This week on a Happy Half Hour.
Ashawn Robinson. You've heard me say a million times there's two kind of people in the world. There's pack mules and show ponies. He's pack mule one hundred percent. He's just putting his head down and doing the thing over and over again. I got all the respect in the world for the way that guy's working.
Right now, what's the 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 Kant and Cassidy Hill.
Hello, friends, and welcome to another edition of the Happy Half Hour. As always, the Happy Half Hours brought to you by our friends at Southern Star, an official bourbon partner of the Carolina Panthers, celebrate the spirit of the Carolinas with a little Southern Star. Matt's over there laughing because I'm doing my best to destroy a read from a quality advertiser, and I really feel like they are our friends are listen.
Is that what helps get you through the day, Then that's your friend.
Yeah, exactly.
A friend is there for you in a time of need, in a time of sorrow, and in a time of celebration.
Southern Star has never let me down or taken my parking.
Place, so that is I am good friend.
Indeed, feeling pretty good about Southern Star right now.
I walked in the building this morning and the first person I saw was Brad Ezac. He would he goes, hey, Cassidy, and I said, and I just jumped right in and I said, Brad, when I'm president, the first thing in this country I'm fixing is parking. And he goes in three weeks and I said yeah, and he was like, okay, I'll start a writing campaign. So there you go. Join Brad Zac to start my writing campaign for president. My whole entire platform is built on parking.
Make America Cassidy again. What could possibly go wrong? We could go early vote for you right now because on the other side of our fine building here at Bank of America Stadium, we are an official early voting site for Mecklenburg County. So this will be my platform. I will encourage everyone, however you vote, to just make sure you go vote. It is safe, it is secure. There are many steps but in place to make sure everything
is above board and detailed. And I was trained last week just to make sure that this is true.
So my own little leslie note.
Yeah, so get ready Tuesday, November fifth, cash you're here on your own in case anything weird happens on the trade deadline.
That's all ug wohoo.
There's no way anything goes wrong.
What could possibly go wrong? Now?
I do think I'll go early vote today though, because I just don't want to get busy. That's right before we go to Germany. I don't want to forget.
Yeah, well you got You've got two and a half weeks to get that in so plenty of tone.
Underestimate my ability to forget something.
Funny, en have time to carefully study the issues at hand and make sure you're making informed choices.
Don't just fill it out like it's an SAT.
Because an informed electorate is each of our responsibilities. So at any rate, all right, so we've talked about bourbon, We've talked about voting. I guess at some point in this podcast about football, we are obliged and contractually bound to talk about the football. So we should prob a little bit. We should probably do that. It's yeah, it's it's rough sledding right now.
If you're the Carolina Panthers. Specifically, if you're the Carolina.
Panthers, defense times are not good at the moment. Last week was probably the toughest of the lot. I mean, even Week one was so unexpected and so out of the blue. That's when you're out there running around with all your people, So it got to be an outlier. It got to be a shock to everybody's system. Looking at that game Sunday, I was just struck over and over with the idea that seven of the people you were supposed to be out.
There with we're not out there the eleven.
Seven of the eleven it is a vast majority, and five of the front seven. Yeah, when you talk about running a three to four defense and all four are not playing, uh, that's problem. And it looked like it on Sunday. I mean, the Falcons were moving up and down the field and it got away from him in the second half. Obviously, there there were some things about that game to like, but I just think the personnel deficiencies on defense are gonna be hard to overcome for a little bit.
They are. And you made actually a really really great point in your mail bag this week, So thank you. Give you the yeah about I.
Pay her to read it.
That you know, I can always count on Cassidy, my wife and my mother that thing he pays me.
To read it. But the compliments are free about not overreacting to the defense, because your initial reaction this is is probably the vast majority of people watch, is to go, Okay, you don't have the personnel right now, should it maybe switch to a different scheme and not a lot of this zone. You've got to be so so disciplined to play zone, and when you don't have personnel that have played together a lot, your first reaction is to change it.
But you made a really great point about if you change it in reaction to one or two games to a couple of personnel groupings, when you need to fall back on your fundamentals, your fundamentals are not going to be set. This is a lot of baptism by fire right now for a group of people that even though their experience is there other than like Trevin Wallace, Claudia
and Cherlists that they're playing together is not there. Their familiarity is not there, and so this is forcing them to communicate, to learn where the other one's going to be, to learn to lean on each other and it's rough, Like you said, it's rough sledding right now, but you I guess you just have to trust and believe that it could pay off down the road. Well, especially when you get some of those guys back.
I mean, here's what we know for sure, zero Vera runs good defense. That was true in La, that was true in Denver, That's been true here in the past. What's different now is they basically started over defensively, with some changes that were their decision and some changes that were other people's decisions. I mean, guys like Frankie Luvu he left as a free agent, he chose to go
to Washington. Can't do anything about that, obviously, the Brian Burns trade, you know, and some other moves, and you were basically starting fresh, and they were starting fresh in a system built around a strong middle. I mean, we could go back, we could have podcast map pull the tapes from back in the summer when we talked about what this defense ought to be good at. And the
first thing I said was run defense. And I said, because you went out and got an old head in Ashawn Robinson, who's just stout, and you park him on the other side from Derek Brown, who's a Pro Bowl defensive. You got two steady guys in Shack and Josie in the middle, and then all of a sudden, you look out there last week and other than Nashawan, they're all gone. You know, it's like the rapture has hit that defense and there's a couple of guys standing around, uh, waiting to see what's happening.
But and those guys.
Are all I mean, it's nothing against any of the individual pieces.
It's just you.
Can you can say, well, injuries can't be an excuse, and everybody likes to say that and talk about next man up and all that fun stuff.
You can say that once one or two guys.
When it's seven starters, that's a little tougher and you're just looking at everything completely different. So you know, I think it's going to you know, just take time and more people. But I do want to say before I lose this thread, uh in my own mind, because that's where things go to get lost. Ashawn Robinson, we did. I did not know a lot about his game. I'm not going full shack. Oh you apology. I was not familiar with your game, but I when guys are out
there on the other coast. If they're an interior lineman, you don't always get a full appreciation for what's what they're actually doing. That dude is a certified old head in a younger person's body because he's out there toughing things out.
He's playing through stuff.
He goes down, it looks like he ain't coming back, he misses one snap and he's back out on the field. And he's out there because he kind of.
Has to be. I mean, he knows that.
You know, there's a bunch of backup players out there on that line with him and Shy Tuttle, so he's got to be the guy who carries the load. You know, a couple of weeks ago, he played like seventy one of seventy five snacks. Yeah, that's Derek Brown percentages. And you know, very few people can do it the way Derek does it. And you know, I think it's it's a credit to Ashawn, who's coming off as.
A complete pro right now. I mean he is. He is one of them old school.
You know, you've heard me say a million times there's two kind of people in the world. There's pack mules and show ponies. He's pack mule. One hundred percent. He's just putting his head down and doing the thing over and over again. I got all the respect in the world for the way that guy's working right now.
Yeah, I mean a snapshot of that is what he did on Sunday. He got hurt, looked like he got pretty banged up on the play. It was one of those that we thought we were looking to see if he was going to the locker room, and a play later he was back on the field.
Yeah.
I mean, that's just that's not something you necessarily see as much anymore. So all the credit to him to your point about him being an old head and a young man's body. He's been forty five since he was twelve.
Ah, Like, he's.
Been a deacon and had a four oh one case since he was in middle school. So it definitely fits. It fits this whole personality.
Yeah, I feel that that's Uh. I have entered that stage of life where, yeah, those are the things people say about me.
But he's playing.
He's playing well, he really is, and that's the kind of thing they've got to hang on to. I mean, you've got a couple stable veterans upfront, him and Shy I think in terms of defense. What you've got to really focus on and where this year becomes a valuable tool for the Carolina Panthers is all m snaps.
Trevin Wallace is getting right.
Because there's a guy who who could end up being your future at inside linebacker and a future signal caller, and he's getting eleven twelve games of on the job training at it. You know, in a perfect world, he could have sat and it's like people talk about with quarterbacks, you know, let him sit and learn a little bit. Well, he was going to be able to do that behind Shaq and Josie a lot this year until neither one
of them are there. And now you know, he's getting used to that green dot on his helmet, He's getting used to doing the communicating and you know he's that's going to benefit him in the future. And that's just kind of where you've got to look at this thing from a defensive standpoint with the Carolina Panthers.
I'm really interested to see what Trevin looks like when Josie is back on the field too. This and this is no disrespect to Claudia and cherylis who has been filling in very nicely, but Josie is what.
Is also hurt and didn't practice yesterday and may not be able to go this week.
Correct minor detail. But Josie is an experienced guy. He's an experienced guy in this defense. He's very very smart how he plays, and he's a good tackler. And Josie is somebody who has called the defense before. So, you know, even with Trevin keeping that job, what is it going to be like having Josie next to him on the field. Could that maybe even speed up the communication and not that that's really been an issue, could have speed it
up even more? You know, can Josie kind of help make sure Trevin is in the right position to then rely on his instincts and maybe clean up anything that a rookie would just naturally miss. I'm interested to see the two of them out there together once Josie gets back from his hamstring.
Yeah, it's definitely going to be a benefit to Trev's So, you know, there's only so much to be said about what's happening on that side of the ball right now. I mean, again, when you're missing so many people. The thing about it is they have maintained a competitive posture throughout these games, and something happened during that game the
other day that kind of took me by surprise. You were looking at me like I was an idiot in the press box because late in the second half down twenty two to ten, and are about to be down twenty to ten when I know what you're talking about, and they were going into the end zone when it lant Us heading into the end zone and Canalis is calling time outs, and it kind of took me aback
for a second, like, oh, what are they doing. What they're doing is giving the ball back to Andy Dalton, and it's not the kind of thing that you would have always anticipated over the last five years here. And I kind of joked about it, but I said, I'm so not used to being in that position that it caught me off guard seeing it. But Andy immediately repaid that.
Confidence if he got it back with a minute twelve.
Yeah, drive some downfield in a minute and a half for a touchdown. Looked really sharp, moved the ball around boom boom boom. So it's a big difference, especially when Atlanta was getting the ball back to start second half. You know, in previous iterations you were you could have been staring at twenty nine to ten in that situation. Instead it's twenty two to seventeen to you know, and all of a sudden, Carolina Panthers are right in this state going into the second half.
So I think it was.
The very smart coaching decision.
It was smart coaching decision, and Andy paid it off by being the kind of Vett we've talked about, being stable, being normal, being able to execute the offense in a hurry, and and there are things that we found out. I mean, I think by and large we should anticipate the Carolina Panthers are going to be able to run the football this year. You know, right now it's with Juba Hubbard, who is about four carries here and there from four
straight hundred yard games. And Jonathan Brook started practicing this week, and Jonathan looks good, and there's a lot of attention on him. I think we're three weeks out from seeing him on field. But they ought to be able to run no matter which back is back there because of those big boys up front, and even with two replacements on the field, that continued to be true against the Falcons.
Rine looked fine. Yeah, you're starting to see Xavier andly get come into his own more. Jalen Coker, Man, what a fun surprise. There's always one of those every year, and I think it's Jalen Coker this year who just kind of pops off from an unexpected place. He's so smooth, he can he can get down deep. When you bring Ian Thomas back, that allows J T. Sanders to kind of come that pass catching tight end. A little bit more on that two minute drive. I thought this was interesting, Darren.
You've got a fourteen year vet, which is what allows you to have the trust to give him the ball back with a little over a minute remaining and to have to drive the length of the field. So you've got a fourteen year old vet. He handed the ball off a couple of times that you and I think he might have had one check down to Cuba, But other than that, all of his pass catchers were rookies JT. Cocher Legette, and he was implementing those guys in his
clinical two minute drive. That's the kind of balance you want to see when you're trying to bring along a rookie pass catching class. And it's also why you know we can talk a lot about that interception when he was trying to get it to Ian Thomas, and the game was essentially over during that interception on the first drive of the fourth quarter. But you can live if you're the offensive side of the ball. You can live
with plays like that. Those are almost within the margin of era because of what you can get with things like that two minute drive at the end of the half. You've just got to have a defense to balance that out, which is a lot of what J. C. Horn was saying after the game. You know, for the past few years it's been the defense is good, the defense is good, we just need an offense. And he was like, now the offense is doing their job and we're not holding
up Oar into the bar game. But yeah, you can you can see the potential for so many things on offense.
Yep.
They are putting things together on that side of the ball, to be sure, and they're going to have to be tight this week. I mean, you're going to Washington on Sunday. Congratulations. They're second in the league and scoring putting about what is it, twenty nine and change a game on the board fifteen yards per game, like three seventy eight. I think the number is Yeah, Washington is on the other side.
They just have a dan Quinn defense.
Yeah, other than that, no problem.
I mean they are off to quite a start. Jayden Daniels obviously getting a lot of attension up there, But there's a there's it's going to be a challenge Sunday in Washington because they've kind of got to that point where Andy and those guys on offense are going to have to match points a lot of times.
So I think we were talking about Cliff Kingsbury with Ever earlier. You've only you've got two of the better offensive minds for that situation there, because you have Cliff Kingsbury calling place and you have Brian Johnson there as a quarterback developer. Those are two of the best at those jobs. And so of course their offense is going to be humming. You give dan Quinn any sort of big boys up front, he's going to do a lot
with them. They did take a hit this week losing Jonathan Allen, so that should make Schubo look his chops even more.
Yeah, you should be able to Carolina Panthers feel no sympathy for this lost.
Right exactly, And so it could end up being another game like that Falcons game, just in the sense of like, Okay, who's gonna who's going to keep scoring? Which defense can make once one or two stops.
And if you can get a couple of stops, I think there is at least some evidence that uh Andy knows guys on that side of the ball are able to make a few plays and keep this thing competitive. So anyway, so we're on to Washington. We've we've covered at length, probably more than we should have, talked about the Atlanta game. We talked about the Atlanta game. Uh, We've got a lot to do coming up the next couple of days. So let's get on with it.
Uh the box. You had me listening to your growl Taylor Swift again.
Yeah, we went back to Taylor and.
The Last American Dynasty. What a cool story. I knew the story of the woman who married the Standard Oil air and Rebecca Harkness, Yeah and lived a full in good life. I did not know that Taylor Swift bought her house.
Yeah, that's that's what I was saying. You know, kind of employees that little bit of an old country writing style, whereas like it tells a story and then at the end of the story, it's like, oh, yeah, by the way, it's me.
Yeah.
And so she now lives in that house. And you know, a lot of people said when she first bought it, because it was a lot of she was in her mid twenties and would have massive Fourth of July parties, that it was like it was having Rebecca Harkness back in the house. And so I think there's a little bit of a kindred spirit there. But love any song that tells a good story.
Yeah, no doubt about that, No doubt about that. So you were listening to Frank Turner.
Yes, I finally introduced you to my favorite live act in the world.
What do you think I liked it?
It was very anthemy. I can see that being the song at the concert that gets everybody really amped up and going, especially because it was like a It is like the song that you sing at the beginning of a revival.
It is into the tent.
And again Frank Turner's I still believe it is his love letter to live music.
He is a Yeah, for sure.
He is the touring artist. Touring artist. I've seen him pushing a dozen times now and will go basically anytime he's closed. He he did he decided to break a record or something and did fifty.
States in fifty days.
Oh wow.
And so he did Columbia, South Carolina and Charlotte in the same day. I went to both shows, got COVID, regretted nothing because it's just every show becomes a sing loong, which makes it a really good place to you guess see that being a single to get covid.
But yeah, it's uh.
He Frank sings about the need for guitars and drums and day desperate poetry. It's a it's a very simple, uh, very simple anthem. It's it's his love letter to live rock and roll music and what it can do for a whole bunch of people when they're doing things together. And and as a person who enjoys the communal experience, I am it's all for.
The opening line did make me think of Julius Caesar. Oh yeah, just like friends, romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.
It's uh, it's good stuff all the way around. Let's listen to some music that makes people happy. Uh, while we go about our business this week, have a song for you. It's a it is a perfect fall week. Should we should we have some fall music I don't know. Oh, now we go back to the jukebox again this week.
What do you got for me? Let's listen to something cool and good.
We are going with a classic Southern crooner, Mississippi man, Leon Bridges.
Have you ever heard of it?
Yeah, likest to the song and you can say it.
I've seen him in person. Really good.
Okay, Well, I was gonna go with River, but if you already know that song, we can do something different.
I'm happy to listen to that again.
That's a good one with River by Leon Bridges.
I'll listen to Leon Bridges. I am in that time of the year where I'm running into all these shows that I want to go see but I haven't gone to see yet.
Yeah.
And the other night I missed Gillian Welch, who is at the night Theater Billion with a g You'll have to look that up. You'll have to look up her singing Miss Ohio. And I'll just leave it at that. So we'll reminisce about the shows we missed. Let's miss song I had said, Gillian, Well, oh gosh, Miss Ohio okay by Gillian Welch, and you will enjoy her a great deal.
I believe.
But we'll we'll get back to that, we'll get through the music. We'll talk about the Washington game next week and see what's coming up. You know, I got to dig out my passport. We're we're going to Germany in a couple of weeks.
That is on our bosses desk, per his request.
There you go, so you're ahead of me.
We will get all our paperwork in order, we will prepare to go overseas, and we will see you next week on the Happy Half Hour.