Did Richardson set us up for success

[panthers55]

There seems to be a camp of folks who think that Richardson made all the right moves last year to set us up for the lockout and what has transpired in 2011.

Here are some reasons why that might be crap:

By keeping Fox to save money, we delayed the inevitable which was a new coach and staff. If we had pulled the trigger last year we already would a system in place so the learning curve wouldn't be as steep, Clausen and Moore wouldn't have to learn a whole new system putting them in position to start, and the coaches would have had a year to work out the kinks and evaluate their players.

By failing to sign core players like Johnson and Anderson who had career years, we will pay a high premium when we could have gotten them much cheaper before their breakout years. From what I can tell even guys like Williams and Davis won't be taking big discounts because they were hurt last year. Perhaps the only guy we saved money on by not signing longeterm was Moore.

By allowing 19 guys to become free agents which will require 80-100 million in signing bonuses alone to resign just our core group, we may have plenty of cap room but we will have no cash to really explore the free agent market this year. Our salaries for 2011 which includes all the signing bonuses when they are paid out regardless of if the cap figure allows the bonuses to be be prorated, will approach 200 million this year. It may keep us from signig Beason who if he has a great year will break the bank next year.

I believe Richardson really expected no football in 2011 and acted accordingly. He is obviously getting overruled in the negotiations or has softened his stance. Either way it hurt the team in 2010 and will again this year. Instead of setting us up well, I think his strategy has bordered on a disaster.

Again the silver lining??? If we had changed coaches last year our record would have been better and perhaps we wouldn't have picked first in the draft.

What do you think???

[weymouthst]

But then we wouldn't have Cam Newton...

[CRA]

There seems to be a camp of folks who think that Richardson made all the right moves last year to set us up for the lockout and what has trnaspired in 2011.

Here are some reasons why that might be crap:

By keeping Fox to save money, we delayed the inevitable which was a new coach and staff. If we had pulled the trigger last year we already would a system in place so the learning curve wouldn't be as steep, Clausen and Moore wouldn't have to learn a whole new system putting them in position to start, and the coaches would have had a year to work out the kinks and evaluate their players.

By failing to sign core players like Johnson and Anderson who had career years, we will pay a high premium when we could have gotten them much cheaper before their breakout years. From what I can tell even guys like Williams and Davis won't be taking big discounts because they were hurt last year. Perhaps the only guy we saved money on was not signing Moore to a big contract.

By allowing 19 guys to become free agents which will require 80-100 million in signing bonuses alone to resign just our core group, we may have plenty of cap room but we will have no cash to really explore the free agent market this year. Our salaries for 2011 which includes all the signing bonuses when they are paid out regardless of if the cap figure allows the bonuses to be be prorated, will approach 200 million this year. It may keep us from signig Beason who if he has a great year will break the bank next year.

I believe Richardson really expected no football in 2011 and acted accordingly. He is obviously getting overruled here which is strange give he is one of the primarily negotiators and it has hurt the team in 2010 and will again this year. Instead of setting us well, I think his strategy has bordered on a disaster.

Again the silver lining??? If we had changed coaches last year our record would have been better and perhaps we wouldn't have picked first in the draft.

What do you think???

I would take that further....with a new staff in place the entire draft class of 2010 might look different. Do Clausen and Pike fit whoever Jerry brought in at that time? Hurney pretty much drafted an entire class for an "unknown" coach.....with no ability to know who fits and doesn't fit what the future coach wants to do. Very possible Hurney drafted a class that not only Fox had little interest in but Rivera as well.....

Keeping Fox was the one flaw to the so called "masterplan" that people praise Richardson for.

[The Saltman]

I'm just glad John Fox is gone. I think Jerry should have just fired his ass and got on with it but that's just my opinion.

[HoFBound90]

only time will tell.

[Jangler]

We get some whales involved and I think this could be a good movie.

[rayzor]

i think you worry alot. :lol:

probably should have fired fox a year earlier, but who would we have had for a coaching staff? i can't imagine that it would be much if any better than what we have now. it would have to have been a hard sell letting them know what they intended to do with the roster last year.

harder to sell a coach on a team that was getting ready to unload so many players and not be allowed to replace them than to sell them on a team that had already unloaded everyone, had the #1 pick in the draft and a willingness to spend in FA (which they now have).

are we in better shape than we would have been had we hired someone last year? impossible to know, but i do think that the coaching staff is coming into a better situation now than they did last year. my opinion is that we are better off because of what richardson did than we would have been if we replaced fox a year earlier. learning curve would be there regardless.

as far as charles johnson and james anderson, before last year did we really have any idea how good they were? spin that situation and now we know we have two more very dependable and effective defensive players who actually want to stay here. it will cost to keep them, but it won't break us. we won't get them for cheap, but it also won't be overly extravagant. i don't see them really testing the market much. the big name guys, other than marshall, all want to stay around. they won't make it unreasonable to keep them. we probably could have gotten them for cheaper had we signed them earlier, but long term i think that makes for happier and more productive players in the long term the way it's playing out. in the big picture i don't think that we are hurt much.

regarding those 19 players that will be UFAs...only a handful of them are guys that we will particularly want to keep around or have to work hard financially to do so. most of them are fringe players who are very replaceable and affordable. they just aren't that big of a deal.

despite your best efforts to educate me otherwise, i'm still not completely sold that resigning core players and adding a couple quality FAs will be all that difficult.

i just don't agree that richardson really hurt us long term with what he did nor do i feel he wasn't expecting football in 2011. i think last year went worse than what he expected, but for the most part everything should be working out well. only way to know for sure is to see how things shake out when the CBA deal is done, FA signings take place and football is played.

[jtnc]

Exactly, how in the hell are we gonna sign all these players plus explore FA? This guy's plain ultimately failed, however people on this forum still believe he's a "genius" no he isn't.

[Catalyst]

Had we re-signed Johnson and/or Anderson before last year they'd both be demanding new deals after their breakout seasons and we'd have to end up spending the same money AND putting up with the headache of two possible holdouts.

Deals like Kalil, Beason, Davis, Williams, etc. were always going to be issues regardless of who was coaching last year or the lockout. We didn't lose anything by pushing these decisions off a year, IMO.

The best thing to come out of all this was the fact that we were able to dump our dead weight and clear the cap space necessary to get the core guys we need re-signed. I don't think keeping or firing Fox made a huge difference one way or the other, TBH. We may have gotten 2-3 more wins, but we still wouldn't have had a legit QB, which was the backbone of our problems last season.

[Leeroy Jenkins PhD]

I truly believe that after the success at the end of the 2009 season, JR really thought we could win with our young talent. If you remember that end stretch where almost every veteran was on IR, we won 4 of the last 5 games. This was with Matt Moore at QB. I even believed we had a good young team. and who is to say he was wrong. The coaching in 2010 was probably the worst attempt at NFL coaching in the history of the league. Aside from Ron Meeks and the defense, offensivly we tossed in the towel in week 2!

Davidson and Fox were the worst possibly coaches I have seen in my history of watching the NFL!!

I am not completely sure he thought we were tanking that season. I think he (JR) believed we could win games with what we had on our roster. I don't think JR could have comprehended the sheer idiocy our coaching staff would present week in and out in 2010.

I also agree that he didn't think there would be football this year. It explains why he allowed our team to fall apart. With no moves in FA and not signing any contract extensions, he was protecting his wallet for a year without football.

In hindsight, with the likelyhood of football being played this year, his decisions look foolish.

Hopefully flooding the market with FA's will allow for a buyers market for the teams with money to spend. If we can bring back our core talent for cheap, due to the fact that there will be so many available FA's, this could leave us cap room to really improve our team.

[CatMan72]

i think you worry alot. :lol:

probably should have fired fox a year earlier, but who would we have had for a coaching staff? i can't imagine that it would be much if any better than what we have now. it would have to have been a hard sell letting them know what they intended to do with the roster last year.

harder to sell a coach on a team that was getting ready to unload so many players and not be allowed to replace them than to sell them on a team that had already unloaded everyone, had the #1 pick in the draft and a willingness to spend in FA (which they now have).

are we in better shape than we would have been had we hired someone last year? impossible to know, but i do think that the coaching staff is coming into a better situation now than they did last year. my opinion is that we are better off because of what richardson did than we would have been if we replaced fox a year earlier. learning curve would be there regardless.

as far as charles johnson and james anderson, before last year did we really have any idea how good they were? spin that situation and now we know we have two more very dependable and effective defensive players who actually want to stay here. it will cost to keep them, but it won't break us. we won't get them for cheap, but it also won't be overly extravagant. i don't see them really testing the market much. the big name guys, other than marshall, all want to stay around. they won't make it unreasonable to keep them. we probably could have gotten them for cheaper had we signed them earlier, but long term i think that makes for happier and more productive players in the long term the way it's playing out. in the big picture i don't think that we are hurt much.

regarding those 19 players that will be UFAs...only a handful of them are guys that we will particularly want to keep around or have to work hard financially to do so. most of them are fringe players who are very replaceable and affordable. they just aren't that big of a deal.

despite your best efforts to educate me otherwise, i'm still not completely sold that resigning core players and adding a couple quality FAs will be all that difficult.

i just don't agree that richardson really hurt us long term with what he did nor do i feel he wasn't expecting football in 2011. i think last year went worse than what he expected, but for the most part everything should be working out well. only way to know for sure is to see how things shake out when the CBA deal is done, FA signings take place and football is played.

This, the only thing I really disagree with is keeping Fox around as a lame-duck coach... I don't think the Panthers realized how bad things would be in that situation.

Fox had always been a consummate pro and a stand-up guy so I think they thought he would finish out that last year just as if he had a 5 year extension and that was naive. I don't think Fox meant to mail it in... but when you know you're on your way out no matter what you do, how much energy are you going to be able to muster?

Once you've caused the HC to lose the majority of his coaching staff and you've stripped him of having any say over personnel, what's the point in keeping him around? JR said he wasn't going to pay a coaching staff 11 million dollars to go on vacation... it's easy for me to say because it's not my 11 million but in my book that's penny-wise and pound-foolish.

They paid Peppers almost 17 million to play for one season knowing full well that they were going to let him walk, so why not let the whole lame-duck coaching staff walk with 11 million and turn the page?

Anyhow, that's all water under the bridge at this point... I couldn't be any happier with the coaching staff we have now and we have plenty of cap room for them to shape the roster to their vision.

[King Taharqa]

But then we wouldn't have Cam Newton...

The end justifies the means. ;)

[cdandi1]

hindsight is 20:20...either way we were going to suck for a year and have to rebuild. If cam shapes up to be anywhere near his potential jerry will be seen as a absolute genius...

[rayzor]

Exactly, how in the hell are we gonna sign all these players plus explore FA? This guy's plain ultimately failed, however people on this forum still believe he's a "genius" no he isn't.

how many of those 19 players do we need to re-sign?

you make it seem like the team is going to crash and burn if we don't bring back every one of these guys and that they are all crucial to the team's success. the vast majority won't be a problem to keep around if we even want to keep them around. if not, we can find better options in FA and not wind up broke. we've got at least 19 spots to fill. that means 19 spots that we can upgrade. the glut of talent that is going to be available means more choices and lower prices.

far too early to know if he failed or not.

don't make me pull out chicken little pics. :lol: