Did Richardson set us up for success

[jtnc]

JR isn't a billionaire.

[panthers55]

it makes a lot of sense. you may not like the way it happened, but it most certainly made sense to not create a situation where you were paying for 2 HCs and their staffs.

it wasn't about screwing fox or the fans (which i think you are still just bitter for having to spend money for tickets last year).

it was about richardson trying to prepare for a year without football.

it was about fox trying to put the new staff in a better situation by not having a bunch of of hang over players from the previous coaching regime. it made perfect sense, if you are looking beyond the 2010 season, to use that year and the loophole it provided to unload players that the new coaching staff probably would have unloaded anyway.

richardson had his eyes on rebuilding, but it required a little demolition. fox's record was a casualty. nothing more. again, richardson had no idea it would get as ugly as it did. only the "prophets of doom" (or chicken littles) lucked out and got it right this time. it was bigger than 2010.

as far as setting the team back...meh. we weren't going forward with fox. how things shook out didn't put this team in much worse of a situation than it would have been if we did nothing.

the team is going to get better. things will improve. the team will win games again. fans will get over it ....or they'll move on and ultimately not be missed because they'll be replaced by new ones. fans stuck with PSLs they regret having will unload them to be bought by someone else or they'll stick around and get over it as well once the team starts winning again.

panthers a laughing stock? that will change this year. someone else will take that honor just like happens every year.

frankly, it just isn't as bad as you are making things out to be, but before you get an even bigger ulcer just give it a chance and try waiting to see what happens instead of just automatically assuming things are in the crapper. the guys running things have more of a clue than you about what is going on and have a bigger plan than you are aware of. blind faith? maybe, but it has to be better than blind distrust.

It is fine to have optimistic trusting folks who buy the party line hook and sinker. We need all kinds. But honestly don't waste your time selling me the party line. I was here for the whole show. Am I angry about paying for tickets for a crappy product? Not really. I was one of the only ones here who told you and others that is was going to be crappy. Was I only lucky or a prophet of doom? I knew what was going on and told it long before the rest of you figured it out. Why? Because I take off the rose colored glasses ever now and then and look below the surface. Those who can't think anyone who can is just lucky so they think they are still on the same playing field and they aren't.

But you have things way off base. I am talking about how crappy Richardson treated folks last year, not this year. I am actually bullish on the Panthers this year. But we won't be signing a bunch of high priced free agents and we won't be in the playoffs. But you apparently are confusing my discussion about Richardson crapping us last year with thinking he will do it again or that we will be crappy again. And that is not close to the truth. No one is saying we aren't going to be better, I surely think we will, but that surely doesn't change that Richardson screwed the fans and was totally off base on just about everything he did last year. It doesn't mean he will do it again or that he is a bad owner, but it doesn't change what happened.

[panthers55]

There's a reason JR's a billionaire and we're all not. Man knows how to run a business and he's not only in it to make a buck, but to bring a championship to Carolina.

Billionaires screw up too, just ask Martha Stewart. In general he may want to win a championship but last year he surely didn't. And it was about making a buck plain and simple. Every NFL owner is a great businessman or he wouldn't have the money to buy a team. Dan Snyder is a great businessman. As for being a great owner, not so much.

[blackcat]

JR isn't a billionaire.

you're probably right. He's getting by on 5 figures like the rest of us.

[blackcat]

Billionaires screw up too, just ask Martha Stewart. In general he may want to win a championship but last year he surely didn't. And it was about making a buck plain and simple.

If you've ever owned or run a business, you'd know you have to make sacrafices at the present for the greater good in the future. Does it suck that we went 2-14, yeah, but in the end, we may see a pay off in the future. When did we go 1-15 and when did we go to the superbowl?

[panthers55]

If you've ever owned or run a business, you'd know you have to make sacrafices at the present for the greater good in the future. Does it suck that we went 2-14, yeah, but in the end, we may see a pay off in the future. When did we go 1-15 and when did we go to the superbowl?

I own four businesses and have for the last decade. And I am working my butt off to keep them afloat in the worse economy in 80 years. I have forgone a salary for a year to keep them afloat so spare me the lessons on sacrifice. But the reasons we went 2-14 was because he made a bunch of poor decisions and totally misread the other owners and thought we wouldn't be playing football this year. He was wrong. A bunch of other teams didn't follow his lead and are just as well off if not better off without gutting their team and tanking the season. Who else did what he did? No one. Sure we will recover and get better but it didn't take doing what he did to get there.

[Cyberjag]

I think he gambled and lost. But I also think he's committed to fielding a winning team, so I am ok with it. There are some owners who just want to have a team and be in the club, and I don't see that in Richardson at all.

Here's a question for you. Had they extended Fox for a few years after 2008, so he didn't have lame-duck status last year, do you think they would have won more games?

[panthers55]

I think he gambled and lost. But I also think he's committed to fielding a winning team, so I am ok with it. There are some owners who just want to have a team and be in the club, and I don't see that in Richardson at all.

Here's a question for you. Had they extended Fox for a few years after 2008, so he didn't have lame-duck status last year, do you think they would have won more games?

Richardson has a failed agenda to have a long-term lockout that he pushed and continues to push. The problem is that the rest of the owners don't share his views and many of the moves he made were the wrong ones. Now as long as your decisions affect you primariy, you can do what you want. But when you take people's money and put an inferior product on the field there is no excuse for it and he whittled away at the trust people have in him and rightly so.

Richardson does want to field a winning team most years, just not last year. If someone like me can figure out that last year is going to be a disaster it isn't exactly rocket science.

As for Fox, they could have worked out a contract that protected both sides usually with a buyout or some other mechanism ( I am not a contract guru). The issue wasn't just that by not extending Fox he was a lame duck coach but so was his staff. When they didn't extend the assistants we had a fruit basket turnover after 2008 and had to replace several of them. It led to uncertainty for everyone and the fact they won a total of 9 games in 2009 and 2010 combined after winning 12 alone in 2008 is all evidence you need to show it was a poor strategy.

Given Fox never won less than 7 games in 9 years and then suddenly he wins 2 in his lame duck year, you don't think that had anything to do with it?? Was that all of it?? No it wasn't. Gutting the team of leadership and the veterans meant we had no heart last year. And failing to bring in a veteran QB backup and going with a quarterback trio with a total 8 games experience between them was a disaster. If we had kept Delhomme who we already had to pay anyway, it would have been much better than it was. And as I discussed last season, Jake was likely gone after 2010 anyway. He knew when he signed the extension he wasn't going to see the majority of the money. That is why the 2010 amount was guaranteed. He knew that would likely be what he got. Add that Fox had little to no say in who we drafted and that we added no one in free agency and it was a failed recipe that was easy to predict.

[Udogg]

I guess I would have to understand the cap better to truly understand what JR did. However if there was ever a year to blow up the team, an uncapped year would be it. Especially if you saw hard decisions coming down the road. However it looks like JR will be able to sign most/all of the core players under the "New" salary structure. Using bonuses and the like we could still very well be under the Cap no matter what the report in the other thread says, since players would much rather have bonuses than salary anyway.

For John Fox (whom I liked as a coach and his football philosophy) got a bad deal in a way. However if you look at it, he got absolved from a 2-14 year, no one talked about the "no back to back winning seasons" thing. He got a new job on a team that was argurable better than the one he had. TBH he came out smelling like roses on the other side. It would have been a lot worse for him if we ended up 7-9 with a "veteran" team. Everyone knows he would have succumbed to the forbidden fruit that is Jake Delhomme.

What we have now is, JR has the #1 pick in a rookie salary capped/structured year. We have the new "face" of the franchise. A defensive minded coach whom almost everyone in the league or has played for him thinks highly of. A new coaching staff , especially offensive coordinator. We are not where I want to be but even with the rose colored glasses off we are not in that horrible of a situation. So I think with what we had to do as a team and as a league, JR made the best decision possible. It was going to be ugly anyway you look at it.

[Zcustom]

You obviously confuse cap room with salary. It is confusing so I will explain it so you can understand it. Cap room is the salary and bonuses prorated over the live of the contract. Salary includes all the signing bonuses and guaranteed money when they are actually paid. My point is that Richardson will have to sign checks to pay the contracts when they are signed. Lets use Johnson as an example. If he is signed on a 5 years deal for 45 million dollars and 25 million of that is up front, the cap hit spread out over the 5 years will be 9 million. But Richardson will have to write the check for the 2011 salary and the 25 million. That will likely be around 32 million. That is what I said with salary. It might be 30-40 million in cap but closer to 100 million in cash. So it isn't chicken little at all, it is the difference between real money and funny money which is what the cap is.

You obviously aren't considering a couple of factors;

1. Hurney is the master of the salary cap, and

2. The only reason contracts were front loaded with large bonuses were to keep the per year salaries down ie "working the cap" because under previous CBA rules the signing bonus didn't count towards the cap. That's why Hurney typically gave large signing bonuses with lower per year salaries at the front of the contract and escalating salaries at the back of the contract, or "backloading". That allowed for restructuring of the contract when it got to the larger per year salaries at the back end of the contract. When he would again give a signing bonus with small per year salaries for a few years. Why would Hurney continue to do business the "old way" after the rules change?

If you think Hurney won't adapt to the new rules and find a way to make it work in his favor you are sadly mistaken.

[jtm]

I think JR set us up to be in the best position possible with the ensuing lock-out and the fact he knew we were in need of an overhaul. People probably forget, but KC did the same thing a couple of years ago and they had some good draft classes and wise free agency acquisitions and they are now sitting in a great position and young.

Time will only tell if JR's plan was smart. We likely still would be looking for a QB if he didn't do this because we would have won a lot more games last year. Just depends on your perspective.

[jtm]

Another thing to keep in mind, JR is out to win championships, not to go 9-7. This whole master plan started after the NFC Championship implosion and he knew we had to find a QB. I think he realized even if we had Sam Bradford last year we were a couple years away from competing again, based on the time it takes a rookie QB to get up to speed in order to compete for a Championship. Again, compete for a Championship is the key word. None of the other phenom rookie QBs are winning championships yet. Our current roster would have been too old to wait the couple of years necessary, so he took the opportunity to go young and rebuild. It just so happened that we had an uncapped year so we could cut dead weight.

I can assure you it was a very difficult decision and one with risks. The NFL is a young man's league and I think looking back it is going to prove to be a good decision if the players we have brought in (Cam) and players we will bring in pan out.

[DaCityKats]

^^ this started in 05? JR should have blown this ship up after the cards beat the hell out of us on National TV.

[Cyberjag]

Richardson has a failed agenda to have a long-term lockout that he pushed and continues to push. The problem is that the rest of the owners don't share his views and many of the moves he made were the wrong ones. Now as long as your decisions affect you primariy, you can do what you want. But when you take people's money and put an inferior product on the field there is no excuse for it and he whittled away at the trust people have in him and rightly so.

Richardson does want to field a winning team most years, just not last year. If someone like me can figure out that last year is going to be a disaster it isn't exactly rocket science.

As for Fox, they could have worked out a contract that protected both sides usually with a buyout or some other mechanism ( I am not a contract guru). The issue wasn't just that by not extending Fox he was a lame duck coach but so was his staff. When they didn't extend the assistants we had a fruit basket turnover after 2008 and had to replace several of them. It led to uncertainty for everyone and the fact they won a total of 9 games in 2009 and 2010 combined after winning 12 alone in 2008 is all evidence you need to show it was a poor strategy.

Given Fox never won less than 7 games in 9 years and then suddenly he wins 2 in his lame duck year, you don't think that had anything to do with it?? Was that all of it?? No it wasn't. Gutting the team of leadership and the veterans meant we had no heart last year. And failing to bring in a veteran QB backup and going with a quarterback trio with a total 8 games experience between them was a disaster. If we had kept Delhomme who we already had to pay anyway, it would have been much better than it was. And as I discussed last season, Jake was likely gone after 2010 anyway. He knew when he signed the extension he wasn't going to see the majority of the money. That is why the 2010 amount was guaranteed. He knew that would likely be what he got. Add that Fox had little to no say in who we drafted and that we added no one in free agency and it was a failed recipe that was easy to predict.

He's continuing to push? I haven't read that, but I haven't been obsessive about football since all this mess started. And I get what you're saying, but I still trust JR despite his bad decision. At least he was trying something, and it was the wrong thing. He did that before with Sieffert, and then we got on the right track again. Maybe this pain will lead to something good at some point, right?

And I also think that Fox remains a good coach. But I also think that the lame-duck status had a lot to do with how Fox was approaching things. Can you imagine him sticking Clausen out there and not really adjusting a game-plan for him if he felt like he was going to have to stick with him for several years to come? Would he have benched Gamble? I think there are a lot of things a coach does that are borne in planning for future years, he did none of them, and that's why lame-duck staffs typically underperform.

I doubt we would have had 7 wins, but I bet we would have had 4-5, even with the youth. And that's what I'm thinking for this year, 4-5 wins. But there will be plenty of glimpses of the future, and that could be fairly bright. :)