even figured out how to do their own jobs yet. Bit off more than they can chew. I dunno if they could be afraid of drafting a QB when they declared they could fix Darnold and get him to buy into this so called "culture" we've yet to see emerge

They said they saw Darnold as a "rookie" so maybe that is true, and I mean I get the gamble to trade for Darnold since it worked out with Tannehill getting away from Adam Gase. Problem is Tannehill showed a lot more promise on the Dolphins than Darnold ever showed on the Jets. And if you're going to get a pure boom or bust prospect like Darnold you have to hedge your bet with a veteran QB like an Andy Dalton orRyan Fitzpatrick, or just draft a rookie QB. 

[PanthersATL]

2 hours ago, Moose Hoover said:

give us more hints...what were his pronouns? what color shirt did zhe/zhim wear? what Native lands were you standing on at the moment of convo?

Didn’t use pronouns, too short a convo for those to come up

was a light blue 1/4 zip sweater.

no native lands that I know of.   Bagels may have been present.

[Proudiddy]

3 hours ago, hepcat said:

The biggest problem with the Panthers the last 2+ years is the mismanagement of the QB position plain and simple. I'm not sure if that boils down to Tepper or the current coaching staff but the failure is on both. A franchise QB allows you to compete even with a sub par roster or coaching staff, and it opens the draft up to pick the best player on the board.

But until you find that franchise QB, you have to keep throwing sh*t at the wall until something sticks. The Panthers were not doing a good job of that. Signing a guy like Teddy Bridgewater was a move that should have been paired with drafting a QB even if it was in the late rounds. Bridgewater was a failure but they didn't learn from their mistake and traded for another bad QB in Sam Darnold and passed on a few viable QB prospects in Justin Fields and Mac Jones. The most mind numbing decision was drafting a cornerback in the top 10 which is a luxury position to pick that high in the draft for a team searching for a franchise QB.

So I can't tell you where the failure lies exactly but there's plenty of blame to go around for the failures at QB. That have all lead to bringing Cam back to save their jobs and keep the fanbase from eviscerating them for their ineptitude and stupidity. 

100%.  All of our issues, grumbling, bemoaning, and dissatisfaction with where we are at this season can all be traced back to those 3 or 4 games we had no business losing before Cam got here.

Occasionally, a team just lays an egg.  The Bills have been a media darling coming into this season, and they have had multiple games where they just didn't show up.  The Titans are a well-coached team, and just had the same thing happen.  The Rams are loaded and have looked like poo the last few weeks.  Baltimore is a perennial playoff team and are well-managed and coached with great ownership, and they come out and lay an egg against the Dolphins last week.  It happens every season, and seemingly even more so this season... 

That being said, in a vacuum, we can deal with a loss to Dallas where the defense saw new things and struggled a bit.  We can deal with a loss this past Sunday, to Washington, where, for whatever reason, the defense just wasn't focused or locked in the entire game.  Those kind of games happen...  what we couldn't afford was losing to Minnesota, Philly, possibly New England, and a Giants team that was without every playmaker on offense when we played them and are so dysfunctional they just fired their OC mid-season.  And all of those losses happened because we had no QB and the offense couldn't produce any semblance of a threat to score.  If we win even half of those games we gave away because we didn't have a QB, where we are sitting right now looks very different. 

At 7-4, a loss to Washington is a write-off and just one of those bad days that happen every so often where you just learn from it and move on.  At 5-6, that kind of loss is devastating.  And it all could've been avoided had they never got rid of Cam in the first place.

[Wanderlai]

They screwed the pooch when they signed Teddy verses just taking our lumps for a year and drafting a franchise QB. There is no magic cheat code by plucking bad QBs from bad teams.