from Darin's mailbag re: the 2002 top 3 picks in the draft

[cookinbrak]

LOL at the people saying "Pep was great, but we never won a SB with him". Cam was #1. No SB. We've never had a player that we won a SB with.

[Brooklyn 3.0]

The funny thing is, if rayzor reallllllly liked one of the top prospects for the Draft, this thread wouldn't even exist.

[MechaZain]

16 hours ago, 4Corners said:

Where does Peppers rank all time in terms of greatest NC athletes? 
 

Jordan

Peppers

Dale Sr

catfish Hunter

Enos Slaughter

madison bumgartner 

Peppers behind Jordan, Dale Sr, and Mia Hamm.

[d-dave]

I love how wrapped up so many of us are about who to draft in November.  Look, I get it, this is a crappy season with some real crap QB play.  I understand how many have moved on to looking at the offseason.

We don't know who our coach is in 2023.  That is the biggest issue for the next 4 months.  We need a new coach.  I love what Wilks is doing making us competitive and interesting, but you know Tepper is going to want an offensive coach because that's what the NFL demands.  Offensive coaches are able to maximize their QBs faster which leads to more ticket sales and sometimes, even a SB trophy!   Who is it going to be?  What do they like in a QB?

As I think about the draft (i'm partially there), I think about how each of the top players compares to each other.  Do we have a franchise altering player in the top 10?  That's something we don't just know yet.  Still lots of evaluating to do, especially post playoffs and bowl games.  Then there is the dissection that happens after, with the risers and the fallers in the draft.

It's along way to say that THE franchise QB is going to be in this draft.  Now if the team feels like that, then they will move heaven and earth (and daft picks) for them.  It's pointless to complain about the tank-a-thon because if a team wants a QB, they will go and get them.

[mrcompletely11]

Stars Matter: Late-rising 2023 QBs, mailbag & trivia

https://theathletic.com/podcast/211-the-athletic-football-show/?episode=545

 

these guys give their take of best qb's they have seen live.  One says Drake Maye and the other says Russell wilson and Justin Fields

 

33 minutes in

[JawnyBlaze]

If anyone actually says we should take a QB with our first pick no matter who had already been taken, they should be ignored. “QB or bust” isn’t a defendable argument. But if we have a chance at a guy the team believes in we should do anything in our power to go get him. Stroud and Young are those type of guys, just depends on which the new coach will prefer.  But you don’t take Levis or Hooker or some other less talented guy at the top of the first just because you need a QB.
 

If we’re picking at 3 and there is no way to move up for Stroud or Young, we try to trade down or take whoever is top on our board and maybe Levis, Hooker or one of the other guys is available at the top of the 2nd and if the team believes they’re a good value there we roll the dice with a 2nd round pick. Same strategy we used last draft. Didn’t reach for Pickett because neither he nor any of the other QBs were high talent guys. But when the value was right and a guy with potential was available we went and got him. 
 

tldr: there’s a lot more nuance than most here (and Darin gantt) like to spend brain cells on

[Icege]

38 minutes ago, d-dave said:

I love how wrapped up so many of us are about who to draft in November.  Look, I get it, this is a crappy season with some real crap QB play.  I understand how many have moved on to looking at the offseason.

We don't know who our coach is in 2023.  That is the biggest issue for the next 4 months.  We need a new coach.  I love what Wilks is doing making us competitive and interesting, but you know Tepper is going to want an offensive coach because that's what the NFL demands.  Offensive coaches are able to maximize their QBs faster which leads to more ticket sales and sometimes, even a SB trophy!   Who is it going to be?  What do they like in a QB?

As I think about the draft (i'm partially there), I think about how each of the top players compares to each other.  Do we have a franchise altering player in the top 10?  That's something we don't just know yet.  Still lots of evaluating to do, especially post playoffs and bowl games.  Then there is the dissection that happens after, with the risers and the fallers in the draft.

It's along way to say that THE franchise QB is going to be in this draft.  Now if the team feels like that, then they will move heaven and earth (and daft picks) for them.  It's pointless to complain about the tank-a-thon because if a team wants a QB, they will go and get them.

Right? There's so many other things that need to sequentially take place first:

• 7 games left in the season (team can be anywhere from 3-14 to 10-6)
• Head coach needs to be hired
• Coaching staff needs to be retained/hired
• Film review needs to take place with the new staff to evaluate the current roster

We won't have any inkling on the direction the team is leaning until we've got that new coach, know what their coordinators' schemes are going to look like, and what type of players they'll need to fit those schemes.

Going with a west coast offense? Corral might be the guy. Want to run a Coryell-style offense? Might be better off drafting a QB. Who knows. At this point, the most we can do as fans is temper our expectations. For those of us that look forward to the draft regardless of the team's record, it just means focusing on the prospects instead of the position groups.

Just too much up in the air to allow ourselves to get stirred up to the point where we're addicted to raging on a message board.

 

Edited November 17, 2022 by Icege

[Varking]

12 hours ago, Shotgun said:

Mahomes was still available when the Bears took Mitch, they just chose wrong.

This is what folks are missing. Picking high just increases our odds of getting “our guy”. We just need to make sure we evaluate them properly and mail the pick. Chicago didn’t in that draft. 

[Wundrbread33]

16 hours ago, rayzor said:

To me he was. I had no doubt he was exactly what this franchise needed on many levels and I knew it just from watching the Iron Bowl. There wasn't another QB I wanted in that draft. There wasn't another pick I was going to be happy with. It was Cam or the draft was going to be a failure and the #1 pick a waste.

I have no feeling like that about anyone in this draft, btw. I like Young and Stroud, but I don't have the confidence in them  I had in Cam.

 

 

Me too. I think a lot of people bought in to the “Cam is a thug” propaganda around that time. It was everywhere, and it had me a little nervous too, but Cam had unquestionable athleticism and talent. 
 

I watched a lot of Gabbert and knew he was a fraud. He couldn’t hold Chase Daniel’s jock, let alone Cam’s. 

[Shocker]

19 hours ago, Sean Payton's Vicodin said:

Why do Panther fans love the revisionist history that Cam was a sure thing?

He had a lot of questions and I am sure the discussion happened on whether they should take Blaine Gabbert instead.  In the end it was pretty much a no brainer though…it had to be Cam

[MasterAwesome]

1 hour ago, Varking said:

This is what folks are missing. Picking high just increases our odds of getting “our guy”. We just need to make sure we evaluate them properly and mail the pick. Chicago didn’t in that draft. 

I feel like picking high can be a double-edged sword cause you're pressured oftentimes to take the "safe" pick rather than shoot for the stars with a somewhat flawed but uber-talented prospect...and the latter prospects often times can be the ones who end up as superstars.  A GM might be terrified to take a "boom or bust" prospect at #1 or #2 overall but picking a little later in the 1st might be that sweet spot where risk meets reward.

I do think Cam was somewhat of a bold pick for 1st overall because he did have a lot of question marks as a prospect. He was by no means a "safe" pick...if anything, that might have been Gabbert that year so let's be grateful we did shoot for the stars with Cam.

[MechaZain]

19 hours ago, Sean Payton's Vicodin said:

Why do Panther fans love the revisionist history that Cam was a sure thing?

No one ever said that. I don't know how this devolved into "was Cam considered a foolproof pick or just another prospect" but neither is true. His potential was rare and it was recognized as such at the time.

"There's no Cam in this draft" is about his ceiling. It's not to claim that he was the consensus top player in his class. Young isn't either, but he's the only one in this class being discussed like that and ironically it's for the opposite reasons.

 

[mrcompletely11]

1 minute ago, MechaZain said:

No one ever said that. I don't know how this devolved into "was Cam considered a foolproof pick or just another prospect" but neither is true. His potential was rare and it was recognized as such at the time.

"There's no Cam in this draft" is about his ceiling. It's not to claim that he was the consensus top player in his class. Young isn't either, but he's the only one in this class being discussed like that and ironically it's for the opposite reasons.

 

You could easily make the argument that AR has that type of ceiling.  Big, fast with a cannon arm.

[Varking]

16 minutes ago, Pakmeng said:

Most every big board had Mahomes in the 20s or 30s behind Trubisky. It wasn't just Chicago to miss the evaluation.

I agree but that’s also my point. The Chiefs got their guy. And anyone who had him as their guy should have traded up to get him rather than hope he falls. When you pick high you have that luxury of getting your guy but you need to scout it right and make the call.