Breer breaks down the final decision

[Mr. Scot]

From the article:

Fitterer sauntered into Reich’s office and matter-of-factly spit it out.

All right, man, the GM said jokingly, who are we taking?

Both smiled. Reich started laughing.

Yeah, it’s Bryce, Reich responded.

[poundaway]

Shortly after 8 p.m. ET Thursday, Roger Goodell announced the start of the draft as Fitterer, Reich, the Teppers and all the Panthers coaches and scouts watched on TV. The league had asked that they wait at least five minutes.

I was wondering why we waited.

[Luciu5]

6 minutes ago, poundaway said:

Shortly after 8 p.m. ET Thursday, Roger Goodell announced the start of the draft as Fitterer, Reich, the Teppers and all the Panthers coaches and scouts watched on TV. The league had asked that they wait at least five minutes.

I was wondering why we waited.

I've heard they didn't like when the Jags turned in Trevor Lawrence's name so quickly in that draft.

[Jaxel]

Confirmed that the Panthers had a clear favorite when they went to 1.

[Tbe]

There was a joke that Nicole was involved in the coaching hire to keep her husband from falling for more Rhule-like BS. 

I guess that joke wasn’t far off.

“Nicole’s a very good judge of character, and that’s why she’s involved in this,” Fitterer says. “She sees it from a different viewpoint and she’s got a really strong b.s. meter. So it was great. … We may fall in love with the guys as players and kind of turn our head, kind of dismiss certain things. She’s got that intelligence to dial in.”

And on Young?

“She loved him,” Fitterer continues.

Her husband, of course, would contribute, too, and in an interesting way—it wasn’t so much about what he thought as what he knew. And what he knew was that his team would have its best shot at getting the decision right with as thorough a process as possible.

So as sure as most of the crew might’ve been after Young’s pro day, there was still work left to be done.

“[Tepper] is all about process,” Fitterer says. “He’s not about the evaluating. He’s not going to sit there and say, Hey, listen, I think this guy’s got a great arm. That’s not his world, and Dave’s smart enough to realize that. He doesn’t want to influence it that way. He just wants to make sure that we’re looking at it from every viewpoint and challenging ourselves, and that we have the data behind our decisions—that we’re not just looking at it from a scouting standpoint, that we have all the back-checks that we can use that are out there.

“Are we doing enough? Are we testing these guys enough? Do we know enough about their psychological makeup and competitiveness? He just keeps asking questions. And he’s not challenging us. He’s just making us think. Are we thinking about this properly?”

 

Edited May 1, 2023 by Tbe

[DJ feed me moore]

4 minutes ago, Luciu5 said:

I've heard they didn't like when the Jags turned in Trevor Lawrence's name so quickly in that draft.

if waiting 5 minutes to turn in a card will get the shield on our side then sign me up.

[Mr. Scot]

Also from the article...

As the 2022 season quickly came undone and coach Matt Rhule was fired, Panthers owner David Tepper had periodic conversations with his football people on the direction of the team and what was next. They’d make decisions to trade Christian McCaffrey and keep Brian Burns, and the process started to inform them on where they were. They had a stout defense with a young cornerstone. The offensive line had come together to drive a run game that dominated with Steve Wilks as interim coach. What was missing was obvious.

“I think once we traded Baker [Mayfield], and Sam [Darnold] came back [from injury],” Fitterer said Sunday. “Sam actually played well this past year. But you have two swings at it, you have high hopes for both Sam and Baker when they got here and, at a certain point, I remember talking to Mr. Tepper and [assistant GM] Dan [Morgan] and we’re like, We gotta just draft and build our own. Even if Baker hit or Sam hit, it was going to be a lot of money to renew these guys, and how do you build a team properly unless it’s like a top-five quarterback?

“How do you really build a team properly to support him? So we thought the rookie way was the right way to go, to draft and develop, and fix the problem rather than taking swings here and there. … Eventually, you just have to draft and develop your own guy.”

[Mr. Scot]

On the process of getting to the pick...

By the time the Panthers got to the combine, they’d done enough work on tape to be comfortable with at least two of the quarterbacks in the class (my sense is those two were Young and Stroud), and that gave Fitterer time to try to get ahead of the market on trading up.

They had the ninth pick. As we chronicled in March, Fitterer and Bears GM Ryan Poles met at Lucas Oil Stadium, and at an Indianapolis hotel a little out of the way (the Hyatt) from the normal NFL hustle and bustle in the city, which Poles had booked to keep his meetings quiet. As the week after the combine wore on, the Texans first came strong, and it looked like the Bears would deal twice, with Houston coming up to No. 1 and Carolina to No. 2. But Fitterer kept after Poles, the Texans got cold feet and the Panthers got to the top of the draft.

Fitterer didn’t want to give up a third first-round pick, and Poles’s desire to get a receiver to help Justin Fields (and get himself a better read on his young quarterback) led the teams to agree to a deal with two first-rounders, and second-rounders this year and in 2025, and DJ Moore going to Chicago. And at that point, while Fitterer didn’t have a decision yet on whom he’d take, he did have a leader.

“Coming out of our February meetings with scouts, Bryce was probably the leader,” Fitterer says. “But we had committed to keeping an open process and we really did. It’s not just like b.s. We really did go into this like, This is such an important decision for our organization. Let’s not lock in [on someone] in February and say ‘This is our guy.’ And so we went through it. … There’s some really impressive guys. There’s some real guys in this quarterback group.

“But the one thing about Bryce is he just was so steady all the way through the process, and every time we sat with him was like, S---, this guy’s special.”

And yet, again, Fitterer, Reich and their staffs resisted calling the fight any earlier than they had to. Stroud would make a run at it. Richardson, who had some similarities to Josh Allen (whom Morgan was with in Buffalo), did, too. So Young would have to keep checking boxes.

Edited May 1, 2023 by Mr. Scot

[Mr. Scot]

Some details on the "long super.impressive answer" we've seen referenced before...

On March 22, the Panthers’ traveling party watched an impressive display from Stroud, one that might have been enough to prompt another look at his tape from the fall, and then boarded the jet for Alabama. That night, they went to Evangeline’s, a posh Tuscaloosa eatery maybe a mile from campus.

As the food was coming, Caldwell asked Young to detail his process. He started by explaining a Saturday night, with his physical recovery from an SEC game. He went into Sunday, from grading the previous day’s tape, to diving into the next week’s game plan and trying to learn it well enough to present it to his teammates Monday. He kept going, and going, and, after about 10 minutes, he was in mid-day Tuesday and those at the table were looking at each other. Reich looked at pretty much everyone with a smirk. Tepper laughed.

Young came off like a battle-tested NFL quarterback, not some wet-behind-the-ears college kid confronted with a hedge-fund billionaire and his table full of NFL execs and coaches.

“It’s like you’re sitting with a 40-year-old man and the level of detail of his answers,” Fitterer says. “You could ask him a simple question, and he gives so much detail and thought to each question. It was pretty cool.”

The next day, more of the same. Fitterer wanted to see Young’s arm strength in person, and that meant training on deep sideline routes and drive throws through the middle of the field. His arm was never going to be Richardson’s, of course. But what the GM and coaches saw was plenty. He could get the ball to difficult spots and change speeds like a pitcher to throw the right ball every time.

[thefuzz]

Great article.  Thank you sir.

 

[Smithers]

Why wait 5 minutes?  Hell the draft already drags on to minute.  Geez the nfl is so stupid 

[Coheed]

8 minutes ago, Tbe said:

There was a joke that Nicole was involved in the coaching hire to keep her husband from falling for more Rhule-like BS. 

I guess that joke wasn’t far off.

“Nicole’s a very good judge of character, and that’s why she’s involved in this,” Fitterer says. “She sees it from a different viewpoint and she’s got a really strong b.s. meter. So it was great. … We may fall in love with the guys as players and kind of turn our head, kind of dismiss certain things. She’s got that intelligence to dial in.”

And on Young?

“She loved him,” Fitterer continues.

Her husband, of course, would contribute, too, and in an interesting way—it wasn’t so much about what he thought as what he knew. And what he knew was that his team would have its best shot at getting the decision right with as thorough a process as possible.

So as sure as most of the crew might’ve been after Young’s pro day, there was still work left to be done.

“[Tepper] is all about process,” Fitterer says. “He’s not about the evaluating. He’s not going to sit there and say, Hey, listen, I think this guy’s got a great arm. That’s not his world, and Dave’s smart enough to realize that. He doesn’t want to influence it that way. He just wants to make sure that we’re looking at it from every viewpoint and challenging ourselves, and that we have the data behind our decisions—that we’re not just looking at it from a scouting standpoint, that we have all the back-checks that we can use that are out there.

“Are we doing enough? Are we testing these guys enough? Do we know enough about their psychological makeup and competitiveness? He just keeps asking questions. And he’s not challenging us. He’s just making us think. Are we thinking about this properly?”

 

If she’s the bullshit/ego detector, gotta wonder what she thought of Rhule back in 2020 lol. If you’re with someone long enough, you’re each gonna have some “i told you so” moments and my god would it be hilarious if Rhule was one of those for Nicole and Dave.

 

Nicole: “hey Dave, remember when you forked out a historical 7 year contract for a used car salesman “culture builder” that I told you was full of poo?

 

*Tepper touches his brass balls to self soothe* 

[thefuzz]

2 minutes ago, Smithers said:

Why wait 5 minutes?  Hell the draft already drags on to minute.  Geez the nfl is so stupid 

IIRC, the NFL got pretty pissed when the Texans told the world they were taking Mario out of NCSU...at least I think that's the one that got them pissed off.

They just need drama and clicks....it's a media/entertainment operation after all.

[Call Me James]

Im ready for some actual football. Tepper really is spending a lot of time in press trying to sell the fans after a pretty terrible start to his tenure here.

this is an exciting pick so I’m sure he’s going for a do lever, but I wish he’d fall back a little and just let the product do the talking. Sadly, Looks like he’s gonna be front and center again like he was at the start of the Rhule tenure.

 

Edited May 1, 2023 by Call Me James