This week on the Happy Half Hour, Augusta and I can create a good podcast, we can write a good story, we can keep up to date information on the website. I can't fix oh in five, So I'm gonna clean up my yard. And I think that's what everybody downstairs is trying to do, is filter out some of that noise and some of that fake problems and keep the focus on the real stuff instead. It's time for the Happy half Hour with your friends Kristin Balboni, Augusta Stone,
and Darren Gannon. Welcome for the Happy half Hour. And it's still called the Happy half Hour even though the football team's ZHO and five, because we have no control of that and we already felt that Happy half Hour was a good name for a podcast and it took too much time to change it.
We can be happy about some things, you can.
I was gonna, you know, you always like go back to the weather, but it is raining today in Charlotte, So it's kind of like, dang, I got.
Football team Zone five. It's raining outside in Charlotte.
You know, Yeah, it's it's tough.
I mean, you know, maybe you have a nice cup of coffee or you know, a diet coke. I'm a big diet coke girl. Get yourself a nice little drink or a snack. Find joy in the what you're consuming. I always like to lean into food of things that make me happy.
TV shows What is.
The food that makes AUGUSTA Stone happy? Oh, my gosh's on a rainy day in October?
There's so many.
Probably my favorite is So I grew up rural northwest Georgia.
My mama is what I call my grandmother on my dad's side.
She no woman from the city has ever been known as Mama.
Yeah, she's Mama.
And she has this beautiful vegetable garden every summer and she cans her own vegetable soup.
It is delicious.
I have tons of it because she has so much, and every time I get to go visit her, she like leaves me.
It's so funny trying to get back up because I.
Have all these jars, so I probably have about five or six and I've been eaten all the time. But anytime it's a cold day, I try to heat that up. You know, you throw some vegetablele in it and maybe have a side of a sandwich of some sort.
But that is my favorite comfort food.
I have it when I'm sick, when it's rainy, when it's cold, and it reminds me of home. So I will probably do that when I get home later, get some. We call it Mama soup. It's literally just tomato based vegetable soup and it is amazing.
That does sound pretty good. And the traditional sandwich that would go with Mama's vegetable soup I would think for a lot of people would be a grilled cheese. You, however, being a vegan, as we may have mentioned a time or two, are not eating a grilled cheese on the side with Mama's vegetable soup. What is the sandwich of preference there?
Hey, I make a vegan grilled cheese. I can't lie. I love.
There's specific brands that I like that I won't shout out because I've seen our cart talks long enough to know that certain brands will get axed. So but I like my vegan cheese. Some of it melt, some of it doesn't. It all tastes good enough to me. I have had cheese in like three years, so I've kind of forgotten what it's supposed to taste like.
Anyway, so I will.
I'll make my own little phony grilled cheese and I will add hot sauce to it.
That usually helps.
All Right, Mimo to the Mark and Sponsorship department, get on the official vegan cheese substitute product of the Carolina Panthers. Absolutely, people have spoken, this is the thing we need, and people want to know what.
Yeah, I have suggestions.
People want to know what brand they should be consuming. I think we're in a safe space here in terms of vegan you know, vegan food substitute products. I don't think you're going to be competing with anybody in this place. So is what's the thing is is a vegan grilled cheese sandwich supposed to be like, is it supposed to taste like cheese or just have the consistency of cheese.
It's always the taste.
The consistency is where cheese is lacking in vegan circles.
Melting. Some brands do it, most of them don't. So you're really.
Looking for that kind of flavor profile, and most of them do do a decent job. I would say there's some if you get like specific like if you're looking for like American cheese, you're not gonna get it.
But maybe you know a smoked gooda.
Comp I think you can. You can get that smoky flavor pretty easily without it being meat, because you can. I have liquid smoke like in my cabinet. I use it all the time for things I'm trying to make taste like smoky bacon or smoky this.
So I don't know.
Technology science has really come a long way, even in the past like five years, with like this vegan cheese situation, but no consistency.
I would say that with most vegan foods.
If you're looking, if you're a textures person, don't don't be vegan, just don't.
All right, See when it's raining and I'm going soup, I go pretty much the opposite of vegan. My kids know that after cooking, you know, I have a problem cooking for one person or two people. I tend to cook for eight, whether there's three people in my house or two or four or twelve a lot of times. So I will make a pot roast or something on a Monday, and then by Thursday that becomes vegetable soup. So you don't waste anything. You use the whole buffalo.
That's the way I was raised and you know, when you're dealing with vegetable soup like that, you know, to me, the counterpart, I'll go grin cheese, sometimes grilled pimento cheese. It is the move. And I don't even want to think about what vegan pimeno cheese might be like. It just feels like lump of oil that has been turned orange or something. So that's fun.
I didn't know that about you, about your cooking.
I love finding out things that like maybe you wouldn't know about your coworker.
Yeah, I have problems with portion control. I mean, or I think really what I want when I cook for eight to twelve people, or if I make two pans of zed at the same time. My wife's like, who did you think was coming over? Well? I was hoping people would just drop by when I was when I was growing up, my grandmother, who's the God rest her soul, whose name was Willy Gant, she always had food going
on the stove. So, I mean, the running joke would be if escape convicts came to Willie Gant's house at four in the morning, she'd be standing there cooking, say sit down and eat, you know, And so I keep waiting whether it's the escape convicts, or for my kids to come home from college, or or for friends to just show up on the porch. I keep waiting for people to just show up so I can feed them.
That's the thing I would love to pull out. Maybe you can make me a vegan mill sometimes. I love that, though it's also another mama thing. She would always feed a lot or make a lot of food, and she was feeding four to six miles on a good day.
Yeah, you can always freeze it, you can always repurpose it, you can always you can always do more. But you can't get by with less unless you're working some kind of miracle or something. I don't know. And we'll get into we'll get into fishes and loaves in another episode of The Happy Half Hour. But I think we've killed
enough time. And we are contractually obligated, even though we don't have a vegan cheese substitute sponsor here at the Carolina Panthers, we are contractually obligated to talk about Carolina Panthers football from time to time. And hey, here's what's going on that football team zero and five right now? Not great, Bob. It was a trip to Detroit that reminded me an awful lot of the trip to Atlanta. I've told Augusta before and probably said on this podcast,
sometimes explaining the results of ballgames is complicated. Some days, it's real easy. In Atlanta. You turn it two times, turn it over two times on the road in the opener with a brand new coach and a brand new quarterback, You're probably gonna lose. You go to Detroit, a team that's probably better than you by every empirical measure, and turn it over three times in the first half, and they turn it into three touchdowns. Guess what's gonna happen. You are going to lose. So I think you can't
you can't dismiss that kind of stuff. I mean, we can call it happy half hour. I don't feel compelled to be happy about everything that's happening around me all the time anyway. But I think when you and admittedly this is a very other than that Missus Lincoln kind of perspective, but I think you can dwell on those three turnovers, you can dwell on the lost young dwell
all on nine five. I think if you're trying to look at what this season's actually about, it's deciding what you've got in quarterback and figuring out what Bryce is good at, what Bryce is able to do. And I think if you, if you really wanted to just kind of isolate on that second half of football and watch the way Bryce was moving the ball around. You know, they get three touchdown passes out of the deal. There
were some things. You know, again, I understand nobody wants to hear about progress and individual scores, and listen, I am not naive. The Detroit Lions were not playing for blood in the fourth quarter of that game. When Bryce was moving the ball around and doing some things, they were playing at a different pitch than they had been
earlier in the game. I get that. But you know, I think when you think about the things that are going on, Bryce in his progress remains the most important thing about this football season.
Exactly, and the game of Detroit also. He wrote about it a lot postgame. Thankfully it hasn't become more of a story because he's doing all right, but Chandlers of all, his injury was extremely jarring. At least you could tell from the field in the press box, a lot of you know, confusion, just wanting to make sure he was
all right. A lot of people were talking about it on Monday in the locker room, and I mean, he's come out really really like, you know, he's able to fly back on the plane and moving around.
Seeing his teammates, and I think that's a good thing.
It's a good sign. And I mean for those seven minutes that we wrote about and Darren wrote a really good quick kind of update letting everybody know what happened that was posted to the website very quickly, which was awesome information for our readers. But I mean those seven minutes were tough. We didn't know what was going on up.
They didn't know what was going on down, and that was a lot to come back and you know, kind of refocus, and I thought you did a really cool job after the game kind of talking about how well, the only thing they can do is keep playing, but you know, you have that in the back of your mind through all of it.
And again, thankfully he's all right.
But I think even postgame, it almost felt like, you know, the game happened, it was important. It's very important now, but at that moment you were focused on Chandler making sure he was all right. And then thankfully he was able to come home with us in Charlotte.
And I think there was a lot of doubt. I mean, when I was talking to Icky, who is as close to Chandler as anybody on this roster because he started next to him, dn'ca state. Those two are old friends and have a lot of background together, and even standing in the locker room talking to Icky about it, he hadn't heard from They had a general sense. At halftime,
players got an update. Okay, he's got movement in all his extremities, he's awake, he's alert, all that kind of stuff, But they didn't know what that meant until really until they get to the airport. Unfortunately, Chandler was able to catch a ride to the airport that got him to Detroit Wayne International and met us and he was able to come home with the team, And just seeing him there on the tarmac I think was that moment of relief for a lot of guys. So one of the
things I think I try to be cognizant of. We say things casually, and I've done this series of stories about Austin Corbett and you say, oh, he's got a torn acl that's an a month's recovery without really experiencing that nine months or knowing what that entails. I think when people hear Frank say all really bad stinger, they're like, Okay, I smashed my shin against the bed from this morning or something, or I stubbed my toe, they don't really
I mean, what happened to Chandler's valla. The essence of a stinger is it's like a nerve contusion almost, and so you take a shot at a certain place, you know, you get hit in a certain way or get turned in a certain direction, and all of a sudden, there's weakness on the side of your body. And so when you see Zavalla on the ground, that's kind of what's going on. I mean, he wasn't able because of that
nerve issue immediately to kind of move everything. He was eventually able to move, So that's what That's what led to a scary moment there on the field and everything. So I don't know. He did not practice yesterday. I'm not necessarily expecting to see Chandler on the field this week, but there you know, it's kind of a day to day thing with that. But it's the good news is Chandler's mostly okay and is walking around. He's in good
shape and just working on coming back from that. But it's it's definitely when something like that happens, it makes a Week five game against the Detroit line seem like not the most important thing in the world, exactly.
And not to get ahead of ourselves too much, because we do have a trip to Miami this weekend and that's a preview. But right after that we have the bye week, which is good for a multitude of reasons, and a lot of its health. I mean, we saw the injury report yesterday. It was a little lengthy, nothing too serious from all of them, but it wasn't you know, the slimmest list in the world. And that's the kind
of thing that a week off would would help. I mean, Corbett's you know, activated off, pupp cut back going, and you know there's some other guys that you could potentially see after the after goodbye JC.
Yeah, I mean it's pretty good. It's not you know, you don't want to create a situation where here comes the Cavalry they are coming in and week week eight, but uh, exactly, you are looking at the possibility of going into the Houston game and seeing Xavier Woods again seeing JC Horn again, seeing Austin Corbett on the field for the first time this season, and all that stuff matters deeply and I and I think it's just at the point now well, regardless how this game against Miami
goes this weekend, I think the culmination of everything that's happened so far this season, you can kind of tell when everybody around you just needs a minute, just needs a break. I think, you know, it's obviously a tense situation and hasn't gone the way everybody wants it to go, But just the little little things that wouldn't be a problem at all when you're five and zero, or even if you were three and two or two and three or whatever, become bigger deals. You Know, the food doesn't
taste as good. You know, the TV's turned up too loud, and why doesn't some jerk hit mute before they leave the room or something. You know, all those little things that are inconsequential on a normal day get magnified in the situation like this, And that's why I think it's important to just stay normal and to keep focused on the stuff that's actually real. You know, Augusta and I can create a good podcast. We can write a good story, we can keep up to date information on the website.
I can't fix oh in five, So I'm gonna clean up my yard. I'm gonna do what I can do. And I think that's what everybody downstairs is trying to do, is filter out some of that noise and some of that fake, you know, fake problems, and keep the focus on the real stuff instead.
Exactly, And now that I've jumped too far ahead, I want to jump kind of back a little bit because you had a cool conversation yesterday in the locker room with a guy that was brought up to the fifty three help out in the secondary DiCaprio Boodle. He's been elevated and doing a lot of special teams reps. Wondering what it was like to get to know the DiCaprio Boodle. Tell me about that name, and I'm just it was it.
It was fascinating. And I don't want to give away too much stuff that'll appear later this week on Panthers dot Com shameless tease read it please, uh, but DiCaprio is an interesting cat, and I mean it's the one thing I will share is that everybody gets a nickname in this room when it comes to special Teams coach Chris Taber, I mean he's going to call you something one way or another, whether you like it or not. And DiCaprio, Boodle has become bottle Cap. It's real good for reasons.
You know.
I mean, it's kind of it's ballpark. Yeah, I get it, it's bootle bottle sure, but yeah, so it's Taber has deemed him bottle Cap, and he's you know, this is the kind of stuff you end up with at a point in the season like this, when guys are hurt and you're all of a sudden dragging people in. The one thing I was talking to him about is he basically comes here with very little stuff. He packed a suitcase with about a week's worth of clothes in it
that he could wear. But a lot of times guys and I'm just this is one of my pet things. I'm fascinated by it. When guys come to town, they don't really know anybody, they don't know where they're going, They have no idea where the Midtown target is and how to get there. They a lot of times don't
have their cars. Uh, so they're they're moving to a new place on short notice, and it's like, Okay, figure out a brand new job, figure out all new coworkers, figure out where to secure food and shelter, and do it fast because you've got an important job. And Boodle was saying, I mean, he kind of laughed. He said, I knew a couple of guys just around the building, he said, but I kind of came here with a suitcase and what I had. And he keeps sending out
for more stuff. He's buying some new clothes, stuff like that a little bit at a time. But yeah, it's a thrown together lifestyle. When you're somebody who comes to a team cold in the middle of the season exactly.
That's that's always interesting to me.
I mean, there's been guys that I've talked to you that have kind of come in they're not even coming from, you know, where they live because they were on the road and then they were signed, and the whole aspect of the lifestyle and everything it can be over it sounds a little overwhelming, but thankfully we do have a good department for that here. Kevin Winston and Jay Kwanjeris shout out. They do a great job and they help them out.
Don and Donnie Toner and the guys in the equipment room or life savers a lot of times because they've got what players need to survive. I mean, you can you know, I've told the story before. Former offensive coordinator Dan Henning lived in the residence ind near the stadium for five years, not for a week at a time, for five years. For five years, Dan Henning lived in that hotel. I asked Dan once, how many Marriott points
do you have? He said, all of them. You can live your life in a stadium if you need to. You can shower and change clothes because there's clothes here for those guys. Donnie's got toothbrushes and toothpaste and shaving equipment and all the toiletries that a man would need to get by. They feed them here for you know. And there's usually a deal when a guy comes in short time, there is a hotel for them in the short term until they can find them a place here
in town. But yeah, it's there's a ton of people trying to make sure these guys have everything they need when they come to town. But right now, all those extra defensive bodies are are in need because, as you mentioned, Hey, the Miami Dolphins are coming to town. Actually we're going to their town.
We've been on the road so much it feels.
Yeah, it's I think when you get out there a couple weeks at a time, it starts to feel like what is home anymore? But yeah, Miami this week to face the number one offense in the NFL and frankly, the one of the highest octane offenses we've seen in a couple of years in the NFL. They're kind of running at Patrick Mahomes Kansas City Chiefs level there for a little bit, and they're doing it on the ground, they're doing it in the air. They lead the league
in total yards, passing yards, rushing yards, and points. So stopping those guys it's gonna be a little bit of a challenge. And I don't know that you stop them, You've just got to slow them down enough to try to hope to catch a couple of breaks. And I mean, the Panthers are once again in that situation. If they turn it over in Miami, it's probably not going to go well for them. So they've got to tighten things
up offensively and hope for the best on defense. Because I really don't think there's a lot you can do to blow these guys down. A Shane. They're running back the rookie from Texas A and m is. He is out this week. He's on injured reserve. So I guess if you're looking for a silver lining on a gray, rainy day in which Augusta is making vegan grilled cheese substitute sandwiches, you can point to that. But A Shane's
been amazing. He's like the only guy in league history average in one hundred yards a game and ten yards of carry in his first three games. And blah blah blah. You know what Devana Shane does not have in his life. What a win against Appalachian State. Really, it's right, the Texas A and M rookie was a part of that tragic loss to the beloved Mountaineers last year when I think we held him to about sixty two yards on the ground. So it's and I'll say we about Appalachian
State without any sense of shame. So anyway, we got that going for us. So Miami, it is what's the see that's the thing. And I know you don't miss anything being the it's a lifestyle, but man, When I go to Miami, I eat seafood, and I eat a lot of it usually, So anything that comes I feel pretty good about things that come out of the sea. It's like asserting my dominance over and illment. I have no control over it. Bring me a fish and I
will eat it. I am not getting in the sea. However, that's a road game.
That's what I was just about to say.
I have recently, in my adulthood, grown a new fear. Darren's going to be surprised to hear this, because I am a little fearful, but of the ocean. When I was in middle school, high school a kid, my dad was a big ocean guy. You know, we'd get out, we'd wade and swim and float and have a good
old time. And the older I get, the more I look back and I'm like, oh my goodness, because a lot of there were a bunch of headlines over this summer, in particular in the spring that I mean, you know, we had the submersible disaster and all that.
Stuff going on in the ocean.
So there was a lot of like think pieces on the ocean and how big it is and how unexplored it is, and how deep it is, and I was like, I don't.
I don't even want to like get anywhere close to it anymore.
Like I know we're flying over it at some point on Saturday and Sunday, and I'm just like, you know, hopefully I'll be asleep by then. Because the ocean is now a new fear of mind that I did not have until like about this summer when I did. There's there's a point where you can do too much research about something.
That's how I feel about the ocean.
Yeah, you might need to get off the internet for a while. I don't. I don't know what's going on too big now it is reasonable to be fearful of the ocean. I am not gonna lie. I got no business there. That's a road game I am. I am a decided underdog anytime I go in the sea. That's why I do not do it. I want my seafood brought to me. I do not care to go and harvest it myself. I you know, the idea of being on a boat out in the middle of the big water, no,
thank you, Uh it is. Yeah, that is not for me. I enjoyed the products of it, but I do not want to participate in that process myself.
For the fans going down to Miami, anybody down there going to the game. Darren Gant, what is Miami seafood highlight for you?
Man? Stone crabs are great and stone crabs are great. There are a lot of effort. It takes a little work to get into them, but I you know, I dig it. I like any kind of crabs. No, crabs are great. You can get those at your area Heristeeter and they are a proud sponsor of the Carolina Panthers, so I don't feel bad about that one. But yeah, it's it's a big anytime you can get your hands on stone crabs. It's a good thing because it's kind of thing. It's one. I don't eat stone crabs in Charlotte,
you know, I don't. I don't like. If I'm in Ohio, I very seldom order crab leg So it's it's kind of a know your place kind of thing. And when I'm there, I'm probably gonna find some seafood. There will likely be stone crabs in my future at some point on Saturday, so we'll see. It's it's always an interesting trip down there. It's a it's a interesting environment. I mean, Miami's on a roll right now suddenly, and it's kind
of curious to me. That's one of the other things I was taught kind of boodle about because he grew up in Miami and he was kind of a Hurricanes guy more so than a Dolphins guy growing up. I mean he talked about, you know, seeing Sean Taylor play when he was young and wanted to be like Sean Taylor. And I always think it's fascinating because Miami is one of those markets that it swings wildly. When they're in
on the Dolphins. They're all in on the Dolphins, but if the Dolphins are down, it's almost like they don't exist, and everybody's looking at the Hurricane. So I think right now, Mario Christobal is probably thankful that the city of Miami is looking at the Dolphins and not his particular end game decision making, because not taking a knee and running out the clock the other night went to led to bad things for the Canes.
So he probably really likes that fact because I was very lucked on that game as an alumnus of the University of Georgia because Georgia Tech is, you know, our sworn rival we like to beat up on, even though you know there's a talent discrepancy there. But I was watching that and I was like, huh, how did you let Georgia Tech do that? And then I was like, huh, your own decisions. But there's a lot of controversial calls on that too. We don't have to get into that.
There was like was it actually a fumble? Was it actually a touchdown? Like there's been like think pieces about that, Like, I mean, at the end of the day, you should have never put yourself in a situation take the knee.
However, just what I know, it was definitely a bonehead decision.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, But but then you could get all like in the weeds of it. And it's been funny to watch the platform formerly known as Twitter kind.
Of explode about that.
But I watched that live actually from our Detroit hotel room, and I was like, wow.
And we could do a whole podcast about this. But that platform formerly known as Twitter, which is all I'm ever gonna call it, by the way, I am. I'm feeling liberated by spending less and less time on that platform with every passing day. I mean, it's just I think it's getting worse and worse. I tend to tune
out a lot of the noise. And again, going back to what we were talking about at the top of this podcast, there's a difference between actual problems and fake problems, and yelling at people on Twitter feels like the fakest problem of all right now, given everything that's going on in the world and the football team and everything else, it's just like, this is the time when you focus on what's real and not what's fake. So spending less time there has been good for me. I'll be honest with you.
I'm right there with you. I'm right there with you. I I've been again. We talked about it. But if you look at my app breakdown, if it's not slack or you know, so far, like honestly, I do a lot of like work, research and stuff.
But if it's nothing like that is the New York Times games app. I'm addicted to crosswords. I've done so many.
I hit a new personal best yesterday. I finished a I finished a Monday crossword in seven minutes. I was really proud of myself for that. So I'm having I'm having some good strides in my personal life. I'll smile about that.
On the Happy half hour. You got crossword prowess.
We can go crosswords, we can go wordle we can go connections, we can go we can go spelling bee. I'm a big spelling guy. You're not completely hooked on that yet. But I've got a pretty good streak of genius going, which is the only place in my life where I have a streak of genius going. So I'm taking it for what it is, finding the positives where I can, and we'll declare a happy half hour on that note.