This week on a happy half hour. That's ultimately what the trade came down to. I mean, is it worth flipping a fifth round pick to buy yourself a fifth year of contract? And given the way wide receiver contracts are exploding, that fifty year option just gives them a little more cost sir.
What's doll cow?
It's time for the Happy half Hour with your friends. Darren Ghant and Cassidy Hill. All right, friends, welcome to Monday. Question Mark, I think it's Monday. This is the Happy half Hour. It's Darren, there's Cassidy. Cassidy Monday, right.
You could tell me it is a new day of the week that just got made up and passed into law last week. And if it happened last week, I'd believe you.
Happy Fred's Day everyone. We're just making stuff up as we go along because we've lost all concept of time. That's what happens when you spend a beautiful weekend in Charlotte, North Carolina, in a windowless room covering an NFL draft. So but we we do it for the people, and we are happy to do it and as excited as
people are about what happened this weekend. Yeah, you know, those efforts were justified because I got to tell you, we were out there at a mini camp last week and we saw grass and we saw football people and football things, and then we went indoors and that football team came out different. It is. It is a big weekend in terms of the Carolina Panthers, not only for the stuff that happened for the immediate but for down
the line. And we can get to it all in a second, but the big news is for a team that walked into a weekend without a first round pick and without a whole lot of expectation. All of a sudden stuff started happening. I mean Thursday night, right before midnight, Dan Morgan gets on the phone, makes the deal with his old boss Bean, and all of a sudden, the Carolina Panthers have a first round pick again.
Right. I think the announcers even said, hey, let's welcome to Carolina Panthers to the first round. When when we got on the elevator Friday night, I believe it was I asked Dan Morgan. I was like, did you trade baseball cards a lot as a kid? Like was that your thing? And he like took it literally and he was like, I don't think I really ever collected baseball cards. I was like, not the point, Yeah, but yeah he was. He was a wheeling and dealing man this weekend.
Yeah, Dan was definitely locked in. That's the one thing. And we're gonna take you behind the scenes into that draft room, you know, as the weeks and months go by here at Panthers dot Com with our video department and stuff we do on the website. But the one thing I can tell you for sure is that stuff was happening, and it was happening fast, and to not only to move into the first round. I mean, Xavier leg.
It, league leget leg it Yeah two ease.
Hold on to it like it's got to ease, he said, So we will do our best to say it that way. League it not Leget. I mean, everybody kind of made fun of the commissioner Thursday night because the way he said it, And then it turns out Roger made actually gotten one right.
He was the only one that got it right.
The rest of us been doing it wrong. But Xavier didn't seem to mind the fact that everybody's been mispronouncing his name for four years, because he's happy to be
here and it's kind of cool. It's a really neat story to see a kid from all in South Carolina played and starred at the University of South Carolina last year, all of a sudden gets to play for the de facto hometown team and it's you could tell he's excited, but they are excited to get to him because I think there was a general sense that the Panthers wanted add it wide receiver. But when you're stuck at thirty three and thirty nine, you never know what's going to
be available to you. But they clearly got to a point on Thursday night where it's like, all right, let's stop messing around, let's go get the guy we want. He was clearly the guy they wanted, and there.
Was a slight run on receivers there in the first round two, albeit a deep class. But Darren, do you want to spend a minute too and kind of explain why that fifth round option was such an intriguing idea to get him on Thursday night as well?
And that's ultimately what the trade came down to. I mean, is it worth flipping a fifth round pick to buy yourself a fifth year of contract? And given the way wide receiver contracts are exploding. I mean the best ones have gone from Remember how quaint it was two years ago when DJ Moore got like an eighteen million dollar a year contract.
Eight that's a bargain.
Yeah, I mean that's a bargain now and the guys like DJ Moore are now making twenty five million in plus and and my god, when Justin Jefferson makes what he's fixing to make right from the vikings, I mean, it's going to blow your mind. So the idea that you can lock in, you know, Xavier, we'll go there while we get used to say and league it until it Xavier turns into the player they expect him to be or hope he's going to be. It's probably not getting too far down that road. But that fifth year
option just gives them a little more cost certainty. And we've talked about it a lot this offseason. So much of what they've done has been with flexibility in mind. When you look at receivers who were under contract for twenty twenty five, it was just feeling a mingo last year's second round pick, so they obviously needed to kind of address things for the future and being able to turn a fifth round pick into what they hope is an extra year of contract for a starting wide receiver.
Seems like a pretty good bit of business. So that made them more than willing to go up and do that. I suspect that there were places a little higher than thirty two that they made the effort. I think in the tail end of that first round there were efforts made to kind of make calls and say, hey, what do you think about or what do you do if and a lot of those people wanted to take their
own picks instead of trade. So they finally got to that point at thirty two where a to make sure Buffalo didn't just sit tight and take them theirselves, but b to buy that fifth year. Dan went ahead and flipped that fifth round pick.
That sort of forward thinking for the contract. You know what that sounds like to me? What's out Brenton Tillis.
Brant clearly has thoughts about the future of this team, and I think the way they've structured all these contracts. I mean, again, a lot of these guys who signed this offseason are on one and two year deals so that you can get through a year of Dave Canalis and see what works and see what all this stuff looks like, and then you can assess whether that's part of the future or short term fix to get you
to whatever the next thing might be. I mean, they've talked about having options and flexibility for a long time, but I think everything they've done this offseason feels like they're looking at twenty five and twenty six more than
twenty four, which you know, again makes sense. I mean, you don't want to sell out this year, and obviously they're trying to compete, and when you look around the NFC South, I still say, there's no reason think you can't be competitive in this division, right But you know, at the same time, the greater goal is what's happening in twenty five twenty six and creating a stable foundation for the future.
Yeah, and that's exactly what they brought a guy like
brand Tillis in for. I mean, this is the guy that the moment Patrick Mahomes was drafted started thinking about his second contract and planning ahead and making sure the Chiefs were in a good place from the moment he was drafted for whenever they would have to sign him to a second contract, because he knew it was going to reset the market then and I think at one point this weekend, and I'm I'm probably going to use the wrong word, but I think Dan Morgan use the
word brilliant to describe Tillis, And so I imagine just having him in the room kind of running those numbers in his head faster than I could ever do with a calculator in a big whiteboard, is helping them go, Okay, yes, this guy here versus this guy there, this is the value of this, This is the value of that. You know, moving into the first round to grab Xavier is gonna save us more money in three years than it would, you know, this week. And that's kind of what we're
thinking about. And so I imagine having somebody's mind like that in the room, as Dan Morgan said, was brilliant, and it really kind of helped them out.
Yeah, because realistically, I mean, when you get on the back side of it and look at what Buffalo did, I mean, they liked Keon Coleman. So if they would have stuck at thirty two, they'd have probably taken him there. You think they would have, but you can't guarantee they weren't gonna take Xavier, and so then you could have got him at thirty three and had four years worth of contract. Okay, cool, and you don't have to give up that fifth but they moved around enough to it
was hard to track. At a certain point, those things were flying. And again, I can't wait to bring you a little more of what happened inside that room, because it was fascinating to be able to witness, because stuff's as as soon as they then make the move trade thirty three to get into the first round, then you walk in to Friday night and you're sitting with thirty nine and fifty two, and they immediately started trying to figure out, Okay, what comes next? What comes next? How
are we going to do this? And when you then or when you move from thirty nine to fifty two, the thought was immediately how do we get back up?
And once they you know, once they were able to make the deal with the Rams, which was maybe low key the best piece of business they did all weekend because in going from thirty nine to fifty two, they picked up an extra fifth round pick which covers the cost of trading with Buffalo and that second round or next year and having given next year's two to the Bears to finish up the pick, the deal for Bryce last year, you were sitting there with a big hole
in next year's draft, and I can I can sincerely say they they were pleasantly surprised to get an offer like that because they had been talking to the Rams about other versions of that and when it got to the point of, oh, you're willing to throw in next year's too, Oh now we're now we're talking, and I think at that point they were happy to drop back a little bit. Anytime you get past the first day of the draft, you start looking at bands of players
rather than specific guys. I feel like Xavier was a guy they had kind of zoomed in on, and it's like, we want this one right here. That was kind of the apple of their eye. But when you get into the second and third days of the drafts, you're thinking about bands of guys, so it's this guy or this guy,
or this guy or this guy. But Jonathan Brooks was definitely in that band, right And I think they were afraid and rightfully so that somewhere between thirty nine and fifty two, somebody was going to make a move up and go get the best running back in this year's class.
And of course, everybody thinks that they got the best running back, but Jonathan Brooks really is one of the most promising and productive, Like he has shown the production, but he still has so much promise because he has so much left in the tank, so to speak. I mean, this is a guy that spent his first two years running behind Bjeon Robinson. When you run behind b jon Robinson,
you're not asked to do a whole whole lot. And then you know, his third year he comes out and he has a great year and obviously is Texas is leading Russier. And so this is somebody that I looked at his numbers. He had two hundred and thirty eight snaps over his three year career at Texas. Chuba Hubbard had two hundred and thirty eight carries last year. I'm sorry, two hundred and thirty eight carries, no snaps. Two hundred
and thirty eight carries last year, yep. And so I don't think this necessarily, this draft pick necessarily means someone's immediately out the door. I know that's an easy assumption to make, but based on everything Dave Canalis has said, is you know, I want to use multiple, multiple backs in my offense. I mean we're not even talking about a two back system. There might be times three backs are on the field, and so if you can kind of marry them all together and give you give yourself
a stable of backs. Yeah, I know. It's the thinking is you've got to have a lead workhorse for a team to be successful in the running game, because you need them to kind of build it up. But I think when you've got such a violent position that is becoming devalued, it really is whether you want to believe it or not, it gives yourself a little bit more options, more playing cards in the playbook. When you've got three,
four capable capable backs. I mean, this is a team that could carry four on their roster, and so adding Jonathan Brooks is going to certainly make that more interesting to kind of see what they do with that unit.
This is all yeah, And by the way, Cassidy with a K, and Darren with one R and an I would you like to point out that it's Jonathan with an Oh.
Yeah, that got me the first time.
Unconventional spelling alert Jonathan. We want to make sure he feels at home here, so we're gonna spell his name right as often as we possibly can. But that's Jonathan with an oh for those of you scoring at home or even if you're alone while you're listening to this podcast, But why would you be, Because people who listen to The Happy Half Hour always amongst the most popular and charming people. They know he's going to be an interesting piece.
Because again, if there is some degree of question about him, he's coming off in acl suffered in November. The plan is that he's gonna be ready for training camp. And again there's no need to rush. If if you were walking into a situation where you didn't have people you trusted a little bit, that's one thing. But Cuba Hubbard I have come around one hundred and eighty degrees on Tuba. I mean he walked into He walked into this place as kind of a home run hitter from Oklahoma State.
We saw him make big runs. Cuba has turned himself into a grinder. He was a home home run hitter who could take it forty yards in Kyleage and you saw that top end track speed, and he wasn't much of a pass catcher. Through the sheer force of will and hard work, Cuba Hubbard has become a competent pass catcher right and confident in his own ability to do it. And he's done it in the way that you have to respect, by repetition, by continuing to work on it.
I mean, two hours before every game, he's out there on the field on the jugs machine catching balls. He's out there with Tommy Tremble after every practice catching balls, and.
Even in April. Yeah, you know, we have to kind of the way we walk to our office takes us by an area where the guys are working. And nine times out of ten, if you hear the drug machine going, is Cuba.
Cuba's on the other end of it. So he is. Cuba has turned himself into someone you can trust in a situation like that. Brooks, you know, though, is just one of those unique talents. I mean again, ten games, eleven hundred yards, ten touchdowns rushing last year, you know, pretty good average, pretty good average, and at six point one yards per carry. Yeah, as it turns out, this guy's pretty good at it. So I think that's gonna
be interesting. The other one that kind of jumps out at me for this weekend, and we'll have chance over the spring to you talk more about all these guys individually. But the other one that sort of jumps off the page at me is Jatavian Sanders. I mean they they slept on it Friday night from minute, and I think after Thursday and Friday, everybody needed to sleep on it for a minute. And when you walked in here Saturday morning, it didn't take long to realize they kind of knew.
Yeah.
I mean, if there were, you know, there might have been opportunities to trade one oh one, they weren't interested in them because I think as they slept on it and looked back at the board and thought, we can get a guy, we can get a pass catcher like this, you know. And that's the thing about Sanders is he is a tight end, unlike the kind they have. He is the pure pass kitch tight end that this offense has been looking for for a long time, been kind
of making do with. Well, Tommy's good at this part, and Ian's a really good blocker, and Sullivan's got a lot of potential as and you know, you keep looking at all these individual parts. Sanders is the kind of body and the kind of athlete that they hadn't had a position a long long time.
Six hundred plus receiving yards last year at Texas, in fact, six hundred plus the last two years at Texas. And granted, I know it's a big twelve defense, but I mean these are still impressive, impressive, consistent numbers to continue to put those up. He said, he's part of what he considers a new age of tight ends. He said, you saw it started with guys like Kittle and Kelsey and Hawkinson, and he said, but now this is what a tight end should be able to do. And I consider myself
one of those. Compared himself to Brock Buoyers, which you know, Brock is a very very special talent, but he's you know jt Is he goes by is, he's got the size, he's got the hands, he's got the production to kind of prove he knows what he's doing. It completely changes their tight end passing game by bringing him in. Yeah, this is the guy that can play day one.
Ten and one eighth inch hands. He could palm a pumpkin lady.
His nickname is man Hands.
Man Hands, which is not a name I would give someone, but he walked in here with it and self applied that Moniker, So I am not gonna argue with him.
He seems proud of it, so we'll give it to him.
Yeah, I'd say so, but uh and in some or go ahead, Darrey, No, I was gonna say. The rest of the weekend is kind of was kind of spent
filling in some blanks on defense. I mean, we looked at all the moves they made in free agency, from Ayshawn Robinson in the front to Josie Jewel at linebacker, Dan Jackson at corner, remade that safety room by bringing in Jordan Fuller, Nick Scott, and the rest of this draft was about filling in blanks around those guys y eight and competition and creating depth again, wait for it
for the future. I mean, there's not really a job available for Trevin Wallace immediately, but Trevin Wallace looks like a guy who's going to play a bunch of football for this team in twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven, same thing. Shaw Smith Wade at cornerbacks. He's a smaller guy, and he's scrappy, and he gets after it. Scrappy. He's never been attached to a tall person, has it. A tall person has never been described as.
Scrap Crappy means that you're short and willing to fight if you're backed into a corner. Yeah, he is scrappy.
Yeah, And I think whether it's Michael Barrett at linebacker, Jen and Crumdy at defensive tackle, they added guys who don't necessarily have starting jobs right now, but it's they are guys at positions where you could see him looking for upgrades. You could see him looking to improve the depth across the bottom third of this roster, and I think that's going to be important as they build this thing for years to come.
Trevor Wallace particular, clearly is someone that I'm excited to see get in pads when we get to that point in training camp. See what happens when he hits somebody, because he's somebody that Darren just watching his tape. He doesn't tackle, He plows into the ground.
Yeah, he kind of runs through people.
And that to me sounds like a dog dawg dog. Yeah, exactly kind of what they were looking for at that linebacker position. But like you said, someone that's gonna be more for the future than anything. Also, this weekend, when you look at what they needed after free agency, there were very few glaring coals and the glaring holes that were there. They addressed one of the holes that I saw a lot of people on Twitter say, well, why wasn't this field was center? And it was because it
already was. And it's not just Austin Corporate getting Austin Corbett getting moved to center. It's also Brady Christian's Christiansen gosh, I cannot talk this morning.
That's because it's Fred's day. It is.
You very watch parks in Direct where they have Head's Day.
Yeah, exactly.
But Brady has also been taking snaps at center, something that Dan Morgan you know, kind of revealed this weekend when asked about the center position. And so they feel like the depth is there. They can cross train some more of these guys as they come in. They can you know, maybe cross train a couple of these udfas and so between Austin between Brady, they feel like that position no longer had a glaring coal either, which is why they didn't reach for it in this draft.
Sure, and that's the thing had all the you know, again, there's a million ways to twist it around and look at it. I mean, if if all the receivers had been gone and eight receivers were gone in the first twenty five picks, and the Bucks don't take Graham Barton with it. I don't know. I mean, it's impossible to know any of that kind of stuff in hindsight. But you know, Austin Corbett is not just some guy. It's like, Okay,
we don't have anybody. You go stand there. I thought it was kind of cool last week when they go out on the field for a volunteer MENTI camp. And again, that was about six weeks ago, right, No, it was last Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Austin was telling me, he's like, people been making me a center for ten years. My college coach told me. And his college coach was a young gentleman named Brian Pollion. If that name sounds familiar to you, he's the son of original Panthers general manager
and Hall of Famer Bill Pollion. I remember Brian hanging around here. I don't even think Brian had a job. He was just kind of hanging around his dad's workplace when he was in his twenties here during the first couple of years of the organization. But Brian coached Austin at Nevada, and he looked at him, and he said, listen, you're my left tackle because you're my best offensive lineman. You are not a left tackle in the NFL because you're six foot four, your arms aren't particularly freaky long,
you know. And he looked at me. He said, son, if you want to play in the NFL a long time, learn how to snap. And so Austin has learned how to snap. He was the emergency backup centering Cleveland from the day he was drafted thirty third overall in twenty eighteen, played there in pre seasons in eighteen and nineteen. And it's not as if you're taking a linebacker and asking him to play tight end. These jobs aren't so vastly
different that it's inconceivable that somebody can do both. I mean, guards are typically across trained, even in an emergency fashion, to play center if they need to during a game. Austin has snapped before. It's not like this is a new skill set that it's impossible that he could have. So he feels pretty good about that. And I've always thought, I mean, from the day Brady Christiansen walked into this building, it's like that could be a center one of these days. Again,
same deal. He played to have tackle at BYU and was pretty good at it. But he's not prototypical length. I mean, he doesn't have big thirty four inch arms or anything like that. But I as smart as he is, as aware as he is, and as good as he is at communicating, I think here's a pretty good chance Brady Christensen could be a good center down the line.
Austin always jokes, I mean that communication element of it is key, because he's the guy who's got to talk to Bryce, he's got to identify protections, he's got to talk to Hunt and Damian Lewis on either side of him and make sure everybody's on the same page. And Austin's kind of glib about it. He's, yeah, I talk too much. I was gonna end up with center anyway.
But it's because he's good at communicating and Bryce. Bryce told an interesting story last week about how last year, during their protection meetings, even after Austin was on injured reserve, he's like before he came back and after he went on injured reserve again, Austin took more detailed notes. He offered more feedback than just about anybody in those meetings. And Bryce basically said, I trust this guy implicitly because he knows everything in such meticulous detail already.
Yeah, and that's what you've got to be able to do to It's like the middle linebacker of the defense, quarterback of the offensive line. Basically, you're in charge of getting everybody in place.
Yeah, and so yeah, all right, he can do it. And again, we've got months and months of off season ahead of us. We'll get into a lot more of the what comes next and who these guys are and the behind the scenes portion of it. But for now, we're gonna we're gonna hit one last thing. I know.
Yesterday for me, yesterday was a big nap day. I do not get the opportunity to take many naps, But after getting back from church and thinking about going for a run, I got about a block and it's like, nope, we're going back to the house and I went couch nap during NBA playoffs for about two and a half three hours. That was a pretty good.
Nap that Sunday afternoon after church, Like, while of game's on in the background, nap. Nothing beats that.
Well. I was gonna say, yeah, I was going to give you the first pick in the nap draft and offer you your opportunity at any any at any nap of them all a.
Sunday afternoon nap, like after after you've gone to church, after you've had a big lunch, and then you come home. It's really clutch when it's like golf on TV. If you don't have golf, NBA is a little too loud,
I'll take a game. But you know, if golf's not on, something like the nineteen ninety nine cult classic The Mummy that gets shown a lot on like Sci Fi Channel, something like that on in the background, or then you know, like one of those like Tuesday afternoon, you've had a long day, you come in and you turn on like the Braves game. That's a good nap, especially if it's raining outside.
You know, what's a sneaky good nap that I will use my second pick in this nap draft on what the work nap.
The work now day from the spot last week I found I was going to sell them out where it's at.
I found a secret nap lounge here inside a Bank of America stadium, and Friday afternoon, about from about five to about five twenty I stole twenty minutes, which got me through the rest of Friday. And Lord only knows what would have happened if I didn't get it.
But the safety of everyone in this building, we needed him to take an out.
Yeah, it would It would have gotten ugly in a hurry because those were long days.
Friday was a fever dream.
Yeah, they all do kind of run together and jamming. That mini campaign last week definitely did it.
So, Yeah, I got a little bit of break before the rookie minuting.
Yeah, secret work nap is my first pick, second overall. What's your next best NAP in the NAP Draft?
Well, I'll use the rainy afternoon with a baseball game on, because I'd already alluded to that one.
That's my second one, all right, My second round pick in the NAP draft is one of my favorites. Car nap, Like back in the days when my kids were playing kids sports and stuff, and you take them to practice. If you find that warm afternoon where you can sort of crack the windows, get some fresh air in there, sit in the passenger seat, kick it back, uh huh. Passive solar through the windshield. Yeah, twenty minutes in the
car while your kids are practicing soccer or softball. That that was a pretty good nap, right there.
A nap in the car is also good, like while the car's driving.
As long as someone else.
Is driving, someone else is driving. I've only done that once.
We believe in safety first.
Here people once while driving. I have one more question that's not to do with nuns, but I want to pose it to the listening audience. Although you, as a native Charlotte Tan, yeah.
Not Charlotte. Charlotte's whole different category.
You're Charlottean, You as a native Charlottean, might be able to actually answer for me. I've thought about this every morning when I drive into work, and I never remember to ask, why do we call the section of Charlotte that is very clearly downtown. There's even a sign that points to it when you turn off my road to get on the Interstate that says downtown this way. Why do we call that uptown?
Oh, you have opened a can of worms. This is one of my pet peeves.
That is it's also not even up. I would consider up to be like north West.
It's the answer, my dear is marketing, and that is I've got hours and hours worth of material about this. This was many many moons ago here in our beloved Queen City. The city fathers and mothers believed we've always had a little bit of an inferiority complex. There was always that fear of being confused with Charleston or Charlottesville, back before we had NBA basketball and professional sports in
this town. So at some point somebody had the genius idea that we would call it uptown and that sounded cooler and more sophisticated. So our friends at Center City Partners, whom we love many moons ago, came up with the idea, along with some local politicians, that we were just going to lively call it up down and assume everybody would
go along with it. Kind of. I'm in a little bit of an anti establishment type in case you haven't noticed, I will still refer to it as downtown casually, and usually there's somebody in this city that is ready to shout me down. But we will get into.
More Charlotte jarn and I are going to go talk about that.
Yeah, we're gonna do that. Dave Canalis still doesn't know the difference between Queen's Road, Queens Road West, and Queen's Road extension much less when it turns into sel one.
That's not a knock against them. You know.
He hasn't figured out the difference between Fairview and rama yet, but he will learn all of that stuff, so will Cassidy, and we will bring you all the leaders here on the Happy half hour.
Thank you guys.