This week on a Happy half Hour, they.
Were hyping them up like, oh, brace yeah man, we're back, We're back, and it was just a completely different vibe and all like, this is how excited these guys are to get back together. And this is always the fun time of year. You know, it's long days, it's long nights. It can be draining, but it's also so much fun.
It's like being around the energy touts.
Do cow whoa. It's time for the Happy Half Hour presented by Southern Star, an official bourbon of the Carolina Panthers. Here are your hosts, Darren Gant and Cassidy Hill.
Hello, friends, We're back.
That's right, it's the Happy Half Hour, presented by a Southern Star and official bourbon of the Carolina Panthers. Celebrate the spirit of the Carolinas and celebrate indeed, because football's back.
Baby.
The song I was singing a minute ago, yeah see back again? Is that a copyright infringement?
It's either a copyright infringement or not the best version of it I've ever heard. Personal, But yeah, it's reasonable to be excited because after a long summer away, we've missed you folks. It feels like it's been forever since we were with you, but it was only but it was only June in a lifetime, Yeah.
It does feel like forever ago.
Many things have changed, but in fact, training camp is in Charlotte. Normally we would be doing this podcast from somewhere in Spartanburg after driving by the beach in Gaffney.
But we're here.
We're at home and we get to sleep in our own beds and do our own stuff at the end of the day, and that's worth something. So it's uh, we are thankful. There is a lot of new to
get used to here with the Carolina Panthers. And as you watch guys report to training camp today, it kind of dawns on you how different this thing is because for so long we're used to seeing a lot of the same faces and then you walk in today and oh, hi, Jadavian Clowney, right, you're here, welcome back to Charlotte, And it was kind of interesting and listening to jed Avian today, he flat out said, you know, I've been on good teams, I've been in places where they win.
This is the way to win.
Yeah, this is what I kind of expect here, And just hearing him talk both about his expectations for this thing and just being at home and how excited he
is about being at home. That kind of brought back one of the themes of the off season for me, because for all the other things, I mean, you change coaches, you change gms, the personnel turnover with significant and no more so on defense, where you know there is no more Brian Burns, Frankie Louvu, all these familiar faces like Dante Jackson that we got so used to, and they brought in Clowney and a bunch of dudes who knew as Gero everro back when and completely remade that side
of the ball. And just standing there looking at him today kind of brought that home to me.
I've been on six teams and I've never been on loser. Really on all six of them. We have winning schedules, probably one and I never went no win, just lost an don't plan on come here and just losing. So I've told them guys of my six team, and I know what it looked like. I know what it takes to win. So it's coming together every day and practice and prepare. We all be here for a reason, We all professionals in pro and we all got what it
takes to win here in this organization. So I think that's what it's gonna come down to, everybody buying in and hearing it from guys that has been from other teams and telling them, man, we got what it take and show up every day and come to work.
Yeah, a bunch of guys like you mentioned Jersey Jewel, Jordan Fuller.
Is, Shawn Robinson, Hey.
Shawn Robinson. So you know, guys that are going to be playing a lot, if not starting, and so we'll definitely make a difference. But yeah, it was fun to watch the guys come in today. I was walking through the hallways around nine forty five going up to a meeting of ours, and so because I saw when he came in this morning, and you know, he was he was Bryce, you know, probably Bryce before caffeine and you know,
a little quiet like he normally is. And then when I saw him in the hallway about twenty minutes later, it was right as he ran into Amir Smith Marsette and a couple of his offensive linemen and they were hyping him up like.
Oh Bryce, yeah, man, we're back, We're back.
And it was just a completely different vibe and all like, this is how excited these guys are to get back together. And this is always the fun time of year. You know, it's long days, it's long nights. It can be draining, but it's also so much fun and just like being around the energy.
Right, And that's where I always get kind of a kick about out of training camp, because you learn so much about both your co workers who you're around basically all day and all night every day for the next month, but also this team. I mean, you really get a sense of what these guys can be about. I mean, there were some signs last year that things maybe weren't going to go according to plan, and nobody knows how
this year is going to go. But it is interesting listening to people talk and Matt's going to pull the cuts for us and plug it in here. I know, because Dan Morgan was pretty interesting talking about kind of the expectations. I mean, Dan sort of teed it up and said, you know, we're not gonna worry about expectations because the focus is on work.
And the reason that kind of hit me again.
It's one of those things that brings it back, just in talking to guys about Dave Canalis.
I mean, what's Dave Canalis.
He's young, he's good looking, he's energetic, he's you know, and everybody thinks he's just run around hair on fire. But you know, we posted a story earlier this week, one hundred years ago where guys said Canalis's focus has always been on the work, and when you hear Dan Morgan talk about it, it kind of drives that message home again.
You know, I'm not going to put any expectations on anything right now. What I do know is that there's a lot of work ahead of us, not only from a personnel's down point, but the players. You know, the players know that they got to put the work in out there. We have a lot of new players that got to gail together out there and become a team. So in terms of playoffs, you know, we'll reach that,
you know, when we're ready. But I think right now we're focused on today, tomorrow and just trying to get better as a team and as an organization.
It's funny that you mentioned that, because you know, there was a thread that kind of went not viral but semi viral a few days ago with a former player from Seattle talking about that and how you know there was He said, there was one coach that would go out there and get out there first to the practice build and make sure every single tackling dummy was lined up perfectly in the right spot and had that sort
of attention to detail coupled with infectious energy. And he was like, and that guy's now an NFL coach, and he's talking abou Dave Canalis as he went on to say, and so to your point, like, yeah, the hair's on fire, but this is also somebody who understands from what we have seen in his previous stops, this is somebody who understands the details and how important those can be. And those two things together, I think it's going to be
fun to watch. And we've of course had OTAs. We've had voluntary mini camp, we've had mandatory mini camp, we've had rookie mini camp. Training camp, to me is where you really start to see it all come together, because it's a lot less about learning the playbook, it's a lot less about learning the installs. It's a lot more about Okay, now let's put this team together. Let's start taking all these puzzle pieces and creating an actual picture.
Yep, no doubt.
And really, I mean on the other side of the ball too. You know talk about all that, you know, renovation of the defense, I mean on the other side of the ball. That's the thing that everybody's focus was on early in the off season, because when you invest a number one overall pick in a quarterback, you know the expectations are going to be different than what you saw last year. But after Bryce Young takes sixty two sacks, tying a franchise records, body said.
Today, we saw you take a hit or two and I was like, a.
Hitter two or sixty two.
And yeah, poor Steve Berlin thought he was going to be off the hook, but he's not. He's still tied for that franchise record. And you know, it obviously wasn't good. But to Dan's point, there was a plan. There was a concerted effort to do things a very specific way, and that included spend that much money on big old Robert Hunt and big old Damian Lewis and Austin Corbett moving inside, and that ought to on paper, create a much more stable interior than they had at any point
last year. I think I should probably retire the number. I feel like I said it about a million times, but when you go through a season and play seven different left guards and eight different right guards, it wasn't gonna go well.
And it didn't.
So that was to Dan's point, kind of that plan was to stabilize the middle of the offensive line, give Bryce a chance to see the field a little bit longer, run the.
Ball, and do those normal things.
And I think that's probably gonna be my buzzword for the next couple of months, because until it's back the normal, you know, that's going to be the place you're trying to get to.
Let me ask you a question, Darre because someone brought this up to Bryce today in his press conference, and I was not here last training camp. So I'm just curious that.
God, that is right, you weren't here last year at training camp. Where were you last year at training Why couldn't you have been here last year?
I was here for two games, and so.
She's lived, ladies and gentlemen.
But they mentioned Bryce not even really having his full offensive line in the off season as well, and so did he ever have a healthy five man offensive line at any point his rookie season, off season or regular season?
Yeah, I mean it was triggered during you know, last year, during the off season, the assumption was you knew Austin Corbett was going to be out for a little bit coming off that knee injury, but Brady Christiansen was back, and you felt like, based on what they had done year before and the way they'd run the ball, okay, well, you can kind of survive with four out of you
five pieces. But then Brady goes out and immediately gets hurt in the opener and you don't ever see him again, and that just started that snowball rolling downhill and it never turned around. So it you know, because Austin wasn't out there, they were cycling through different guys at right guard throughout camp last year and it never stabilized at all.
But you know, what they're hoping is that by putting all that money and poundage and then you know, really making an emphasis of that position, that they're giving him a better chance.
And you could just tell.
I mean, Bryce talked today about going through his process getting himself ready and really trying to it's almost a start over for him.
For me, there's always like an urgency. There's always a sense of wanting to be the best that I can be the best that we can be every day, and that's definitely something that I don't want to lose and I want to make sure we're at and I don't feel like for me, I guess there's I don't look at it as as pressure from outside things. I think really for us, it's making sure we can be the best we can be every day and then accomplish our goal shout the year. And that's a big picture thing
and it's not something that's really gonna change. We can't get that done tomorrow. We're not gonna get it done next week. It's going to be throughout the year. So because of that, I try to keep my focus on just the small stuff what I can do right now. We have a meeting in however many minutes, trying to make sure we're locked in for that. I'm locked in for that, So I think kind of just that's kind
of the mindset. And because of that, you don't really feel I don't really feel the over like this, the overhanging pressure, whatever it is that it may come from the outside. So I guess that it's kind of my approach towards it.
It's a start over with an understanding of what the NFL is now, yep, And so that can be I think what makes a big difference is he's not wide eyed anymore. He has a better understanding of how a calendar works, what the schedule looks like. He knows his way well, actually, I was gonna say he knows his way from the meeting room to the training camp field. But it is a different training camp field this year. But it's still the same practice field. You know, it's
he's going. He's got a new coaching staff, but he has, you know, a lot of the same guys still around him with but now he gets a fresh start with that familiarity.
Sure, and listen what it looks like last year's scar tissue at this point. I mean, everything's kind of pointing forward for him. And in addition to all those offensive linemen, you walk in today and you see, oh there's Deontae Johnson. That's different. Oh there's Xavier Legat. There's a first round pick at wide receivers. So again, they were very systematic, very methodical of that, the way they put pieces around Bryce to kind of enhance the chances.
And Dan Morgan told us today that that was really their intention and that they wanted to make sure that they gave him the best pieces around him. But then he also made sure to say that as far as Bryce, but the team as a whole, that the expectation was going to be there were no expectations. I mean, you've been around this game a long time.
Is that a.
Safe philosophy is that?
I just think, you know, the only way you can do this job well and in a stable and long term fashion is by keeping your eyes right in front of your feet and the next step, you know, the old coaching cliche, be where your feet are, do that thing you're working on. And again it's Dan, it's Canalys, it's all of them. They are very workmanlike in their approach to this thing. I mean, everything is about getting
the football right. We've heard Dave Canalis say that a hundred times already and we're not even on the practice field for the first time, but that's going to be the thing. And I think Dan, Bryce and Dave all sort of have that same mentality. They work the same way in that regard. They're not going to be big react. There's two things. They're very planned out, very prepared, and you know, we'll see where it takes them. I mean, the first step is improvement, and after two and fifteen
that shouldn't be terribly hard. But how many numbers does that mean? What does that mean?
Four wins?
Six wins a when nobody knows, you know, and they're not focused on that right now, And I don't think it helps to think about how many games you're gonna win or whether you're gonna go to the playoffs. What they need to be focused tomorrow when they walk out on the practice field is are we going to do Wednesday right?
Right?
And then after you do Wednesday right, you work on Thursday and you just keep stacking those days. And that's really the only way to fix this thing.
Dan Morgan might not have expectations, but and I'm not saying that we will, but I do have a question. I feel like you can usually kind of tell at some point during the off season, in the case of the NFL, during training camp, what a team is gonna be, or at least for me, you get a vibe and you might not know how how many games they're gonna win, but you kind of can figure out what side of five hundred they're going to be on at what point for you do you feel like you have a good
feel for a team. You're gonna say six games into the season, aren't you.
Well an amount of games into the season at least, because I just think, you know, they need to because of the way last year went, they need to get into preseason score some points, right Seeing a touchdown would be kind of cool after they get shut out the last two games of the year.
Not that I meant to remind you of that.
Speaking of carrying scars, I think everybody listening to this podcast is too so score some points.
You know.
And I think when you base an offense the way they I think they're probably going to they want to run. They want to be intentional about running, and I think when you do that, you give yourself opportunities. Again, it's not going to be flashy and dramatic, but I don't think you need flashy and dramatic. You need to be stable for a second and then you can build.
One of the more interesting things that I thought came out of the Press Conforce today is previewing training camp, was Davian Clowney saying, you know, he's been on teams that have had success. He's been on teams that have
gone to the playoffs. The Baltimore Ravens last year one of the best teams in football, and he was saying that a large part of that is simply the attitude that the team comes in with, and you know, followed up with that, I was like, that's such a easy thing to kind of say, have a good attitude, But can that really make a difference between a winning team
and a losing team? And he said absolutely, And he used Baltimore as an example, and he was like, you know, on the defensive side, we were led by Roquan Smith. We came in every day with a good attitude about being there. And you know who is a poster child for that, Darren Is Dave Canallis. And so I thought that was really interesting. And this is an eleven year vet. We've been around Clowney enough the past couple of months
now to know he's not gonna He's not gonna. I'm trying to figure out what's a word I can use that won't get us caught by the FCC. He's not gonna tease you. He's he's gonna tell you what he's thinking of what he really believes. And so him saying that I thought stood out because that's something you can control.
Listen, if there's a Happy half Hour Bingo card out there amongst our listeners, no one has Cassidy being the first FCC final. Okay, absolutely nobody. That's Darren saying bad. Word is like the free space in the middle that everybody just kind of assumes, all right, so don't don't go stepping on my turf.
So anyway, but it was cool, Yeah, I mean, it's cool. Though.
It was interesting to hear from Dan from Bryce from Jadavian today and again, we're gonna walk out there on that practice field tomorrow and it's gonna be different. We've been on that property, we've seen the things he wrote about the new cooling trailer. Players are gonna get the duck in out of the heat into a twenty degree room.
Twenty degrees and let me tell you, twenty degrees is cold.
Yeah, it's just a little bit less than what it is in this studio right now. We can see our breath as we're taping the Happy half Hour. But no, I mean they it's a pretty significant investment in and the health and wellness and athletic training staff talk to us about it. Today, and it's basically a two hundred thousand dollars investment in having guys ready because when it's hot, you want guys to be able to duck in, cool
themselves off, come back out and continue to practice. It's not a big dramatic jumping into ice kind of thing. If you're starting to feel a little hot, and it's all about getting more work done, that's the thing and I and I think that's going to be a theme throughout this entire training camp for everybody.
So that was the interesting part to me because I'd never really thought about it until Kevin King had athletic trainer and Andrew Altov sports science ault. I think now though his title is Director of Human Performance, it's a great time, right. It is just all humans are under Andrew alltop.
They made the.
That you know, this allows them to let players get back to practice that in the past, if they were overheated and you had to either take them completely off the practice field or usually if you put them in an ice bath. By then they're so good wet by the time they get dried off and dressed again, it's practice. This allows them to go back out because they can go into that trailer for two minutes at a time, cool down enough to get back out to work.
Yep.
It did make me wonder though, so they said the recommended time is two minutes. We got to go in and kind of experience it. I think we were in there for probably a little over two minutes. It was it was getting pretty cold. I was over there right in front of the vents. But I thought, especially once I put like sleeves back on, I probably could have stayed in there another minute. What's the longest you could think?
You think you could stay in twenty degrees before you start like really leading to cover up.
I lived in Boone for four years and change, so I'm used to a little cold weather in my life and I hate I don't want anything to do with it. I want to be warm, I want to be comfortable, and a little bit of cool is nice. Too cold for too long makes Darren unhappy and nobody wants that. That's when he starts saying swear words on the Happy half Hour.
Hey, you're talking to somebody who lived in Green Bay for two years. The coldest game that I ever worked at kickoff was three degrees.
Yep, And so I was in some three degree weather at the NFC Championship Game where your Carolina Panthers faced your former Green Bay Packers many many moons ago, probably before you were born. I'm almost certain of that. That was nineteen ninety six.
That was not before I was born.
Close enough, close enough. But anyway, So again, a lot of new stuff going on. I can't wait to talk to you guys again because by the time we visit again, people have been able to experience what this new setup is. We are not in Spartanburg, my friends. We are in a large American city. You're gonna come to training camp, You're gonna see a little practice. There's some cooling areas from our friends at Marris Jenkins over there for fans afterward.
But the stands are covered. You're in the shade. I mean, we're doing everything we can to make people comfortable here. It's really impressive what's happened in a short amount of time. The facility staff here at Bank of America Stadium been working overtime and been doing a great job. It looks really cool, and I can't wait to hear from people after they get a chance to see what this all looks like.
And I can't wait to actually see what it looks like.
You know.
I mean, we're gonna get out there tomorrow and there's gonna be ninety dudes or so practicing football right in the skyline of a major city, and I'm looking forward to seeing what it looks like.
It is definitely gonna be fun. Like I said, this is when you see what a team is, what a team is made of, what you might get out of a team. And if you see our team, Darren and I come say hey. Darren requires a Bojangles sweet tea and berry biscuit for you to say hello to see. I'm to Adams the payment.
I'm too old for straight sweet tea. I gotta go half and half. That's actually right in my life, so uh anyway, but we'll enjoy cool beverages. We might sneak into that cooling trailer after practice is over.
I'm actually thinking this sixty degree studio is going to be a good nap spot at some point during the week.
See, I'm trying to get a crossover event. This podcast is sponsored by our friends at Southern Star, a bourbon partner of the Carolina Panthers. Maybe we sneak off and have a little nightcap at the end of a long day of training camp in that cool in that cooling trailer.
What do you say?
I'm sure Kevin and ALTAF won't throw us out, not at all. What could possibly go wrong? So anyway, for Cassi Hill, I'm deren Gant. This has been the happy half hour and we'll see out there on the practice field.
Gang.
Hi guys,