Impact Rookies in Playoffs (Beyond Round 1)

[Osaka Panther]

14 hours ago, Gapanthersfan said:

And that exactly demonstrates how vitally important slamming your first round pick is. Even with the lackluster later round record, the team almost always had enough talent to be competitive. 

He picked Kuechley when they already had Beason and Davis. It’s all about BPA.

In the first, you look for who is most likely to be an all pro, and you pick that guy. At worst, you may have improved a position of strength with younger and cheaper talent. 

i am sure there are some players drafted after Luke who also had good careers. 

 

[frankw]

17 hours ago, Shotgun said:

I think our front office prioritizes small game hunting skills higher than most teams. 

All jokes aside it's obvious the Panthers like to draft players with connections to the area. We drafted Horn over Surtain and played up the local ties narrative and then did the exact same thing with Xavier Legette. Then you add in the RAS score obsession and this is what you get. Seemingly little has changed since moving on from Fitterer.

But for this team to take a big step forward in a short time is going to require arguably our best draft in many many years. I wish I could say I feel good about that happening but while there are some things to like about Dan Morgan I just don't see anything different from the previous GM when it pertains to the draft.

[WhoKnows]

19 hours ago, VintagePanther said:

Yall love tearing down our own to gas up other teams trash . Troy Franklin had 28 catches this year with a world breaking 2tds . XL is a so called bust and doubled his numbers across the board lol 

 

17 hours ago, MasterAwesome said:

Coleman had very similar production to Legette in their respective rookie seasons, but in a much better offensive situation.  If you're acknowledging XL is the rawest of the three, then it doesn't make sense to compare them on the basis of their rookie seasons.  Ladd's floor and ceiling may be mere inches apart (which is still a very good receiver), whereas Legette has miles to go to hit his potential.  So it's all about his trajectory over the next 1-2 seasons.  We're not built to win now anyways, so if Legette can turn into a 1000-yard receiver by Year 3 then that's still a win in my book, even if it took him longer to get there than it did Ladd.

We have obviously been focusing on his drops this year, but also the timing between Bryce and Legette just seemed off at times.  He had his fair share of underthrown and overthrown balls, at a seemingly higher rate than with Thielen, Coker, David Moore, and Tommy Tremble.  I expect the two of them to build their chemistry in the offseason and the production should follow.

Just an FYI for Coleman and Franklin, they were not their team’s #1 target. While we may think Coker and Thielen were better, hint they were, Legette out-snapped them by 50% and sizably out-targeted both of them. He just produced Mingo like production per target so it seemed like he was the 3rd target when he actually led our WRs in snaps and targets by a good amount.

Coleman was 3rd in targets on the Bills and had half the targets that Legette had and his ypt was 9.8 to Legette’s 5.5. Franklin was 3rd in targets but he had a Legette/Mingo level of 5.0 ypt. That said, Franklin was a 4th round pick, not a 1st round pick.

Sorry to both of you, but production wise, Legette had a bad season and produced like a 4th rounder. McConkey absolutely should have been our pick. All we can do is hope that somehow Legette improves a lot and doesn’t end up just like Mingo and TMJ.

[WhoKnows]

2 hours ago, frankw said:

All jokes aside it's obvious the Panthers like to draft players with connections to the area. We drafted Horn over Surtain and played up the local ties narrative and then did the exact same thing with Xavier Legette. Then you add in the RAS score obsession and this is what you get. Seemingly little has changed since moving on from Fitterer.

But for this team to take a big step forward in a short time is going to require arguably our best draft in many many years. I wish I could say I feel good about that happening but while there are some things to like about Dan Morgan I just don't see anything different from the previous GM when it pertains to the draft.

I’m with you on the drafting. Our 2024 draft feels like the same as Scotty and that’s not good for the future. We have to blow away the draft. I mean, do you think any team would trade their 1st through 4th for our picks?

[NorthTryon]

19 hours ago, VintagePanther said:

Yall love tearing down our own to gas up other teams trash . Troy Franklin had 28 catches this year with a world breaking 2tds . XL is a so called bust and doubled his numbers across the board lol 

It is because they wanted a AT clone in Ladd. XL was open all of the time and has game breaking ability. He after his rookie season needs surgery and has aspects of his game he needs to work on yes. Ladd also had so many more factors working for him. The first being he was not working against teams #1 corner hardly ever! They forget to mention things like that, or that he had an established QB throwing to him. People whine about XL and Bryce's chemistry, well Bryce wasn't the QB all year. Lastly, Ladd will never produce the results blocking on the perimeter that XL does. If XL is still struggling to catch in year two and three, then we can express that he was a bad pick. 

[MasterAwesome]

28 minutes ago, WhoKnows said:

 

Just an FYI for Coleman and Franklin, they were not their team’s #1 target. While we may think Coker and Thielen were better, hint they were, Legette out-snapped them by 50% and sizably out-targeted both of them. He just produced Mingo like production per target so it seemed like he was the 3rd target when he actually led our WRs in snaps and targets by a good amount.

Coleman was 3rd in targets on the Bills and had half the targets that Legette had and his ypt was 9.8 to Legette’s 5.5. Franklin was 3rd in targets but he had a Legette/Mingo level of 5.0 ypt. That said, Franklin was a 4th round pick, not a 1st round pick.

Sorry to both of you, but production wise, Legette had a bad season and produced like a 4th rounder. McConkey absolutely should have been our pick. All we can do is hope that somehow Legette improves a lot and doesn’t end up just like Mingo and TMJ.

I don't know why you're arguing as if I'm claiming Legette had an incredible rookie season.  I argued:

1) Legette is acknowledged as the most raw among these prospects.  You don't evaluate a raw high-ceiling prospect like Legette against a polished pro-ready prospect like Ladd solely on the basis of their rookie seasons.  If you think we should stop drafting the raw athletic guys and take the sure thing, then that's a separate discussion.  But Ladd was always going to have the easier transition to the NFL and so nothing should be surprising about him vastly outperforming the other receivers drafted around him in year 1.

2) It felt like the timing was off between Bryce and Legette for a good number of the incompletions.

So those are the justifications for the lack of production, from my point of view.  If I'm explaining why I think Legette struggled, your rebuttal that Legette did in fact struggle doesn't make a lot of sense.

Do you not put any of the responsibility on Coleman for the lack of targets?  The Bills were desperate for somebody to emerge as their WR1 after trading Diggs.  That WR room was wide open for Coleman to seize that opportunity.  Instead, a guy like Shakir has less snaps than Coleman but almost double the targets.  There has to be a reason Coleman isn't getting targeted more...and that reason (from 20 seconds of Googling) seems to be that he really struggles with separation.  I understand being upset about passing over Ladd, but I don't know why Coleman is even in this conversation with his underwhelming rookie season.

[ImfromClayton]

XL is fine. Looks like a good 2nd round grade guy to me. I think a lot of people wanted Justin Jefferson. 

[CPF4LIFE]

4 hours ago, frankw said:

All jokes aside it's obvious the Panthers like to draft players with connections to the area. We drafted Horn over Surtain and played up the local ties narrative and then did the exact same thing with Xavier Legette. Then you add in the RAS score obsession and this is what you get. Seemingly little has changed since moving on from Fitterer.

But for this team to take a big step forward in a short time is going to require arguably our best draft in many many years. I wish I could say I feel good about that happening but while there are some things to like about Dan Morgan I just don't see anything different from the previous GM when it pertains to the draft.

Yes....thats why I'm currently leaning on walker to be the pick. 

Makes to much Panther sense. 

Edited 13 hours ago by CPF4LIFE

[WhoKnows]

44 minutes ago, MasterAwesome said:

I don't know why you're arguing as if I'm claiming Legette had an incredible rookie season.  I argued:

1) Legette is acknowledged as the most raw among these prospects.  You don't evaluate a raw high-ceiling prospect like Legette against a polished pro-ready prospect like Ladd solely on the basis of their rookie seasons.  If you think we should stop drafting the raw athletic guys and take the sure thing, then that's a separate discussion.  But Ladd was always going to have the easier transition to the NFL and so nothing should be surprising about him vastly outperforming the other receivers drafted around him in year 1.

2) It felt like the timing was off between Bryce and Legette for a good number of the incompletions.

So those are the justifications for the lack of production, from my point of view.  If I'm explaining why I think Legette struggled, your rebuttal that Legette did in fact struggle doesn't make a lot of sense.

Do you not put any of the responsibility on Coleman for the lack of targets?  The Bills were desperate for somebody to emerge as their WR1 after trading Diggs.  That WR room was wide open for Coleman to seize that opportunity.  Instead, a guy like Shakir has less snaps than Coleman but almost double the targets.  There has to be a reason Coleman isn't getting targeted more...and that reason (from 20 seconds of Googling) seems to be that he really struggles with separation.  I understand being upset about passing over Ladd, but I don't know why Coleman is even in this conversation with his underwhelming rookie season.

Just pointed out that Coleman was far more productive because he only had half the targets. Your first line compared Legette to Coleman. Coleman is a typical rookie. I’d be happy with Legette’s production in a vacuum, but it kind of reminds me a bit of TMJ where people were surprised that he had as many snaps as he did and people excused his production by saying he needed more opportunity when he was our WR2.

I wasn’t really even arguing. I saw two posts using other WRs as examples of why Legette was solid and I wanted to add some comments. Legette has a lot of work to do and I really hope he takes the next step but he had better stats than actual production/effectiveness.

[Martin]

The problem I have with always drafting the high potential/boom or bust prospects is that you miss out on a lot of very good players. 

Ladd would have been the right choice, so would Frazier have been. That would have given us two very good starters for 10 years, exactly what we need.

We are in no place to gamble, we need many solid contributors. Once we have that, then we can take chances.

[frankw]

2 hours ago, WhoKnows said:

I’m with you on the drafting. Our 2024 draft feels like the same as Scotty and that’s not good for the future. We have to blow away the draft. I mean, do you think any team would trade their 1st through 4th for our picks?

Yeah I do have some optimism for certain things Dan has done but the draft is always the key for any team wanting to contend. The Panthers have simply been too blase about purging people involved with the previous drafts. The college scouting department is still pretty much intact when we should be cleaning house there. That not happening indicates it's a problem at the top. I don't want to say Dan Morgan is another figurehead for David Tepper like Fitterer was but there's a reason no one else was interested in the job.

[WhoKnows]

49 minutes ago, Martin said:

The problem I have with always drafting the high potential/boom or bust prospects is that you miss out on a lot of very good players. 

Ladd would have been the right choice, so would Frazier have been. That would have given us two very good starters for 10 years, exactly what we need.

We are in no place to gamble, we need many solid contributors. Once we have that, then we can take chances.

It’s amazing how often a we’ve repeated the same mistakes. Projects, injuries, reaching, drafting to the weakness of a draft not the strength and just plain poor scouting.

This draft has to be a real good draft. Not just starters that are below average or wouldn’t start elsewhere, but actual above average starters like McConkey and Frazier and others we passed on seem to be. Somehow Young has changed but that’s not enough when your D gives up 146 points in the last 4 games so you have to go to two OTs when you scored 30 and 38 in regulation.

[MasterAwesome]

6 minutes ago, WhoKnows said:

Just pointed out that Coleman was far more productive because he only had half the targets. Your first line compared Legette to Coleman. Coleman is a typical rookie. I’d be happy with Legette’s production in a vacuum, but it kind of reminds me a bit of TMJ where people were surprised that he had as many snaps as he did and people excused his production by saying he needed more opportunity when he was our WR2.

I wasn’t really even arguing. I saw two posts using other WRs as examples of why Legette was solid and I wanted to add some comments. Legette has a lot of work to do and I really hope he takes the next step but he had better stats than actual production/effectiveness.

I only compared Legette and Coleman because the post I was responding to had compared them.

Not sure why you're still claiming I said Legette "was solid", even after my last post was entirely dedicated to clarifying that he struggled.  Even the other guy you think said Legette was solid, seemed to more be pointing out the double standard to praise an "impact rookie" like Troy Franklin who had far less production. 

Even if you want to go with the "more targets" angle, the Troy Franklin comparison doesn't really make sense either.  Legette had 58% more targets than Franklin, but 89% more yards and technically 100% more TDs, although TDs are harder and less reliable to extrapolate.  So Franklin still underproduced Legette if you normalize for target share.  His point remains valid even under your reasoning.  Yes Franklin was a 4th round pick and I think that's the key difference, but again that circles back to nobody disputing that Legette struggled this year, despite you misinterpreting a couple of posts in here.

Anyways, sounds like we largely agree.

 

[WhoKnows]

Just now, MasterAwesome said:

I only compared Legette and Coleman because the post I was responding to had compared them.

Not sure why you're still claiming I said Legette "was solid", even after my last post was entirely dedicated to clarifying that he struggled.  Even the other guy you think said Legette was solid, seemed to more be pointing out the double standard to praise an "impact rookie" like Troy Franklin who had far less production. 

Even if you want to go with the "more targets" angle, the Troy Franklin comparison doesn't really make sense either.  Legette had 58% more targets than Franklin, but 89% more yards and technically 100% more TDs, although TDs are harder and less reliable to extrapolate.  So Franklin still underproduced Legette if you normalize for target share.  His point remains valid even under your reasoning.  Yes Franklin was a 4th round pick and I think that's the key difference, but again that circles back to nobody disputing that Legette struggled this year, despite you misinterpreting a couple of posts in here.

Anyways, sounds like we largely agree.

 

We probably do. I just grabbed two posts and added some color to the stats. Legette got a ton of targets and needs to produce way more. McConkey, Coker and Thielen were all 9.8+ ypt and Legette was 5.5, which is right around the corner from Mingo’s 4.6 and Franklin’s 5.0. He needs to improve, although if we take TMac, we are kind of limiting Legette’s presence as long as Thielen doesn’t retire.