This Team Has Been Hamstrung for Several Years

[SmokinwithWilly]

2 hours ago, JawnyBlaze said:

KB and Funchess were trash, especially Funchess. KB was good(ish) his rookie year but doodoo after that and his absence was a benefit on a team that had to start Ginn and Cotchery in his place…

KB is going to always be one of those what ifs. Everyone reacts differently to grief and combined with the knee injury, the guy just imploded. 

[BIGH2001]

17 hours ago, Evil Hurney said:

Interesting take. While I do generally agree that better drafting would generate more depth and a better overall team I wanted to compare to the other teams in the league to see if the data supports that claim.

Carolina vs the NFL

To be as objective as possible I used the "DrAV" metric from PFR to determine if a player was a "contributor". To qualify as a contributor, a player's DrAV had to meet or exceed the median DrAV from their draft class. Re-stated, if a player was in the upper half of their class, they were counted as a "contributor" for the team that drafted them. I'll admit there is probably a better way to do this, I just wanted something quick.

Since it took a bit to scrape this all together, I only went back as far as 2016. I also calculated the hit rate for each team or # contributors / # picks. Here are those results.

My takeaway is that, over the time span I looked at, the Panthers are slightly below average in terms of finding contributors in the draft. Their 43% rate is just below the league average of 45%. Surprisingly, Philidelphia actually has a lower contribution rate from their draft picks (40% overall); if anything, that should give us all hope that drafting isn't everything to a team's success.

I also found it interesting that our NFC south foes have all done a better job of finding contributors in the draft: ATL at a whopping 63% clip, NO at 56%, and TB at 53%.

Carolina GMs

For those interested I also zoomed in on the Panthers and broke things down by GM; It's crazy that we have had 3 in such a short time period. The percentages shown are the hit rate.

My takeaway here is that the jury is still out on Fitterer. Despite the lack of star power, his 2021 draft did end up producing a decent amount of value for the team. His 2022 draft on the other hand was rough. How much of that is him vs Rhule vs the new coaching staff wanting different players is hard to tell. Note that I am not interested in looking at the 2023 draft until after the season.

And this is why most stats are useless. The eye test says our drafts have been less than average for a long time.

[WhoKnows]

20 hours ago, top dawg said:

Bingo. We haven't been the best at putting players into the best position to succeed and maximize their skill sets.

We also haven’t been the best at getting the good players.

[Cdparr7]

22 hours ago, amcoolio said:

As much as I had high hopes for Mingo, he does not look promising. How do you quit on routes this early in your NFL career. I really thought he was going to be the next DK Metcaf/AJ Brown/Amon Ra type player that we needed. I know its only game three, hopefully he improves

I have more hope in Mingo than I ever had in Terrace Marshall. I called Terrace Marshall "Dwayne Jarrett" after his first season and got like 20 poos on that post. 

The problem with our fanbase is that we aren't more critical of stupid decisions. We could have drafted Levis at number 1 and the board would have been like "hey let's give this guy a shot, you're being too hard on him" when clearly, he is garbage. 

Our fans buy into the hype too much then freak out when that player turns out to be trash. We took Bryce and it's pretty clear he isn't the game changer he was hyped up to be and people are freaking out or making up excuses for him. Can he be a good QB? maybe, but everything we know so far points to no. 

We are too nice of a fanbase and 80% of them don't want to part with players because they think they are cool or "seem like nice guys".

[WhoKnows]

1 hour ago, BIGH2001 said:

And this is why most stats are useless. The eye test says our drafts have been less than average for a long time.

How can anyone say our 2021 was 6 contributors? Just because our team was so gutted in 2020 (Cam, Luke, Bradberry, Irvin and tons more vets left) that we are forced to start guys from the 2020 and 2021 draft doesn’t mean it was a good draft. Don’t forget we were the 8th pick so we were at the 1st quarter of each round on average.

Horn

Marshall

Christensen

Tremble

Hubbard

Nixon

Brown

Smith

LS

Phil whatever

Basically, our best player was pick 8 and has already missed more than half his games. The rest are forced starters, who are well below average because we don’t have better, and garbage. A good draft is not pick 8 playing 1 out his first 3 years, a backup RB and a below average LG.

KC rebuilt their OL in the 2021 draft such that they won a SB and our draft looks twice as good as ours. They traded for Orlando Brown with their first and they got the best young C in the game, maybe even the best C overall. I’d rather have Humphrey and Tre Smith to anchor our OL at C/RG than our entire draft.

[Newtcase]

21 hours ago, Evil Hurney said:

Interesting take. While I do generally agree that better drafting would generate more depth and a better overall team I wanted to compare to the other teams in the league to see if the data supports that claim.

Carolina vs the NFL

To be as objective as possible I used the "DrAV" metric from PFR to determine if a player was a "contributor". To qualify as a contributor, a player's DrAV had to meet or exceed the median DrAV from their draft class. Re-stated, if a player was in the upper half of their class, they were counted as a "contributor" for the team that drafted them. I'll admit there is probably a better way to do this, I just wanted something quick.

Since it took a bit to scrape this all together, I only went back as far as 2016. I also calculated the hit rate for each team or # contributors / # picks. Here are those results.

My takeaway is that, over the time span I looked at, the Panthers are slightly below average in terms of finding contributors in the draft. Their 43% rate is just below the league average of 45%. Surprisingly, Philidelphia actually has a lower contribution rate from their draft picks (40% overall); if anything, that should give us all hope that drafting isn't everything to a team's success.

I also found it interesting that our NFC south foes have all done a better job of finding contributors in the draft: ATL at a whopping 63% clip, NO at 56%, and TB at 53%.

Carolina GMs

For those interested I also zoomed in on the Panthers and broke things down by GM; It's crazy that we have had 3 in such a short time period. The percentages shown are the hit rate.

My takeaway here is that the jury is still out on Fitterer. Despite the lack of star power, his 2021 draft did end up producing a decent amount of value for the team. His 2022 draft on the other hand was rough. How much of that is him vs Rhule vs the new coaching staff wanting different players is hard to tell. Note that I am not interested in looking at the 2023 draft until after the season.

I mean this really means nothing tbh.  While our draft classes may land a "hit" on this spreadsheet, calling our 43% vs KC 49% only a 6% difference is ludicrous.  Patrick Mahommes counts for the same hit % as any single player counted for us.  Those things are not equal.

[RumHam]

On 9/26/2023 at 10:29 AM, amcoolio said:

As much as I had high hopes for Mingo, he does not look promising. How do you quit on routes this early in your NFL career. I really thought he was going to be the next DK Metcaf/AJ Brown/Amon Ra type player that we needed. I know its only game three, hopefully he improves

I said it at the time, why the hell are we taking a wide out in the second? only one has EVER worked out for us. Same with edge rusher. We need to focus on draft interior lineman on both sides in the second round b/c the upper portion of the talent is still up there. Wide receivers are the one's who aren't first rounders and have a lot of red flags. In the future, if we draft a WR, if you haven't figured it out, he will be a bust.