Speaker 1: All right, welcome once again to a new year's edition
Speaker 1: of Happy Half Hour. Wait did we do a new
Speaker 1: year's edition already?
Speaker 2: What day is it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good question. I know what day it is.
Speaker 1: It's day twenty one of the Panthers career of one
Speaker 1: Cassidy G. Hill.
Speaker 2: We all run together at this point.
Speaker 1: Welcome friends. I was already old. She has lived a
Speaker 1: lifetime in her first three weeks here with us at
Speaker 1: Panthers dot com and has seen many things. And we
Speaker 1: are going to talk about many things. But welcome to
Speaker 1: the first off season edition of the Happy Half Hour.
Speaker 1: There are many more to come. There is a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff to talk about. But I feel like we
Speaker 1: just need to put a bow on the season that was,
Speaker 1: and the season that you caught the tail end of,
Speaker 1: and you know, really seemed to catch the entire twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three Panthers experience and a little bit of time
Speaker 1: there at once. That was not great. Closing the season
Speaker 1: on two shutout losses was dreadful. But and I don't
Speaker 1: mean to pick on poor DJ Hark, but the photograph
Speaker 1: that we used on our rapid reactions after that game
Speaker 1: of a forty two yard pass that ended up with
Speaker 1: a goal line fumble. The photograph might have been the
Speaker 1: summation of the Carolina Panthers season as a whole. An
Speaker 1: offense that was supposed to work a certain way. It
Speaker 1: seemed like a great idea at the time, and it
Speaker 1: was this short of being what you thought it was
Speaker 1: going to be, and that was kind of it. I mean,
Speaker 1: you you have to have whiplash CASTI because you kind
Speaker 1: of walk in the door in your first game's at
Speaker 1: Packers game where the ball is going around, you know,
Speaker 1: pu pull, you know, and it looks like an actual offense,
Speaker 1: and then to go from that to a couple of
Speaker 1: flat tires was a little bit of a culture shock.
Speaker 1: I'm sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I definitely thought it was going to be one
Speaker 3: thing after that first game on Christmas Eve, and then
Speaker 3: it quickly became something else.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: In defense of dj Hart, my whole life is a
Speaker 3: series of it was supposed to be this and it
Speaker 3: wasn't but that, and you know that play too. While
Speaker 3: we're on that play. The more I'll watch it, there's
Speaker 3: a lot that Djhart could have done differently to keep
Speaker 3: it as a touchdown. That was also an incredible play
Speaker 3: by Anton Whitfield junior.
Speaker 1: Sure, and he's made a bunch of those this year.
Speaker 1: He's really good at football. There's nothing and you know,
Speaker 1: the Bucks are going to the playoffs, and this is
Speaker 1: the fourth year in a row they're going to the playoffs.
Speaker 1: Third year in a row they've won this trailer park
Speaker 1: of a division. So not to take anything away from
Speaker 1: them in this fine achievement, but yeah, I mean, it
Speaker 1: was just it was a season of unfulfilled expectations. It
Speaker 1: was a season of let downs for what was supposed
Speaker 1: to be an offensive revolution. So here we are again.
Speaker 3: That last game too, Darren, And I'm curious your opinion.
Speaker 3: It felt like because the Jaguars game, that was just
Speaker 3: a really bad performance and that was also a lot
Speaker 3: of Josh Allen taking advantage of a piece mild line
Speaker 3: and going after Bryce Young a lied in that first half.
Speaker 1: Is Yeah, it really was. I mean, that one got
Speaker 1: away from him and a hurt.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it was just you know, a snowball that
Speaker 3: just kept going.
Speaker 2: This last game.
Speaker 3: Some of the decisions just felt like the mindset was
Speaker 3: don't let Bryce get hurt. And I completely understand that,
Speaker 3: and so it just makes me wonder if like that was,
Speaker 3: even if that was the offensive game plan to make
Speaker 3: sure Bryce didn't get hurt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. Protecting him was obviously the priority
Speaker 1: that gets more and more difficult, as we've talked about before. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: Gabe Jackson and Nash Jensen were able to get through
Speaker 1: that game unscathed, so that no one else added to
Speaker 1: that long, long, long, long long injury report that included
Speaker 1: seven different players at left guard and eight different right
Speaker 1: guards over the course of the season. And that might
Speaker 1: have a little something to do with Bryce Young being
Speaker 1: sacked sixty two times this year, which ties a franchise
Speaker 1: record set by Steve Berline.
Speaker 2: Not a record do you want to be tied with?
Speaker 1: In the year two thousand? The year two thousand?
Speaker 2: Not a real song? Or did you just make that?
Speaker 1: No? I think it was a bid on a late
Speaker 1: night show. I can't remember which one it was, but
Speaker 1: that is this week's dated pop culture reference, even though
Speaker 1: I can't remember what it's in reference to. I want
Speaker 1: to say it was Conan O'Brien. Okay, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it was a late night ConA.
Speaker 3: Think of the Jonas Brothers song Gear three thousand.
Speaker 2: When you say it like.
Speaker 1: That, we are different Ages will give you.
Speaker 3: One hundred dollars right now if you can sing me
Speaker 3: a line from the Jonahs brother song Gear three thousand.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I am not going to be getting one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars because I could probably do a couple of
Speaker 1: lines of Hanson's bop. But that's as close to the
Speaker 1: Jonas Brothers as I think I'm getting.
Speaker 3: The Hanson Brothers or Hanson Walks the Honest Brothers could rune.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fair, that's fair. I was of the age
Speaker 1: where I remember when those kids were still kids. Anyway,
Speaker 1: where were we We were talking about football and all
Speaker 1: the things that went wrong, and that's you know, when
Speaker 1: you're talking Jonas Brothers and Hanson, that's probably as good
Speaker 1: a transition as anything else. To say, let's not talk
Speaker 1: about that anymore. The Carolina Panthers are in searches again.
Speaker 1: We knew they were going to be looking for a
Speaker 1: new coach after Frank Reich was fired eleven games into
Speaker 1: the year. Now they're looking for a new general manager.
Speaker 1: Scott Fitter was let go on Monday. That that was
Speaker 1: a transition that I think a lot of people probably
Speaker 1: expected simply based on the record, and there are books
Speaker 1: to be written about the way decisions got made, fault
Speaker 1: being distributed, and all those kind of things, and there's
Speaker 1: going to be a time for that to come. The
Speaker 1: one thing I would say about Scott is he was
Speaker 1: kind of brought in as a collaborator, and he was
Speaker 1: brought in as someone who could work with Matt Ruhle.
Speaker 1: He was brought in as someone who could work alongside
Speaker 1: a coaching staff. And I do think that a lot
Speaker 1: of the things that Scott's probably getting beat up for
Speaker 1: out there in the public, you know, with a more
Speaker 1: critical viewing of the situation, people might realize that not
Speaker 1: all of those things were strictly one person's fault. They
Speaker 1: were people trying to come up with organizational decisions and
Speaker 1: when you go through coaches, you know at the pace
Speaker 1: they have lately, and again, you can say what you
Speaker 1: want about those any of those decisions, but I don't
Speaker 1: think anybody's arguing that you needed to make changes on
Speaker 1: the coaching staff with the way the offense turned out
Speaker 1: to be this year. But now that they're looking for
Speaker 1: a general manager, the one thing that I think is
Speaker 1: a positive out of all this is you're going to
Speaker 1: have a coach and a GM on the same timeline,
Speaker 1: and I think that is probably helpful in this situation
Speaker 1: because the priorities are going to be clear for those
Speaker 1: two gentlemen or women. It's twenty twenty four, it could
Speaker 1: be a woman. I suppose I'll do it. Sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there you go, me and you coach and GM, we'll
Speaker 1: knock this thing out. I think I'd rather be GM GM. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We can discuss divisional abor later. But I think it's
Speaker 1: important for those two people to kind of be on
Speaker 1: the same timeline because anytime there's any lack of alignment
Speaker 1: in terms of this person's priority versus this person's priority,
Speaker 1: you set yourself up to be in these weird gray
Speaker 1: areas where you know, what should this person be doing
Speaker 1: at any given point. Are they trying to please a
Speaker 1: new guy or hang on to their job. Those kind
Speaker 1: of things always become sort of gray areas, and I
Speaker 1: just think this takes it away. This is the first
Speaker 1: time the Panthers have been in this situation since two
Speaker 1: thousand and two, when they were coming off a one
Speaker 1: in fifteen season with George Seaffert, and they installed Marty
Speaker 1: Hernie and John Fox into those two jobs. And I
Speaker 1: think history is probably kinder to both of those gentlemen
Speaker 1: than there present was for him at the time. I
Speaker 1: think both of them took a lot of criticism, but
Speaker 1: in hindsight, you know, John Fox wanted to turn this
Speaker 1: into a tough and smart football team, and in a
Speaker 1: short amount of time he took a one in fifteen
Speaker 1: that was thirty first in the league in total defense,
Speaker 1: and they were second in the league in two thousand
Speaker 1: and two, and the year after that they were in
Speaker 1: the Super Bowl. So I think time will tell us
Speaker 1: that that was a pretty amazing run that those two
Speaker 1: guys put together. And really, if you think about from
Speaker 1: three to five, that was as good a team as
Speaker 1: there was in the NFC. That was when Philadelphia was
Speaker 1: on another bit of a run, if not for Steve
Speaker 1: Smith being injured in the opener in four and kind
Speaker 1: of blowing the wheels off of that season. That was
Speaker 1: the three year window where it was as good as
Speaker 1: it gets around here. I mean, Cam Newton certainly got
Speaker 1: them all to run with the fifteen to one season
Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen, but in terms of you know, consistent,
Speaker 1: stable success, that was sort of the benchmark, and those
Speaker 1: two guys sharing a vision and working together help put
Speaker 1: that together. So you can go to Panthers dot com.
Speaker 1: We have handy trackers to show you who has been
Speaker 1: requested to interview for this job. I think it's reasonable
Speaker 1: to imagine that interviews are going to start very very soon.
Speaker 1: And the one thing Cas you mentioned in looking at
Speaker 1: the list, there are a lot of different types of
Speaker 1: people on both of these lists, and I think if
Speaker 1: you just kind of go down and look at those trackers,
Speaker 1: you can see this is not a search that is
Speaker 1: isolated on any one particular thing. They're still casting a
Speaker 1: wide net, and I think it's reasonable to suggest that
Speaker 1: that those searches are both going to expand there's gonna
Speaker 1: be names not on that tracker who get in for
Speaker 1: these jobs. So we're still two three days into this
Speaker 1: process that's going to grow. But when you look at
Speaker 1: those list of names, what jumped out at you?
Speaker 3: I think the thing that jumped out at me the
Speaker 3: most was a lot of offensive guys, a lot of
Speaker 3: offensive coordinators, offensive coordinators of young quarterbacks other than maybe
Speaker 3: Ben Johnson, who you know, is kind of revitalized Jared
Speaker 3: Goff's career, who was not young, but you know, still
Speaker 3: one of the most dynamic offenses in the NFL right now.
Speaker 3: But a lot of guys that have worked with young
Speaker 3: high draft pick quarterbacks who maybe still need some tinkering,
Speaker 3: needs some tooling, and you know, have figured out how
Speaker 3: to kind of let them be who they are as
Speaker 3: quarterbacks and not force them into a system, but rather
Speaker 3: build a system around them. I think that's really really
Speaker 3: important for a young quarterback like Bryce. The defensive guys
Speaker 3: that are on the list, I'm looking at two of
Speaker 3: them at least have been guys that have previous head
Speaker 3: coaching experiences, and that can be crucial. You know, you
Speaker 3: look at their head coaching experiences and go, okay, well
Speaker 3: why are they coordinators right now? They were fired as
Speaker 3: a head coach, But you learn a lot from what
Speaker 3: you did wrong, and a lot of times you see
Speaker 3: those guys on their second cycle around the head coaching
Speaker 3: carousel really have sort of figured things out. Dan Quinn
Speaker 3: was was not a bad head coach. You know.
Speaker 1: Dan Quinn won a whole bunch of games in Atlanta
Speaker 1: and got them to a Super Bowl.
Speaker 3: Matt Ryan to a Super Bowl, and well he was
Speaker 3: more of a defensive do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Had that go, weren't they up big in that game
Speaker 1: at one point something.
Speaker 2: I think it was like a twenty one point.
Speaker 1: Who can go? Who can even who can even remember Dan?
Speaker 1: But I mean to your point, Dan Quinn Rahee Morris
Speaker 1: experienced NFL head coaches already. Mike McDonald from the Ravens
Speaker 1: is the other defensive guy on that list as we
Speaker 1: have it right now, the other six being offensive coordinators.
Speaker 1: And I think based on the way last year's search
Speaker 1: went and what they were looking for, that's not a surprise.
Speaker 1: And just run down the names in case you haven't
Speaker 1: visited Panthers dot com to read this tracker, which I
Speaker 1: know anybody who's listening to this podcast already has. But
Speaker 1: you got Ben Johnson, Bobby Slowick, Brian Callahan from Cincinnati,
Speaker 1: Frank Smith from Miami, Todd Monkin in Baltimore, and then
Speaker 1: Dave Canalis from Tampa Bay. Those are the other six
Speaker 1: candidates for the head coaching job at the moment, and
Speaker 1: you know, again to no one's surprise, they're looking for
Speaker 1: someone to create an offense around Bryce Young, and each
Speaker 1: of those guys have different claims to it. I think
Speaker 1: Todd Monkin is kind of the senior candidate among that group.
Speaker 1: But if you look at the job he's done both
Speaker 1: at Georgia as a coordinator and then in Baltimore this
Speaker 1: year with Lamar Jackson, he's kind of made himself a
Speaker 1: candidate for a whole lot of jobs.
Speaker 3: Something I do want to add, though, to is you
Speaker 3: know everybody right now wants a piece of that Shanahan Try.
Speaker 3: And there are some guys on there that you know,
Speaker 3: even if not direct branches, they may be like an
Speaker 3: acorn off the Shanna hen Try.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: I think the names Dan Quinn and Raheem Morris are
Speaker 3: interesting in stand out though, are because it's so easy
Speaker 3: to look at what a coordinator has done. And that's
Speaker 3: not to say any of these guys would be bad
Speaker 3: head coaches. We don't know, but it's so easy to
Speaker 3: look at what a coordinator has done and look at
Speaker 3: the quarterback stats and go, that's great. I want that
Speaker 3: for my team. Being a head coach is a lot
Speaker 3: more than just calling plays, and more and more head
Speaker 3: coaches are calling their own place, but it's about being
Speaker 3: like kind of a CEO of the whole building. It's
Speaker 3: not quite as much in the NFL as it is
Speaker 3: in college because you have a GM. You have a president,
Speaker 3: but you're still in charge of an entire locker room.
Speaker 3: I mean, look at what like you look at what
Speaker 3: Chris Taber has done here the last few weeks, and
Speaker 3: you know, he's a special teams coordinator. He's not going
Speaker 3: to be out there calling the place for Bryce Young,
Speaker 3: but he's done a really, really hard job, which is
Speaker 3: keep a locker room together as they're going.
Speaker 2: Two and fifteen.
Speaker 3: And that's a big part of being a head coach.
Speaker 3: And that's not to say that too needs to be
Speaker 3: the head coach, but that's something that has to be
Speaker 3: taken into consideration when they're going through these.
Speaker 2: Interviews, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can look at stat sheets and say, hey,
Speaker 1: that Joe Burrow guy, he's pretty good at football. I don't,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to lie, I have not done
Speaker 1: a ton of research on what kind of coach, what
Speaker 1: kind of personality Brian Callahan has. I mean, we know
Speaker 1: these guys from the work they've put on film, and
Speaker 1: a lot of these guys like Callahan, like Frank Smith,
Speaker 1: or offensive coordinators for coaches who call all the plays.
Speaker 1: So there's a little bit of education that's going to
Speaker 1: have to happen. And that's what this interview process is about.
Speaker 1: The people who are involved in that process or are
Speaker 1: getting to know a lot of new people and none
Speaker 1: of this. The one thing I have come to understand
Speaker 1: fully as long as I've done this, is we're all guessing.
Speaker 1: I was talking to a friend in the league, someone
Speaker 1: who might actually be a day or two older than me,
Speaker 1: as if that was possible. But I was talking to
Speaker 1: this friend who's a West Coast connected person in the league,
Speaker 1: and they said, when Mike McDaniel was hired in Miami,
Speaker 1: the people who had been associated with him previously were like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: no way, that guy's a head coach, you know, And
Speaker 1: everybody kind of scoffed at it and thought Miami had
Speaker 1: made a gigantic mistake, when as it turns out that
Speaker 1: Mike McDaniel cap looks like he can coach a little bit,
Speaker 1: especially when you give him some of the fastest skill
Speaker 1: position talent in the league and a quarterback who can
Speaker 1: spread it around efficiently. So I think that a lot
Speaker 1: of it. It's going to as with everything in the NFL,
Speaker 1: it depends on fit. So we can evaluate any of
Speaker 1: these jobs in a vacuum. It's going to be about
Speaker 1: whether this GM candidate and this coach can work together.
Speaker 1: What's their vision, how do they see putting a team
Speaker 1: around Bryce to maximize his skills. And you know they're
Speaker 1: going to have to get to know all of these
Speaker 1: candidates and then they're going to have to spend some
Speaker 1: time thinking about how they're going to work together. Because
Speaker 1: those two guys, like it or not, are now paired up,
Speaker 1: and we will see as the weeks go by what
Speaker 1: that's actually going to look like.
Speaker 3: Darren, one of these days, I'll tell you my Mike
Speaker 3: McDaniel's story.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a podcast in and of itself, so
Speaker 1: or maybe not. Mike McDaniel he is an interesting cat.
Speaker 1: So there are more stories to come. There are more
Speaker 1: you know, news items. We got a ton of stuff,
Speaker 1: I mean cash. You were in that locker room on
Speaker 1: clean out day. There's so much uncertainty. I mean, there
Speaker 1: was a big conversation around Brian Burns, who held court
Speaker 1: for a while, and you know Burns is going to
Speaker 1: be a topic and he kind of shrugged and he
Speaker 1: was like, listen, man, I'm kind of on the back
Speaker 1: burner right now until there's a coach in a GM.
Speaker 1: I ain't gonna spend a lot of time worrying about
Speaker 1: what my future is because the people who are going
Speaker 1: to decide it ain't here yet.
Speaker 3: So I thought that was very mature of him to recognize,
Speaker 3: yeah and go, you know, in a normal year, yeah,
Speaker 3: I might be the top of the list, but this year,
Speaker 3: I'm not the top of the list of priorities I
Speaker 3: gotta worry about.
Speaker 1: And it's just so muchtainty. And I thought you kind
Speaker 1: of did a good job wrapping up the locker room
Speaker 1: the other day of you know, there were kind of
Speaker 1: the same amount of questions, it's what have you learned
Speaker 1: from this? What's next? And that was kind of the theme,
Speaker 1: wasn't it. I mean that because with all the uncertainty
Speaker 1: at the top, the guys in that locker room who
Speaker 1: are likely going to be a part of things moving forward,
Speaker 1: they just can't know yet. You know.
Speaker 3: What stood out the most of that locker room, though, Darren,
Speaker 3: was how light Bryshong seemed. He just seemed, at least
Speaker 3: to me, and maybe I'm reading too much into it,
Speaker 3: he just seemed to me like the weight of the
Speaker 3: world had been lifted off his shoulders. And after the
Speaker 3: season he's been through. That might have been that probably
Speaker 3: what it felt like like he was light, he was joking,
Speaker 3: he was teasing, he was a little goofy, which is
Speaker 3: just not something that we've seen right from Bryshong throughout
Speaker 3: this year, especially as the season has progressed. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: so it just kind of makes you realize what he
Speaker 3: could be, especially as he kind of grows and gets
Speaker 3: more and more used to the game and gets more
Speaker 3: comfortable with.
Speaker 2: Who he is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think it is a reasonable Shade
Speaker 1: Tree psychologist assessment to say, with the weight of the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three season lifted off of him, the opportunity
Speaker 1: to move on to the next thing might be something
Speaker 1: he enjoys.
Speaker 3: So speaking of that, you know what I learned about
Speaker 3: Bryshong on Monday. Tell me he majored in psychology.
Speaker 1: There you go, So he is.
Speaker 3: That is what he he said he would be doing
Speaker 3: if he wasn't playing football.
Speaker 2: What he could do Maybe after he retires, we could be.
Speaker 1: A psychology We could get together and do some Shade
Speaker 1: Tree psychology with Reich Young.
Speaker 2: So maybe that that's a weekly segment.
Speaker 1: Maybe we turn that into a bit, Maybe we turned
Speaker 1: that into.
Speaker 3: A bit, but readers send in their life conundrums to
Speaker 3: Brys Young and he kind of helps you.
Speaker 2: Work through them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ask Cassidy. We already have asked the old guy.
Speaker 1: We'll make ask cass A say that five times fast,
Speaker 1: and I'll refer to Bryce without getting yourself in trouble
Speaker 1: with the FCC or me subject podcast matter podcast subject
Speaker 1: to FCC requirements? Can I just say a bunch of
Speaker 1: swear words? If I want to.
Speaker 2: Go for it? How many can you say in ten second?
Speaker 1: THO, you would be surprised. It's not just the number,
Speaker 1: it's the volume and in intensity. We got podcast map
Speaker 1: researching that. In the interim, I'll try not to get
Speaker 1: us sued into oblivion because I don't know, maybe someday
Speaker 1: somebody wants to sponsor this fine podcast product. So until then,
Speaker 1: and until next time, when we have a little more clarity,
Speaker 1: maybe on one or both of these searches, that'll take
Speaker 1: care of us for this week. We will see you
Speaker 1: again soon on the Happy half Hour.