MeDisclosure: All opinions expressed in this article are my own, and represent no one but myself and not those of my current or any previous employers.
Everything I've ever written on this site fits pretty neatly within one or more of the following three categories: technology, leadership, and culture.
Except this one. While I should be nervous to stray outside my lane, since those would seem to be things I know something about, it's always just a bullshit stream of conscious, anyway, so fuck it. Today I'm going to talk about football. Zeke, this one if for you.
We are but two weeks into the 2024 NFL season, so we are very squarely in the overreaction-without-enough-data stage, and yesterday the Carolina Panthers (a team I have no affiliation with or to) announced that they are benching their starting quarterback, Bryce Young. But the problems with the Panthers go far deeper than that, so I'm going to play a little armchair General Manager. In particular, what would I, someone with absolutely zero experience leading a football team in any capacity, do with the mess they have.
First, let's define the mess. Yes, they have a quarterback that is struggling mightily. After all, quarterbacks do get benched. Players skills deteriorate, and others fail to live up to expectations. None of that is necessarily abnormal or debilitating for a franchise (even when it is a top pick, like Bryce Young), so why is this situation different?
Some Recent History, for Context
In 2022, the Carolina Panthers finished 7-10, which was good enough for second place in a very shitty division. The division winner (Tampa Bay) was sub-.500, finishing with a 8-9 record.
It is an understatement to say that this division was ripe for the taking.
Over the first six games of 2022 (of which they won one), the team was outscored 146-103. After the fifth game of the year, they fired head coach Matt Rhule, along with defensive coordinator Phil Snow. Rhule was replaced with defensive passing game coordinator Steve Wilks, who served as the interim head coach for the remainder of the season. Wilks had, in hindsight, a very successful season in that role, finishing 6-6. However, ownership wasn't impressed enough and went another direction in 2023, hiring Frank Reich as the Head Coach. We'll get back to that decision later. For now, let's continue with 2022.
So we have a division there for the taking, and they looked, well, close-ish, if you squint a lot. Some stats[1] worth calling out:
- 19th in team defense
- 23rd in passing defense
- 18th in rushing defense
- 19th in scoring defense
- Turnover ratio (for the season): -4. You'd obviously like this to be positive, but this is practically neutral
- Special teams was middle of the pack, across a number of metrics, on both sides of the ball)
- 20th in team offense
- 29th in passing offense
- 10th in rushing offense
One thing jumps out, even when looking at these basic metrics: the passing offense is amongst the worst in the league, ranking 29th out of 32. With the rushing offense ranked in the top 10 of the league, and the overall team defense 20th, clearly the passing offense is the anchor. So let's look at that a bit deeper, starting with the quarterback, the most important position in all of sports.
Sam Darnold was the third overall selection in the 2018 NFL Draft (following Baker Mayfield and Saquon Barkley), by the New York Jets, after he posted a career 20-4 record at USC, where he lit it up through those 24 games with 57 touchdowns passing (another 7 rushing) and more than 7,500 yards (7,229 passing). He is built like the prototypical modern day quarterback, at 6 foot 33⁄8. The Jets went 4-12 in his rookie year, with Darnold playing in 13 of those games. He had a 57.7% completion percentage, 2,865 yards (an average of 6.9 yards per attempt), 17 touchdowns, 15 interceptions (yikes), and a QBR rating of just 45.9. He was also sacked 30 times in those 13 games[2]. He played three years as a Jet before moving on to Carolina, where he was supposed to get a fresh start to a disappointing start to his career.
Frankly, this was a head scratcher move in-and-of-itself. The Panthers acquired the former number 3 overall pick in exchange for a late 2021 sixth-rounder, and a second rounder, and fourth-rounder in 2022. Clearly they thought they saw something in Darnold that the Jets were unable to tap into in his three years in New York.
Perhaps most confusing was that Carolina also had the 8th pick in the 2021 draft, which was a draft that had five quarterbacks selected in the first round, and a total of eight picked in the first three rounds, at that time, an NFL record.
Now, it's always easier to connect the dots when we're looking backwards, and as it happens, they didn't miss out on much, as most of those eight quarterbacks have either fizzled and settled in to backup careers, or haven't completely fulfilled their potential (looking at you, Trevor Lawrence). Here are those selections:
- No. 1: Trevor Lawrence, Jacksonville Jaguars
- No. 2: Zach Wilson, New York Jets
- No. 3: Trey Lance, San Francisco 49ers
- No. 11: Justin Fields, Chicago Bears
- No. 15: Mac Jones, New England Patriots
- No. 64: Kyle Trask, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
- No. 66: Kellen Mond, Minnesota Vikings
- No. 67: Davis Mills, Houston Texans
I could argue that Justin Fields might have been a good selection, but that's difficult to say. The reason I say he might is that perhaps some consistency in a franchise would have given him the structure needed to have a different career than he has, which has shown flashes of incredible potential, but been marred with injury and inconsistency. I can't say what might have been, but I can squint and say "maybe." I'll say this, I really like him under the tutelage of Tomlin and working in a consistent environment for the first time in his career. He's my very bold prediction after two weeks: if he can stay healthy, he keeps that job and wins Comeback Player of the Year, but I digress.
Instead, the Panthers selected Jaycee Horn, a cornerback out of South Carolina. While he's struggled with injuries over his career, his fifth year option was picked up, and if can stay healthy, he's got "potential to be a top-10 cornerback in the NFL. His 80.3 coverage grade is 15th at the position over the past two years, and his 0.83 yards per coverage snap ranks tied for eighth", per PFF, who have him ranked as the 30th best cornerback in the league. This roughly puts him in the top 30% of the league, if I'm using very basic back-of-the-envelope match, counting the two outside corners per team and a slot DB per team, for a total of 96. Unscientific, but I'm in the ballpark.
All right, so the Panthers traded away multiple picks for a young quarterback with a track record of throwing almost as interceptions (39) as he had touchdowns (45), but we'd be remiss if we laid the blame of what was coming solely at the hands of a quarterback who was, by all accounts very kind, sharing the ball with both teams and not just keeping it for his own.
The Trenches and the Receivers
I'm a huge believer in the trenches, and it's the reason I hold Jim Harbaugh in such regard as a coach (because he agrees with me, naturally). I actually think the difference between the top rated quarterback and the 64th rated quarterback is actually a lot smaller than we think. These are, after all, the best 64 quarterbacks in a world of 8 billion. Of course, all 8 billion of us aren't trying out (Nikki Sigler was our quarterback in 5th grade, and she was solid), and the difference between the top quarterback (Pat Mahomes) and the (e.g.) 15th quarterback is probably wider than the difference between the 15th and the 64th, but you get the gist. And the biggest difference, to me, is whether these signal callers have time. This is more important than having a Pro Bowl wideout (great offensive lines make average wide receivers into Pro Bowlers; it doesn't work the same in the other direction) or anything else you can do for your quarterback. Time. That thing you can't get back. #yep-deep-stuff
I argue that practically any of the 64 quarterbacks could be Pro Bowl caliber if they are given the time to work through their progressions and make the throws they can make. They may not go from 64th to top 10, but they can be winning starting quarterbacks in the NFL. So let's take a quick look at the offensive line, who are responsible for providing the quarterback with time.
Carolina's sucked. They were ranked 31st out of 32. That's really shitty. Their right tackle was solid, but this group was absolutely horrible. So now you have a quarterback who has a tendency to throw it to both teams, and now you aren't giving him the time to make good decisions. Yikes. That's a bad combination. Let's hope the guys he's throwing it to are elite.
They weren't. I mean, they did have D.J. Moore, who finished that season ranked 12th overall, with a very respectable 93 catches, but just 4 touchdowns (a tie for 61st amongst receivers). Their other receiver was (Robby) Chosen Anderson, who finished the 2021 season with 53 receptions (65th) for 519 receiving yards (84th) and five receiving touchdowns (56th). While he has perhaps the greatest hair in football:
He may be more known for changing his name a few times.
So, the bottom line is that the Panthers had a new coach, overpaid for a subpar quarterback, didn't protect him or give him time, which only lent itself to an already problematic touchdown-to-interception ratio getting worse (he threw a total of 16 touchdowns as a Panther over two years and the same amount of interceptions), and ended that tenure with less touchdowns (16) than games played (18), and his receivers were, at best, okay. Time to blame the quarterback, obviously (cue the eye roll).
The Haul
This brings us to the Carolina Panthers 2023 offseason. Despite being unable to top a division in which the winner was under .500, they apparently felt like they were even closer than before (at this point, we'd sit our family down and tell them they can't drive any longer because they're dilusional). They had an interim coach who had inspired the team to play 6-6 over the final 12 after beginning the season 1-5, and somehow, they convinced themselves that they were a quarterback away, or at least that the quarterback class of 2023 had something special at the top of it, and they were willing to double down on stupidity, ignoring the lessons of only two years previous. But not only that, they said "hold my sweet tea" and went all-in. If you're thinking "what the fuck?" right now, trust your instincts.
As shown above, the bright spot in a dark franchise on offense had been D.J. Moore, who finished in the top 12 in catches, and 11th in yards. On the one hand, he was just about the only weapon on that offense that other teams would have been interested in then (their leading running back was Chuba Hubbard, who finished 35th in yards, with only 612, and running backs aren't exactly trade targets with high returns, unless your name is Christian McCaffrey, who had been moved to SF earlier, in what has been considered the worst trade ever, though my money is still on Herschell Walker), but on the other hand, you suck really bad, so maybe don't trade away the one bright spot you have left. Which is exactly what they did, but they didn't stop there. They gave away Moore, the first round (9th overall) pick in 2023, the second round (61st overall pick) in 2023, and their 2024 first round pick, which happened to turn out to be...the first overall pick of that draft!
Either this franchise saw some sort of other-worldly and once-in-a-generation/can't miss talent, or they had gone insane. Who was this phenom that would make us forget names like Brady, Manning and Rodgers? None other than Bryce Young.
Bryce Young
I'm not going to bash Young, per se. He's a little fella, by modern day quarterback stats, at only 5' 10" and 200 pounds. Coming out of Alabama, he was touted for his above-average athleticism and explosiveness, and known as a dangerous scrambler. He'd of course need these things since the franchise that selected him still weren't doing nearly enough to protect him. On the other side of the coin, his height and weight were concerning, which led to some concerns of durability. Perhaps equally concerning was that his "[p]rocessing became inconsistent in 2022. Took a slight step back and forced some passes this season."[3], and his arm strength was generally felt to be above-average, but not great.
So for those of you scoring at home, we have a small person (by modern quarterback metrics) with durability concerns who took a step back in processing time, who won't be protected or have any time to make decisions as he transitions to the NFL, which is significantly faster than college. But at least we got rid of his best targets. And for those of you not scoring at home, try some Keith Sweat music.
Oh, and the Carolina brass gave up the farm to make this move. You know, I lived in North Carolina for a year, and I don't remember the drugs being that much better there to be able to convince anyone that this strategy was well thought out.
A Quick Aside
I'm going to switch gears for a moment and talk about a belief I've had for quite some time.
Here is a list of Superbowl winning quarterbacks over the past twenty years (recognising some of these guys won more than one):
- Tom Brady
- Ben Roethlisberger
- Peyton Manning
- Eli Manning
- Drew Brees
- Aaron Rogers
- Joe Flacco
- Russell Wilson
- Nick Foles
- Matthew Stafford
- Patrick Mahomes
Flacco had Ray Lewis and Terrell Suggs and arguably one of the best defenses in history, alongside the 1985 Chicago Bears, in addition to Anquan Boldin, an offensive line that included Matt Birk, Bryant McKinnie, and Michael Oher, and a secondary that boasted Ed Reed and Jimmy Smith. In short, they protected a good-not-great quarterback and then let their defense beat the hell out of everyone. And Ray Lewis hadn't been involved in any murders quite yet.
Russell Wilson was also part of an elite defense when he won the 2014 Super Bowl, centered around Bobby Wagner, Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas, and Kam Chancellor (damn!). Additionally, that team "fielded the #1 rushing attack in the league with Marshawn Lynch finishing the year with 1,306 yards and a league-leading 13 rushing touchdowns. In addition to Lynch, Russell Wilson had one of the most prolific running quarterback seasons ever with a career high 849 rushing yards and 6 rushing touchdowns along with a league-leading 7.2 yards per attempt", which is to say that while Russell Wilson's career hasn't finished like it started, that year he looked like a sure-fire first ballot hall of famer.
In 2017, Nick Foles won the Superbowl, but wasn't the starting quarterback for that team. In fact, it was Carson Wentz, who also was voted to the Pro Bowl that season, along with teammates Zach Ertz, Lane Johnson, Brandon Brooks, Fletcher Cox, and Malcolm Jenkins, while also sporting the best center in NFL history, Jason Kelce. Wentz tore his ACL in the division clinching win against the Rams. In this case, Foles captured lightening in a bottle. He's always been a quarterback who could get hot, and (see my earlier argument about the trenches), was good enough not only to win a Superbowl, but be named the MVP of it.
In all other cases, the quarterbacks were absolutely elite, hall of famers. So, what is my point here in this digression away from armchair GM? It is this:
A good coach without an elite quarterback, or an elite quarterback without a good coach and defense, will keep you in NFL Purgatory forever, or what I'll call Kirkatory.
Kirkatory
As I have said before, while writing things that are more "in my lane" than this: the Minnesota Vikings are my choice for raising my blood pressure. And as a Vikings fan, I have just completed the Kirk Cousins era. What Kirk Cousins did for Minnesota, strictly from a draft perspective is this:
- 2019: 18th
- 2020: 22nd
- 2021: 23rd
- 2022: 32nd* NOTE: LA Rams → Detroit → Minnesota. Multiple trades, from 12
- 2023: 23rd
- 2024: 10th NOTE: Cousins was hurt in 2023, leading to this high of a pick
Cousins was never, and will never, be elite. He's not Brady, Manning, Roethlisberger or Rodgers. He's not good enough to win a Superbowl if he's the best player on the team. But he is good enough to assure your team never drafts high enough to ensure they will become a Superbowl contender. Let me unpick that for a second, and be clear: this is not a cut against quarterbacks like Cousins. They are good enough to win games even as the team ebbs and flows between strengths and weaknesses. That's why you very rarely pick in the top 15, after all. And top players (quarterbacks included) don't necessarily come from the top of the first round. Brock Purdy, the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers was Mr. Irrelevant, a term for the last player taken in the NFL draft (pick 262). But (a) Brock Purdy has also never won a Superbowl, though (b) he does have (arguably, and I'd argue it) the best coach in football (Kyle Shanahan) and a top defense, so that one hits on my algorithm.
I would argue the only elite quarterbacks in today's NFL, who are still playing at an elite level (sorry not sorry, Rodgers, I guess your magic crystals have worn off) are Pat Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, and Josh Allen. Right after that, you can name Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, maybe Jalen Hurts. But "elite" needs to mean elite, and Burrow doesn't win games by himself. Herbert has been considered a disappointment against expectations coming out of Oregon, and Hurts is still figuring it out.
So by my hypothesis, those guys are elite, and they can win you a Superbowl without a great defense, perhaps. But if you have a Kirk Cousins, or the black version of him (Dak Prescott), or Jordan Love or Trevor Lawrence, what you actually have is a quarterback that will keep you in Kirkatory, unless they have more.
More interesting to me is this: even without a quarterback, there are certain coaches who in-and-of-themselves can keep you in Kirkatory. Exhibit A: Mike Tomlin.
First and foremost, Mike Tomlin is too cool for school. The Mount Rushmore of Cool is him, Antonio Banderas in the movie Desperado, Sam Elliot in the movie Roadhouse, and Prince, obviously.
But check out Mike Tomlin's tenure at Pittsburgh, where he's been the head coach since 2007:
- 2007: 10-6
- 2008: 12-4 NOTE: won the Superbowl
- 2009: 9-7
- 2010: 12-4
- 2011: 12-4
- 2012: 8-8
- 2013: 8-8
- 2014: 11-5
- 2015: 10-6
- 2016: 11-5
- 2017: 13-3
- 2018: 9-6-1
- 2019: 8-8
- 2020: 12-4
- 2021: 9-7-1
- 2022: 9-8
- 2023: 10-7
That's insane that he's never had a losing record. Absolutely crazy. Roethlisberger retired in 2021, literally limping out the league, and Pittsburgh has had some clunkers behind center over the years. And still, Tomlin wins. But what does that mean for the draft?
- 2008: 23
- 2009: 32
- 2010: 18
- 2011: 31
- 2012: 24
- 2013: 17
- 2014: 15
- 2015: 22
- 2016: 25
- 2017: 30
- 2018: 28
- 2019: 10
- 2020: no pick
- 2021: 24
- 2022: 20
- 2023: 14
- 2024: 20
So, he's in his 18th year as the head coach there, and he's had one Top Ten pick (2019, Devin Bush, who is no longer with Pittsburgh). Mike Tomlin has Pittsburgh locked in Kirkatory.
This next (and final) step of my digression is necessary to complete the argument, which is that there are no guarantees about your draft position compared to the impact a player might have (see Brock Purdy and Tom Brady). But the NFL is a business, and businesses need to think in terms of risk and risk mitigation, as well as the tradeoffs for taking big swings. And to that end, my argument is that the draft is an ordered list containing parts of a product (people) with varying risk/reward ratios and risk levels. The top pick in the 2024 draft (Caleb Williams) is a very high reward, very low risk pick, which is why he went #1. Joe Milton III, from Tennessee, was drafted 193rd, with a scouting report that included "has NFL-level tools but lacks the processing, instincts and accuracy to be considered a potential starter."[4] Risk there is mitigated by only using a 6th round selection on him. Bryce Young was considered high reward/medium risk, and Carolina lost that bet, which happens.
That isn't to say that the likes of Milton III won't become a starter, or a hall of famer, but the risk/reward and the risk mitigation percentages are all drastically different. Choosing Milton first overall instead of Williams surely would cost a GM their job. So how to measure this? Well, if I cared enough, I'd gather a bunch of data and do proper analysis. But I don't, so I'm going to do a little analysis, which is the following:
- Take the top 100 impact players (predicted) for 2024 (source)
- Retrieve each of their draft selection slots
- Compare
Not perfect (by a long shot), but it'll do...especially if it proves my point.
Analysis Results
I will admit, when I started this little analysis exercise, as imperfect as I know it is, I had some expectations that my hypothesis would be supported, but I was still shocked at the results. They more than prove the point I'm trying to make around risk mitigation and risk/reward. Check it out!
Of the Top 100 Projected Players, from ESPN's article "2024 NFL Rank: Predicting top 100 players for this season":
- The average (mean) draft position: 36.39
- The median draft position, which is a far better measure: 16!
- Of the top 100, 67 of them are first round picks
- Of the top 100, 15 of them are second round picks
- Of the top 100, 6 of them are third round picks
- Of the top 100, 4 of them are fourth round picks
- Of the top 100, 5 of them are fifth round picks
- Of the top 100, 2 of them are sixth round picks
- Only Brock Purdy was a seventh round pick
- 39 of them were taken in the top 10
- 22 were taken in the top 5
- 5 were taken first overall (Stafford, Trevor Lawrence, Goff, Burrow, Myles Garrett)
Clearly, first round players have a higher likelihood of having an outsized impact than players taken later in the draft, and within that, 58.21% of players taken in the first round were taken in the top 10, versus 41.79% taken in picks 11-32. It turns out that while the draft is a crapshoot, the cream usually does rise to, and come from, the top.
Thus, the best way to add impact players to your team is to draft them in the first round (or take on free agents who were drafted in the first round), and generally the higher the better. Take that one step further, and (using this year's data) the San Francisco 49ers have the most players on the list (8), and they're expected to compete for a Superbowl. The Arizona Cardinals, Washington Commanders, New Orleans Saints, New England Patriots, and Carolina Panthers have zero of the top 100, and they are all expected to suck this year, with the (early) exception of New Orleans, who have been dominant through two weeks, and especially impressive in week 2, destroying Dallas (in Arlington) 44-19. And Arizona has a really nice nucleus, between Harrison, McBride, Benson, and Murray. They're going to surprise some teams this year, and have high expectations to compete for that division in 2025. The NFC Norris and the West are going to be fun to watch for the next few years.
Anywho...this means that if your team is stuck in Kirkatory, whether that is because you have a quarterback who is good enough to not let your team finish in the bottom 10 (like Kirk Cousins) or if your coach is good enough to prevent the same regardless of quarterback (Mike Tomlin), that creates a situation in which it is harder, and generally will take longer (or require more luck) to ever move out of Kirkatory. Frankly, as much as it pains me to say, the NBA approach of throwing a season (or, perhaps benching impact players and lowering the chances of winning) likely accelerates the rebuild. I'm glad the NFL doesn't do that because the product suffers, but in real life, getting those top 10 picks is more meaningful than any alternative options. And it's one reason why I'm so glad Minnesota let Kirk Cousins walk. Well, I have more than one, but I'll just mention that one for now.
What I find most interesting is that if winning championships is the ultimate goal, you're better off playing at the edges, drafting high and hitting homeruns on some of those and then cycling through down years than being consistently competitive but never winning championships. If you're lucky enough (as Seneca reminds us, "luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity"), maybe you hit on a Mahomes and your franchise is set for a decade. Mike Tomlin, Brett Favre, Aaron Rodgers. Each of them, Superbowl winners. But only one each. You can be consistently competitive and win games, or you can ebb and flow and win Championships (and like everything else, Tom Brady is an exception). If the best players statistically come from the top of draft, then all-things-being equal, a team that can cycle quickly between being bad enough to get top 10 picks (or pick up former top 10 picks in free agency), will have a better chance to win more championships on the other end of those cycles.
This obviously hand waves over a number of different things, and in no way pretends to be a full analysis. Rather, it is a very long digression in my Carolina Panthers Armchair GM post because...Carolina has done almost everything wrong! Let's return to that conversation now.
About Freakin' Time
Geez, don't yell at me. I'll start with what they've done right (in response to "Carolina has done almost everything wrong"): they don't have a Mike Tomlin-esque coach there. The best thing that franchise is done is not hire a better coach. At least they won't get caught in Kirkatory.
Coaching
So they mortgaged everything to get Bryce Young. That's not Bryce's fault, it's management. We'll talk more about Owner David Tepper and General Manager Scott Fitterer shortly. But in Bryce's young career, he's had Frank Reich, who lasted 11 games into Young's rookie season and went 1-10, and Chris Tabor, who continued with the same level of shittiness, going 1-5. This horrible combination of change and what-the-fuck-are-you-doingness almost surely stunted or slowed Young's growth, but worse yet, made that ridiculous trade with the Bears even more ridiculous. Like a lot more ridiculous. And their shitty offensive line probably gave him PTSD. Because Reich/Tabor went a paltry 2-15 (in a still very bad division, mind you. For shit's sake, Atlanta was trying to use Desmond Ridder as their starting quarterback), the trade (again: they gave away their top reciever in DJ Moore, the first round-9th overall-pick in 2023, the second round-61st overall-pick in 2023, and their 2024 first round pick) meant that the 2024 first round pick was actually the first overall pick, and this time around, it meant that Chicago would get their dirty paws (see what I did there? I'm a real dad) on what is largely believed to be a "generational" talent[6] in Caleb Williams.
So you traded everything away for a guy who had some red flags, and included as part of that "everything" is a better player than the guy you got for all of that. Deep sigh. And to be clear, this isn't a matter of "sure, easy to say that now, but who knew Young would be a bust?", and I can get behind that for all of about a minute. If you thought he'd be better than CJ Stroud, okay. You (we) were wrong about that, but they came out with similar grades and scouting can be wrong. But, even a year ago, when Young and Stroud went 1 and 2, Caleb Williams was already a better prospect than both of them! I didn't say Williams will be better than Stroud (even if I think he will), but as prospects go, Williams > Them. So you'd have been better off sticking with Sam Darnold, or freaking trading for Desmond Ridder (!) than trading everything for a guy who wasn't as good as the guy who was coming. That might be a bit harsh, and easy to say from my armchair position (those things are correct), but without doing anything to improve the team, you traded everything, then didn't protect him, then took away essentially the only target who was near the prime of his career (33 year old Adam Thielen was never going to fill those shoes. At this point in his career, and for awhile now, he's been a possession receiver), and then fired the head coach mid-way through year one. So far, so good, and I'm only scratching the surface of boneheaded decisions. I mean...we've not even gotten to the offseason or this year.
2024
A new season, a new coach. Interim Chris Tabor was out, and Dave Canales was in. Dave Canales is apparently a quarterback whisperer. A closer look at his career, and in particular his work with quarterbacks:
- Quarterbacks coach, Seattle Seahawks (2018–2019)
- Passing game coordinator, Seattle Seahawks (2020–2021)
- Quarterbacks coach, Seattle Seahawks (2022)
- Offensive coordinator, Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2023)
Ownership
Let's quickly talk a bit more about the owner, David Tepper. This is the billionaire with such thin skin that he threw a drink at an opposing fan from his luxury box, and was later fined $300,000 for it. He also has been criticized for being too hands-on with the Panthers. So far under his amazing leadership, the Panthers have compiled a 31-68 record. And my favourite part: they have had more full-time head coaching hires (4) than playoff appearances (0). This guy runs his team like Trump ran his 2016 administration. And not surprisingly, he's gotten similar results.
So you have this yahoo doing his best Dan Snyder impressions, and now he's gone and given Whispers the coach a six year deal, you still haven't addressed your horrible offensive line, your wide receivers are almost non-existent, and Young's numbers are brutal (two games, 245 total yards passing, 0 touchdowns and 3 interceptions). I wonder what Whispers is going to do, what with all his awesome quarterback coaching experience...
Hit the Pine, Kid
They bench their first round pick and franchise saviour, after only two games into his second season (and 18 total games). Yep, that should help. They took Xavier Legette with the 32nd pick in the draft, and received a "C" grade for it. Bleacher Report had him projected to go in the third round! Now, maybe Carolina saw something others didn't. After all, with their history in the draft, they are certainly due for getting something right accidentally, and they did need a WR, so...okay, I guess we can let that pass, if for no other reason than it's not quite as obnoxiously horrible as the rest of their decisions.
But apparently Whispies the Super Coach thinks The Red Rifle, Andy Dalton is going to be a better choice. After all, Young's strength is his athletic ability and scrambling, but maybe a soon-to-be 37 year old ging who has thrown 59 passes in two years will be better behind one of the most offensive offensive lines in football.
And let's be honest here, The Red Rifle has been serviceable (with a nice career as a backup after leaving Cincinnati), accumulating a 86-83-2 record and a respectable career passer rating of 87.6. I have no doubt he's going to be better than Young. But to what end? If you forced me to make an argument as to why this is a good thing, it's this:
The Carolina Panthers are horrible. Really horrible. In two games, they've been outscored 73-13!!! Now, if you are sitting there thinking "I'm not sure how a different quarterback is going to help a defense averaging 36.5 points allowed per game", you're right. He can't. What he can do is give you a baseline of the offense, so you can determine how much blame to put on your 23 year old quarterback who has had three head coaches in 18 games, arguably the worst offensive line in football, and no receivers beyond a past-his-prime Adam Thielen and a (probably) picked-too-high Xavier Legette.
The Sunk Cost Fallacy
The sunk cost fallacy is very real. Per Wikipedia:
[The] sunk cost fallacy is a fallacy where someone convinces themselves that they should continue doing something because they put in a lot of time and/or effort into it, even if they actually get very little reward out of it.
And to be clear: I do not think Bryce Young is a starting quarterback in the NFL. Not last year, not this year, and unless major strides happen, not any year. I could very well be wrong about that, but I have yet to see what he did at Alabama translate to the NFL. I'm not saying it's his fault. The best coach he ever had was at Alabama. In fact, I might argue that the mis-treatment he's received since joining the Carolina Circus and the too-hands-on Dan Snyder wanna-be owner they have there is what broke him.
But I'm not going to fall for the sunk cost fallacy. We are where we are, and now that Dalton is the quarterback, we should be able to get a baseline for just how big of a shit-show the offense is. The entire point of this really long rambling mess was for me to decide what I would do, now that we've gotten context on what has happened (traded too much, didn't invest in the trenches, threw a quarterback with red flags to the wolves behind a porous-at best-offensive line, and traded away the one target he had to throw to, then changed coaches on him three times in 18 games).
What Would I Do Now?
My rule here is that I cant undo anything that's been done, even though I absolutely would have done many things differently. But I'm pretending to hold the role that the real GM, Dan Morgan holds. I don't know much about Morgan as an executive, other than his resume, which includes stops in Seattle and Buffalo, prior to coming to the circus. I can say that the first thing I'd do before taking that job is to set some ground rules with the head clown himself, Mr. Tepper. There's got to be some boundaries here. You hired me for my skills as a GM, and I can only take this job if you let me do it. So draft decisions and player personnel decisions are mine and all mine (and my staff, obviously). Schemes and who plays are the decision of the Head Coach and his/her staff. Without those boundaries, even the best decisions that any of us can make will surely be undone and undermined and destroyed, so the first thing I'm doing is getting an agreement, and we're putting it in writing (along with a clause that says if a third party agrees that agreement was broken, I get full salary and a bonus for putting up with his shit).
Next, I'm going to make some phone calls, and see if there is anyone out there who thinks that maybe they can fix the situation we've created. Maybe I can trick some team that makes really bad decisions (looking at you Raiders and you Broncos) to slightly overpay for Young. What is overpaying at this point? Maybe a third round pick, second at best, and that is probably be a stretch, but you don't know if you don't ask. He was, after all, the consensus top quarterback in the 2023 draft and has only 18 games under his belt (in a horrible situation), so a team being able to get a second try with a top pick for only a mid-to-low second rounder is a decent good risk/reward gamble, if you have the right system. In fact, I'd stash him myself and see if we can't slow down and get him back on track, except for I think there's enough water under the bridge in Carolina, and everyone would be better off with some fresh starts. That's painful to do, especially because we paid so much for him, but again, I don't think he's the guy, I think this franchise owes it to him and to ourselves to call a spade a spade, and I do believe in the sunk cost fallacy and I'm going to make a hard decision here to avoid it.
So I am going to have an extra third round pick from that trade. I'm going to sign another quarterback this season, perhaps someone akin to Kellen Mond. Yeah, I'm very sure anyone reading this was like "you have zero credibility, shut the hell up", and to them I would say "that is true, but hear me out."
I don't want to win this year. We can't afford to have a best case scenario of somehow the Red Rifle gets us to seven wins in a still underwhelming division, and this year the NFC South plays the NFC East, which is also bad (the New York Giants are quite possibly the second worst team in the NFL, and from a roster standpoint, the Commanders are somewhere in the team picture, unless Jayden Daniels reaches his ceiling, which is incredibly high). There are bad teams on the schedule and wins to be had. The last thing we need is to find ourselves in Kirkatory! And our trade offers get substantially worse if our side of the equation isn't a top 5 pick. We have too many holes to fill. So I need to lose, but I might as well try someone who isn't 36 freaking years old just in case there is something there to work with. And I just thought of Mond because I know him (he was a bad Vikings draft pick), which is not to say that I would choose him, per se, just that I would explore someone like him. Someone young, a bit more mobile, and who needs a change of scenery. There are tons of those guys out there, so replace Mond with the flavour of your choice. Best-best case scenario, I stumble on a Brock Purdy and I can use my 2025 draft pick on something other than quarterback. Worst case scenario, we lose all 17 games, get the first pick in the 2025 draft, and we're a footnote on (e.g.) Mond's Wikipedia page. And at the same time, you open to giving a starting job to guys who can still play but aren't part of any long term plans. Guys like Ryan Fitzpatrick and Ryan Tannenhill, and...dare I say (if my earlier all-too-early bold prediction comes true), Russell Wilson. Or like Joe Flacco and Matt Ryan were at the ends of their careers. I'd be fine with Andy Dalton if it was part of a strategy (but this move to Dalton feels like this history of chaos just repeating itself again). You aren't making 5 year plans with them involved, but they're still good enough now to win games and be competitive. Do these things while you dig the trenches and create a winning culture in a franchise that has become a doormat.
All right, I'm now in the 2025 offseason, preparing for the draft, and I have the first pick. Let's assume that I sent Young off to Tennessee, where he's waiting for Will Levis to be continue to make boneheaded plays like he's done in both weeks 1 and 2 of this year. So I have a first round pick (first overall), a second round pick (33rd overall) a two third round picks, plus 97 (the first pick of the 4th round), so I have five picks in the first 100. That's not bad, and I'd be excited if I were enamoured with the 2025 Quarterback draft class, but I'm not.
It's very early in the college football season, but the QB class already seems to be falling into place. I expect (and again, this could change!) Quinn Ewers to go first, Carson Beck to go second, and the next two quarterbacks to come off the board (not third and fourth overall, but the third and fourth quarterbacks off the board) to be Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders. And, I expect at least one of them is going to have a nice career. But I am not in love with any of them, and my team sucks, so...I'm trading the first overall pick to recoup at least some of what I've lost giving up the farm for Bryce Young.
Here's my logic: I don't even think Ewers is the best quarterback on his team right now. Beck seems like a game manager, and I'm sure as shit not drafting a game manager in today's NFL. Gabriel...maybe, but so far he looks like a slightly worse Bo Nix, and Sanders is going to be a mess. The talent is there, sure, but so is the attitude, and so is his dad. And he already quit on his team once. I don't see any of these guys as the solution to my problems in Carolina. So let's just say that I move that first overall pick, and I get back a similar haul as what I gave up for Bryce Young (three picks this year and a first rounder next year). So now I've moved down in the 2025 first round, and I now I have seven picks in the top 100, with the (e.g.) the 10th pick, two in the second, three in the third, and my fourth rounder, plus in 2026 I have two first round picks.
The rebuild is in full swing now. I expect that Jonathon Brooks comes back from his injury and proves why a lot of people thought he might be the best running back in the 2024 draft, and he's still only 21 years old. I focus my 10th overall pick in 2025 on one of the trenches, and one of my second round picks on the other. With the other second round pick, I can go in a few directions: adding another weapon at WR, help in the secondary opposite Jaycee Horn, or more help on one of the two lines (all-things-being-equal, I'd add another starter to the OL, and starting making one of my biggest weaknesses into the strength of the team). If I'm being honest here, I'm not familiar enough with the Panthers to know exactly where they're the most horrible, beyond that they bring zero pressure and can't protect their quarterback. But you get the idea. I start to build teams the same way as Jim Harbaugh does, by focusing on the lines, protecting whoever is behind center, and shifting the team into a defensive powerhouse.
Offensively, in 2025, I lean on Brooks, and we try to win games like Mike Tomlin does, by running the ball and being tough. Hell, we might even implement an Arthur Smith type offense. It's not fun to watch, but you can be competitive, and until we have a quarterback who can sling it, this will do. Quite honestly, the quarterback free agent list for 2025 doesn't look especially promising. It's guys like Sam Darnold, Marcus Mariota and Trey Lance. Justin Fields is in there, though after watching him against Denver this past weekend, I struggle to understand how Tomlin will be able to put Wilson back in, but he'd be my FA target, followed by game manager Jacoby Brissett. Not the sexiest thing in the world, but at this point, Carolina isn't going to go from ugly ducking to Lisa Bonet, if you catch my drift. Build from the inside out, focus on the lines, install an offense that likes balance and can run the ball, lean on our young running back, and install either a mobile quarterback (Fields) or a game manager (Brissett) and see what the draft looks like in 2026 to find that franchise quarterback with one of the two first round picks, or maybe Fields can be that guy, and I can move one of those picks for another haul. Bill Belichick used to trade down over and over, and for a lot of years, that strategy worked. I'm not saying that's the strategy I'm taking, but I am willing to move down for more picks, especially while my team has this many holes.
Finally, accent these things with some quality veterans, probably erring more towards consistent journeymen to flashy divas. I would want to bring some maturity and appreciation for the nuances of the game to the locker room, but appreciating that we're going to have an influx of young 1st and 2nd round talent, and we want to feature those guys and have them be at their peak as the late 2020s come. For this, it's about not only plugging holes and bringing in experience, it's equally about bringing in the kind of guys to reinforce a team-first culture and a level of professionalism that represents the jersey.
Here's the bottom line: this strategy (and I want to reinforce here, I have no idea what I'm talking about) maybe makes Carolina a contender in 2027, and potentially a legitimate one in 2028, if some things fall the right way. There are no fast fixes here, especially with the mess that management has created, and continuing whatever the hell they're doing there now will make them a perfect use case for what not to do, and the clowns of the league for the decade of the 2020s. Remember the Bucs of the 70s and the Aints of the 80s and the Lions of all-time-except-now? Don't be next.
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