This week on a Happy Half Hour.
Here's what I think about preseason football after watching thirty years of NFL preseason football product. It's kind of like when you buy Craft singles or something that says American cheese product. They don't say cheese, they say cheese product. That's what preseason football's like.
Touchdown cow wha, 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.
All right, it's a great day. I don't know, I just felt like starting the Happy Half Hour in the voice of Dave Canalis. I mean, he always walks into press conference, you know, full of energy, and he says things like that was a great.
Day, what a great day, to have a great day.
How we do on everybody, every big good good.
I wish I had a little bit of his energy.
Podcast, Matt, Does it come off as sincere when I say it that way?
No?
Okay, what if I just do it the way I always do and say, hello, friends, welcome to the Happy Half Hour.
If you're not starting the podcast talking about liquor, then it doesn't feel sincere.
Yeah, hey, okay, I'll take that all right. So there we go. We're already into this happy half hour presented by a Southern Star, an official bourbon of the Carolina Panthers celebrate the spirit of the Carolinas. And you know what we celebrated last week, Cassi Hill, What did we celebrate last We celebrated a touchdown. We saw it with our own two.
D Actually we didn't if you were in the elevator like I was.
Well, I was. I was watching it on a monitor.
So I've heard the stories.
Yes, touchdowns have been scored. The Carolina Panthers have scored points. All of you naysayers go someplace else. It is a happy half hour and a happy half hour. Uh and only happy because preseason almost over. Oh yeah, it's kind of a drag. I understand people who have been frustrated not seeing the starters and the people that they kind of want to see. But there's a reason for this gang.
There is a reason. And Bryshawn kind of summed it up on Tuesday.
Yeah, yeah, day of the week is it anymore?
That is a great question. But bryshonk summed it up on Tuesday when he said, you know, we trust the coaches. They have a plan, and they have put us in a lot of game like situations in practice to kind of adjust for if they don't play in a preseason game. Now, granted, Darren, a lot of people will say, well, we're prepared regardless. You've watched a lot of practices, and you've watched a lot of practices for the Carolina Panthers. Do you see it?
From my point of view, We've heard so much about Dave Canalys's training camp plan and and not straying from the plan even when it would have been easy to and actually sticking to it, and it's sort of beginning to unfold to prepare the players in a certain way. I feel like we have actually seen that happen, and we've seen it working in the longer camp went on, and the closer we get to the regular season, you're like, Okay,
I actually kind of see his process here. Do you think that plan is enough to make up for possibly not playing the starters in a preseason game.
Here's what I think about preseason football after watching thirty years of NFL preseason football product, and it's kind of like when you buy craft singles or something that says American cheese product. They don't say cheese, they say cheese product. That's what preseason football is like. It's preseason football product.
It is a product of the NFL.
It is not like the other football And Canal has talked about it earlier this week, and Matt is awesome, and we'll pull the sound and he can say it in his own words, but Dave said in as many words, there is a difference between a joint practice snap and a preseason game snap. And I'll let him explain that part before we come back.
So you're gonna get an elevated speed just naturally, you.
Know, guys.
Guys, we're pushing our guys to go full speed all the time. But as we know, they get into this competitive moment and when the jersey color changes and it's someone new, there's an excitement to it. There's just naturally
an excitement to that part of it. But we're not tackling to the ground, you know, we're certainly not you know, cut blocking anywhere, and we're not doing some of the things that that we would normally do in a normal game setting, you know, so there's still a big difference, you know, it's like, there's it's amazing to me always the levels of speed that our players take it when it goes from the most competitive thing you can create in a practice to what happens in the game, you know,
and the adrenaline and all those things and the lights and all the excitement of that.
And I get that. I'll go with him on that, except here's what I like about the joint practice situation. And I swear I believe if my friends at three forty five Park Avenue steal my idea and turn joint practices into three hour scrimmages where the first half is one versus two or Mayo versus your D, the second half's your DMO that kind of thing, and turn it into a three hour joint practice on television inside stadium bowls with money, then we'll all be better off. Because
here's what I like about a joint practice. Snap number one, it's predictable. You can strap a red jersey on your quarterbacks back. Know that nobody who's trying to prove a point and make a name for himself and become the fifty third man on the roster tries to take out your guy. The other thing I like about it, and I actually prefer this one. I mean, I understand safety, but it is still football and people are still gonna get hurt no matter how many steps you take to
try to protect them. Here's what I like the most about a joint practice. It's a repeatable rep. If you want to get I mean, say, for instance, da and Canalis open the door to maybe playing those guys in Buffalo on Saturday afternoon. And if he does, that's fine. But if he does, he's going to be going against Buffalo's twos because Sean McDermott already said he wasn't playing his And you don't know if you're going to get
in a red zone situation or not. I mean, Bryce might drop back, scramble a little bit, chuck one up to the heavens, and Deontay Johnson might run eighty yards for a touchdown. Boom. That's a series. I don't know. Would you go one play and get them on out of there, but you'd get no red zone. So he can get together with Robert Salah or whatever coach he wants to do it with in the future and say,
really like to work on red zone today? All right, cool, let's do twelve plays of red zone and if something doesn't go right in one of those plays, blow the whistle, bring it back reset. We've seen Dave do that in his own practices before. So I just think the repeatable work, the controlled work, the predictable work, allows it to be better work. I mean, there were things I saw during the joint practice on both sides, on both fields that
were instructive to where the Carolina Panthers were. I mean, this time a year ago when the Jets were in Spartanburg, that joint practice did not go particularly well for the Carolina Panthers. You could tell. And again, you know, sometimes it's a canary and a coal mine, sometimes it's just a dead bird. But that practice last year should have been the moment when we all said this ain't quite right. But we didn't even realize how bad it was going
to become at the time. But this year, you know, and people ask me on Twitter, you know what the difference was in this one now one, and I said, a competent offensive product was on the field. I mean, not only did they score during those sessions, Bryce moved the ball downfield, he was hitting some shots deep. You know,
they were protecting well. Icky was getting good work. And I think some of the things you've seen over the course of and this is a really long way of answering what was a really direct question on your part about seven minutes ago. I think the work Dave Canalis has done during this training camp's been very focused. He's been intentional about we want to run, we want to be physical, and they've practiced that way by being very intentional.
The one thing that Dave Canal said he would want to see out of the starters if they did play in a preseason game specifically Bryce was essentially the between the snaps procedures, the operation of things, getting in and out of the huddle, you know, getting to the line, maybe making some checks or whatnot. Those are things that you can, like you can practice in practice, but I don't know if you can really facilitate the game atmosphere
of doing those things. So, if let's say they don't play on Saturday, and the first time the starters step onto the field to play this season is that first week in New Orleans, a notable tough place to play there in the super Dome or sound echoes, do you just resign yourself to the fact that there might be some procedural issues the first few drives, maybe even the first game.
I think it could be, but it doesn't have to be, don't I don't think it has to be that way. And I just think that they've gotten a little bit of that out of the way in terms of Canalis's operation. He went through a George League game management coordinator in the first game and did his first challenge and one he's one and zero. They've done a lot of that stuff. I think you can replicate some of that kind of stuff.
I used to laugh when John Fox was coach, he dedicated part of a training camp practice to how they're coming out of the tunnel to stretch, and he would have everybody on the roster, ninety deep crowd into that little you know, crepe myrtle shaded corner of the field at Wafford and come out of the corner and then it would go stretch and everything. You can teach some of that procedural kind of stuff. And listen, Bryce Young's been in big games before in that building, you know.
I think in the course of his time as a college player he might have wandered in there a time or two, but it's you know, I think some of that stuff and the call for these guys to play in a preseason because they have to do it. I keep going back to, you know, just checking the numbers, Thirteen teams, including the Carolina Panthers, have not played their starting quarterbacks at all in the preseason so far through two weeks now. Some of that's injury. I mean, Matt
Stafford's been a little dinged up. You know, different guys are out for different reasons, but you know, seventeen teams didn't play them in Week one, twenty teams didn't play them in Week two. You know, obviously that vin diagram crosses a little bit there, but thirteen teams doing it means there's a reason some people don't do it, and I think the lack of predictability. And Canalis also mentioned this last week, just having guys dinged up. I mean
Xavier League, it has missed some time with injuries. Damian Lewis has been in and out of practice a little bit with some shoulder related stuff, some personal stuff, and so I think that without being able to put all those people together, Dave's just been hesitant to put half a first offense out there. Because if you want it to be what you expect to get out of it, if you want it to be intentional, and there's that Dave Canala's word again, you want to play those guys
all together. So it's decent work.
Can I take a guess at what thirteen teams haven't played their quarterback?
You can, and as you talk, I'll dig the notebook out of my bag that has that information.
And this is purely just a guess. I'm trying to think of who I've heard this played, and therefore who wouldn't know.
If Matt had a digging sound effect.
The Jets have not played their starting quarterback. Oh no, I don't think the forty nine ers have.
You're all over the yard now.
The forty nine ers have.
Blah blah blah blah, and the forty nine ers have not.
Okay, so some two for two I want to say the Bucks have not.
I'm all over this notebook now the Diggings again, No, brock Purty did play in Week two, so the forty nine ers have not. Here we go the thirteen teams that have not played a quarterback in the preseason. Jets, Baltimore, ravens Lamar Jackson, Cleveland, Deshaun Watson was I guess Chargers, I mean, Justin Herbert's been hurt, He's coming back this week, probably played a little bit. Maybe Miami's played two has played, Dak Prescott hasn't played, Jalen Hurts, Jared Goff, Kirk Cousins, Bryce,
Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray, Matt Stafford, Gino Smith. Those are the thirteen guys. So you've got kind of a mixed bag of old and dinged up and old and don't need it and young and could you know, could arguably use some. You know, I think you could talk about Baker Mayfield in Tampa as being a guy who could probably use as much as anybody else. He's running a brand new offense this year without Dave Canal.
Speaking of Baker Mayfield, Dave Canal has actually made a good point. I thought early this week about you know, they played their they played their quote unquote starters in the preseason at Tampa last year because they were in the middle of a quarterback competition. It was still down between Baker Mayfield and Cayl Trask until Week one, And he said that's obviously not the case here. Yeah, and
so that makes a difference too. Another question that I'm meant to ask a few minutes ago, what is at three forty five Park Avenue the NFL headquarters.
Oh yeah, that's their mailing address.
Do you send a postcard?
Now? It's just one of those things. I know. It's kind of in thirty years you kind of pick up certain things, and certain things just become shorthand, and it's really like, yeah.
When people say like or you hear like reports from the British media and they're like news today out of ten.
Downing, Yeah, exactly, it's kind of like that.
You know what's at ten Downing?
Is it the Prime Minister's House?
It's the Prime Minister's House.
Oh yeah, I'm a genius.
Or six hundred Pennsylvania Avenue, it's the.
White House, sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue. See what happens when you try to get wise the confidence? Yeah, I know, un earned confident. This is the benefit of being old. You just kind of stop and look at people and say, did you mean to do that?
Oh?
I was short numb a thousand, my bad?
Yeah, at any rate, you could have been more intentional with that. Hey, speaking of intentional here's an adorable Dave Canalis story about being intentional. I saw him this morning on the practice field before practice started. He's walking out on the grass doing his Dave Canalis thing, being very bouncy and energetic.
Because it is. It's more it like we joked about it not being as legit from you at the top, but it is legit from him.
Oh, no question. And he stops dead in his tracks, and I thought, did he step on something sharp? What happened here? And he bends down and he picks something up out of the grass, and I was like, I'm assuming somebody left a nail or something there that somebody's going to drive a golf cart tire over and flatten it, because I just kind of think nails are going to go in tires. But it was a moth. And Dave Canalis comes up with two hands holding this big brown
moth and he's like, look at that. He stands there and he considers it for a second, and then he walks it over to the side across the little artificial turf barrier between the grass field and everything else in the world, and he kind of sits it down on the edge very gently, And I was like it's adorable, because ay, I believe Dave Canalis has the best interest of that moth at heart, he wants the moth to
become its best version of its moth self. But I think also in Dave Canalis's brain, he's like, I do not want one of my guys seeing a moth on the ground and getting distracted and taking away from the activity of football practice. I think both of those things can be equally true.
And with the advent of technology, that moth could be a little drone for all we know.
Yeah, it's clearly a Saint's drone that's flying over this place. So anyway, now that and that was a story about Dave Canalis in a moth. So at any rate, where were we We were talking about what's coming up in the next little bit. You know, we covered obviously there's going to be a game Saturday at one o'clock in Buffalo, New York, Orchard Park to be specific, and then we will be back and this will turn into a whole
new ball team again. Because before we talk to you again here on the Happy half hour, since we normally do these in midweek, this team's going to look very different on Tuesday by four o'clock. They've got to turn a ninety man roster into a fifty three and that is going to be hard, and you know, for a lot of different reasons. I mean, I think anybody could look at this roster and say, okay, there's one, there's one that you could probably cross some names off and
have a decent chance of being successful. But where this is tricky is we're not gonna know on Tuesday who the fifty three is. We're not gonna know on Wednesday who the fifty three is. It's going to be a minute because, as we've mentioned throughout the off season, one of the benefits of being two and fifteen the year before is you've got the very first spot in waiver
claim order. So basically, any player with four years or viewer of experience in the league that gets cut next week, if the Carolina Panthers won them, they're going to have them right. And I imagine, based on you know what we've talked about this roster being which is thin in a lot of places, that is a privilege they are going to exercise. So it's going to be interesting to see how all this comes together.
With that in mind, going into Saturday's game, which Dave Canals alluded to earlier this week, is being a decision game for a lot of guys. What units are you keeping an eye on the most, and even if for different reasons, like for example, I think both the wide receiver and the safety units are ones to keep an
eye on, but for completely different reasons. One of them they're going to be begging guys to take some of those spots, to claim those spots, and the other one they got some hard decisions to make.
They really do. I mean, safety is a place where they're deep, and I mean they kind of casually old by the way, drop into Rudy Ford the other week, and Rudy Ford's a cat who started games in the league and it's been a good special team year, and so yeah, I think safety is one of those places because what do you do with a Jamie Robbinson. What do you do with an Alex Cook who started a couple of games here last year AND's got some potential.
So that is behind a very veteran starting group. I mean, Averro's talked about three starting caliber safeties in Xavier Woods, Jordan Fuller, Nick Scott. Right now, Xavier's not practicing. He's got a little bit of an injury deal, and who knows how long that's going to keep him out. But until then, you're looking at all, right, what do you do? You know, Sam Franklin broke his foot back together Saturday. Ostensibly, Sam is a guy you want to keep on the
fifty three and bring back later in the year. Now they've changed the rules a little. In the past, anybody you wanted to put on IR and bring back later you had to carry to the fifty three man through the fifty three man cuts. This year, they'll let you put two guys on IR on cutdown day and then bring them back at some point later, not having to carry him on because I think a lot of people realize those were just kind of roster spots that were
getting turned over the following day anyway. So let's just put that mechanism in place and put a cup on our Sam's a guy who could fall into that category. But then you're talking about you know, Alex Cook, Demani Richardson, who keeps making play after play, whether it's in the
preseason game or in practice or joint practice. You know, there's a lot of guys in there, and again, we kind of Oh, by the way, somebody like Alex Cook, who's looked good and was able to step into a weird situation and start last year in and amongst a lot of veterans. So that is probably as deep a
group as there is. The one that's interesting to me and the one I'm continuing to watch and again for a very different reason is the Cornerbacks we we know based on canal is saying that Dan Jackson was gonna miss six weeks ish and I love six weeks ish. I love I love six weeks ish almost as much as I love a story about taking care of the earth and its smallest months. I love six weeks ish.
But it does tell us that Dame Jackson ain't gonna be ready for the Saints in week one, And going into last week you could have said, well, maybe Lamar Jackson is kind of the leader amongst that group of younger guys to start in that outside job opposite j. C.
Horn.
But then Lamar gets hurt knee injury. Last week. He was waved injured. I mean, there's a chance at some point down the road later this year he could come back, but for now he is. He's gone. So you take
him out of the decision making process. That means that they probably, depending on who who is on the waiver wire next Tuesday, you're probably making a decision on a starting cornerback for the regular season opener between DeShawn Jamison, DiCaprio, Bootle, and Shaw, Smith Wade, and there are other guys around and in the mix, and Troy Hill is on the roster, but I mean, Troy's pretty exclusively a nickel at this point. He's here because he's smart, and he knows how to
play nickel, and he's comfortable inside. Shaw had been taking a lot of his naps inside at nickel this year. But he's a cat who's always played outside. It's like every high school team's best offensive lineman's there left tackle. Every college's best corner guy plays outside corner. You only start playing nickel when you get to the league and
they realize you're shorter than everybody else, or you're getting older. So, although it is a complicated job, but somewhere between that three man group of Shaw and DiCaprio and DeShawn Jamison and one of them dudes is going to probably be starting against the Saints down in the Super Dome, So I'm kind of curious to see how much they play and who looks like what in a game against the Buffalo backups.
Yeah, I also want to see it maybe a little more from the tight ends, because that could be an answer to the wide receiver numbers. Do you just maybe carry a cup like another tight end or two than you would normally.
Do so, And again, we haven't seen Ian Thomas in a little bit. We don't know the extent because as Dave's gotten closer to the regular season, he's being less forthcoming with his injury information because everybody tightens up when you get to the regular season and they get into gamesmanship mode. But we ain't seen Ian Thomas in a minute, so we don't know when we're going to see him.
Does he have to become one of those guys who goes on ir to come back later, you know, Tommy Tremble, Jatavian Sanders, what do you do with the Jordan Matthews who is so good and so smart and so able to do a lot of different things. But can you carry a Jordan Matthews to the exclusion of an extra dB or you know, those are the kind of things I think are going to be real debates downstairs over the next couple of days because, and I don't mean to single Jordan out there, a lot of the bubble
here is very big this year. There's probably about thirty guys on the quote unquote bubble and how that thing goes. I mean, again, before Dan Jackson and before Dan Jackson and Lamar get hurt, some of those guys we were talking about at corner were probably on the outside looking in, and now you're sort of changing the calculus on a lot of that. But there's going to there's gonna be a lot of that. I mean, do you keep a Mike Boone as a fourth running back until Jonathan Brooks
is ready or maybe even beyond. Because one of the things that I think is going to be interesting is how special Teams comes into play, because Tracy Smith is going to have to find a dozen dudes to run down kicks and punts, not a dozen that, but he's going to have to find eleven guys, not counting JJ and Johnny or JJ and Johnny and Eddie to be on those special teams units. And that's always tricky because he's going to be the last one to get to vote.
I mean, in a situation like this, he might have a guy or two that he loves, and in ordinary times at Sam Franklin. Unfortunately, Sam's walking around on a crutch right now, his foot in the boot. So it's
a little bit awkward in that regard. But they're going to be changing tires on a moving car all year anyway, and especially when the roster's in such flux, because there aren't very many We talked about safety, but there aren't a terrible many positions on this roster that you say, oh, they don't need, they don't need anybody who's not here. You know, could you find a third quarterback to stick on a practice squad instead of a Jake Plumber? You could possibly find one of those. Even did I say
Jake Plumber? God, I've been good at that all preseason, and here we are coming down the stretch.
I was gonna let it slide, but then I was like, it's kind of funny.
Yeah, and it's like that's smart. Aleck made fun of me for six hundred pennsylvania avin it is, I'll show him. But this is what happens to us in training camp when we lose all side of what time of day it is, what day of the week it is, or the address of.
The White White House of the States, or the.
Back third quarterback on the Carolina Panthers roster. This is what happens to us. So anyway, that's that's all going to be a complicated set of numbers, and we are going to tune in. I don't want to promise Wednesday next week because this thing might still be in flux a little bit next Wednesday, but next Wednesday or Thursday, I feel reasonably confident Wednesday ish, Yes, So tune back in next Wednesday ish for the next episode of the Happy Half Hour when fifty three people will be happy.
That could be a revolving cast of characters over the next couple of days, but you know, we'll be happy. Podcast Matt for Cassidy. I'm Darren and this was the Happy Half Hour.