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