Happy Half Hour Episode 138: German Engineering

This week on a Happy half Hour.

I love many of the things you do. Your cars amazing, your Schnitzel terrific. It's a really short step from Schnitzel to Bojangles beer. Yes, your work with non potato and cabbage vegetables. No but coffee, definitely.

No totsop cow. 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.

Hello friends, and welcome to the Happy Half Hour. We're coming to you live from Charlotte somewhere some day, yeah sometime.

I'm still kind of sorting all that out. We have seen some things, you and I.

Cassidy melt some things, heard some things.

It's been a lot in the last little bit, jamming an eighty one hour dashed back and forth to Munich for a little football game, gave us a lot to talk about, and we're gonna get to it all in this episode of the Happy Half Hour, which as always is brought to you by our friends at Southern Star, an official bourbon partner of the Carolina Panthers. Celebrate the spirit of the Carolinas and we have.

You did that off script, and we have plenty.

To celebrate since we're back home in our own place where we know the things.

Back home offul win, back to back wins going into the bye week. That's about as good of a feeling as you can ask for this time of year.

It really is, And I mean it's a nice break. It's a good time for everybody.

Listen.

I don't think and I'm in the middle of writing a mail bag which will be on the website later on today.

I don't think it's appropriate to think, oh God, they've figured it out or anything like that. But there are little.

Things you're seeing that suggest an identity the Carolina Panthers. Right now, Chuba Hubbard gets an extension and continues to run like he was broke. They step up and play good defense at the time they need it with some of those guys. I mean, you think about Dan Morgan's first off season. He signs Derek Brown, who unfortunately is injured, but he goes out and he signs a bunch of these old heads on defense because they needed to stabilize

You know.

The Vegas game, they played well. They also got some help by Gardner Minshew.

Do you need to call for mat? Can you cut this out?

I'm sorry, I'll.

Just keep talking. Do you are we okay? Did you bring something back from Germany?

Didn't you do the math the other day? That like of the eighty one hours like nineteen he.

Spent eighty one hours going back and forth with Munich nineteen them more on airplanes.

Somebody I got the airplane crud.

Yeah, somebody took a picture of me.

Somebody who works with me took a picture of me sleeping like a dead man on the plane, wearing the eyemask, bundled up in the comfort.

I passed by you at one point and didn't realize it was you until the last second.

Yeah I was. I was just trying to cover myself up.

But anyways, what I was gonna say was Vegas, they made the plays they needed to make to win, got a lot of help by the offense, jumping out ahead so much. And then the Saints sort of the same thing, you know, made the plays when they needed to make them. The Giants game again got some help by Daniel Jones, absolutely, and the run defense still has some holes that need to be addressed. A lot of that probably could be addressed next year by Derek Brown just being back on

You know, one of.

Them was able to get the pressure and the other one the sack or vice versa. And I think one of them is actually the only one who got the sack between the two of those, but still you saw them both. You saw Clowny play a little freer by having DJ Wanham on the other side. And then you saw Josie Jewels start to just kind of become that outlaw taking things from people that he was previously in Denver.

You there, you go, do we have to pay for the copyright of that?

I hope not.

And then with a Shawn Robinson in the middle, and again you know, Shy Tuttle all the credit to him for stepping up, and Derek browns apsis and kind of taking that over as well. But you're starting to see what this defense is supposed to look like. And I think you could probably foresee the rest of this season them taking those steps and putting it together. And if a lot of these people return next year, I think you can really see what Dan Morgan had in mind.

Yeah, I think you And that's the thing you're seeing. You're seeing the things coming into play. I mean, you see what the plan was supposed to look like. Now again, you saw it for the first time in week ten, right, and that's not ideal, and you're already missing a couple of really key pieces.

But at the same time, you're getting there.

You're getting there, and I think that's okay. I think progress is okay. That's Dave Canal just keeps talking about that, building off progress, building off you know, little things you're doing well, and that's how you build something that's valuable and lasting.

So it was a good it was a great week.

And credit to j want them yep Man for stepping out there in his first game. Usually in your first game back, you got to shake the rust off. He came out like a missile ready to go. I think he had six tackles, a sack, two tackles for lost, two quarterback curries. I don't even know how many pressures he had.

He was all over the place.

The amazing thing to me was that he played fifty snaps period, because the dude who hadn't played football in almost eleven months to come in. Usually you want to pitch count those guys and keep them in some kind of with some kind of restraint, but there was not really a lot of that, and and he just he was out there balling, and that that makes a huge difference for those guys.

The thing in Avero talks about this all the time.

To play the defense the way they want to play it, you've got to have a guy outside, and it gets even better if you've got two guys, right, And now they finally got the two guys they were counting on on the field together. And I don't think it's an accident that that's when you saw that step up in the entire defensive level, because you know, no disrespect to Charles Harris, DJ Johnson, any of the other dudes who've been out there on the other side, but it's just different.

Yeah, it was fun to watch, and like we said, there's still things to fix, but they're always a little bit more fun to fix after a win than a lost.

Yeah, and we'll get to that.

I mean, we'll have time when we get back next week, we'll talk more. Next week will be more footballie. I think it's worth visiting for a moment here on the podcast, just with the fact that we were just in Germany.

That was wild.

I mean, the the atmosphere. We were joking about it. It's a completely different vibe. For one thing for us, because I know we are the most important part of this production. It's an open air press box in Germany. That's kind of the European standard. This closed in glass press seeding area is not something they do in big European soccer stadium.

Deal with it.

Yeah, And so we were dressed for the elements and we were out there in them. But being in that, being in that vibe was just a really neat thing because the German fans are super into it. Hey, it's not just a curiosity. There are a lot of people who really dig on football and are super into it. So they're all into the rhythms of the game at the right time.

Sprice talked about that.

He so like they were being loud, you know, when the other team had the ball on third down, so in their job, it was like a home field advantage for us, even though we were you know however many miles away from that only.

Tried to do the wave once.

Yeah, and it's good.

And maybe my favorite thing about the German fans is they love to sing. Oh my god, even when the music goes off, they continued to sing. And I just find this charming and adorable.

It was so cool when they played Country Roads, something that the German fans apparently have latched onto from the NFL being there. It was very much like that soccer atmosphere where they just keep going and it's sort of a sing along. When they played Country Roads and the music cut out because the Giants went back over offense, went back on offense, and the Giants were running a play and the crowd kept singing. That may have been one of the top five coolest sports moments I've ever

Yeah, it really was a super cool thing for me.

And I was sitting there even before the game when they pull out the big flags start doing two national anthems and stuff, and I just kind of caught myself. I'm old and jaded and cynical and all that, and I've been doing this for a million years, but I was sitting there thinking, man, the first thing you ever covered in exchange for money was in East Burke McDowell

I mean, you know what, the most charming moment of the game was I'm surprised you haven't brought this up yet because you loved it.

When it happened.

What's that?

So they gave all the fans like placards to hold up so that they could make the German and American flags in the NFL symbols. They then took those those pieces of what I assuming are glossy cardboard, yep or something of the sort, like strong card stock, and turn them into paper airplanes.

And they were.

Throwing them on the field and throwing them around. I think at one point it hit Johnny Hecker.

Maybe it was Tommy Tremble at Tommy Tremble, Yeah, Tommy was standing over there next to I in Thomas and the guys the rest of the tight ends, and one of them pegged him in the head. So it was great. I'm all for German engineering, but it's cool. I those guys had it figured out. And every time the paper airplane would get near the field, you'd hear the crowd start to lean into it.

They'd be like, come on, one landed.

In the end zone, and every bay start they say come on in German, Yeah, said you know. The one thing I figured out is that there's certain things that transcend the barriers of language.

We're all one people.

I walked whatever day of the week it was when we got there. I just needed a little refreshment. So I wandered down the street from our hotel found a little neighborhood pub and I walked in and looked. The guy looked at me, and I said, pilsner. Sure, And so he said words that I assume indicated the amount of money he wanted his exchange for the pilsner. So I just held up my credit card and handed it to him and he went, no card, minimum twenty.

Get another pills there.

I said, two pilsners, and he just kind of looked at me and he went three.

And I said, okay, fine, three.

So I stood there in this little bar as the only English speaker in the place, and it was amazing because it was a very small.

Space ab outside of this podcast studio.

They had a little train going around the top of the bar that delivered shots of schnops to people, and the jukebox was just full of eighties classic rock. I mean it was it was Rick Springfield, it was Toto, it was Journey, it was def Leppard and I was like, this is amazing. This must be what Reagan felt like in eighty nine.

I have breached the cultural gap. Here we are one people finally.

Uh oh, this was a good This was a good thing. But I put a picture the coasters. I put a picture of it on Twitter the other day and it's written in German and it's got a man just kind of collapsed with his head down on the bar, and I said, I don't really know what this says, but I feel this right now because it was It was a good time, but it was a it was a long time.

It was something else just wanted to point out too, because it was a lot of fun. It is The Panther's put on a lot of different events around Old Town Munich and got to go hang out at some of those on Friday and Saturdayay.

You saw Steve Smith almost create an international.

I did see Germany is going to put out a travel warning next time Steve Smith crosses into the country lines. But that was a lot of fun. I think I texted you at one point because I was in the van with Steve Smith, Julius Peppers, Luke Keigley and John Beeson and we were driving down to Old Towns, a twenty minute ride, and just in that twenty minutes to kind of hear some of the stories they were telling, and you know, just it was a bunch of old friends back together again in a car. The first time

Yeah.

So it was a lot of fun just to hang out with those legends for two days and kind of hear their stories and and really understand why they are so special to the Panthers fan base. Yeah, and get that experience firsthand.

And I think our new friends in Germany are picking up on that too. I mean they're kind of you know, we got a product to sell. They you know, people were digging on Luke Keekley tapping the keg.

Was lots of beers flooding.

There were there were beers. There were At one.

Point I walked into the Panthers Pub, like the Panthers had an official pub set up, and that's where they were handing out the beers every day, and I walked in with them and they kind of like created a path for him because we had to go through to the back. Felt a little like walking in with the Beatles to their concert. Sure, and people were going crazy. And I walked past one guy and I heard him say to his wife, Oh my god, that was Steve Smith, like just like shocked, like, oh my god, look at

It definitely was.

It was an experience to remember, to be sure, it is also an experience to be endured.

Yeah, I'm still catching.

We all came back sick.

Yeah, we're all still a little dragging. I love our German friends. They're great at so many things. Coffees not one of them.

No, Oh my gosh, Darren. Everybody on our team made fun of me because I was like, get thee to a Starbucks. And I found a Starbucks finally, after we had been there for about thirty six hours. It was like it was like somebody crawling through a desert looking for water. I was just like vanilla latte.

See, and I have remarkably low standards for coffee.

I usually I don't.

Even need the coffee to taste good. I just need it to like have something to it.

I usually begin the day with a starter cup of whatever's left over in the pot from the previous day, and I just warm it up, because it takes less time to nuke that one cup of coffee than it does to make an entire pot. So I come in Monday when I finally woke up at like, you know, we get in at three ish. You know, it was like eight forty five when I woke up ish, and I just poured whatever was in the pot and drank,

Today.

I didn't make a coffee while I was here, and I was like, so that's the coffee I left here on Thursday. And I guess that cup of coffee was better than any coffee I had in the entire country of Germany. So I love many of the things you do. Your car's amazing, Your schnitzel terrific. It's a really short step from schnitzel to bojangle beer.

Yes, engineering, of course, small talk.

No coffee, your work with non potato and cabbage vegetables, No, but coffee definitely.

Know, you know, everybody knows what they do well and knows what they don't do well. And Germany knows they don't do coffee well.

If they don't care, yeah, I guess so. But cool experience. I'm ready to go back. I want to go somewhere else cool. Where can we go?

Oh my gosh, where would you like? Where else would you like to see an international NFL game?

I would?

I would get down in South America. I kind of envy those guys who got to go to Brazil this year. That's a new experience, and I just want to go see more stuff.

One of the things and I didn't even I got to do something with this.

At some point I talked to a bunch of guys leading into the trip about the theory of travel, and one of the things I believe is once you've done it once, you just want to do it over and over and over again. Like I left the country for the first time about a year and a half ago. Oh really, wife and I took an extended you know, delayed honeymoon. We did Paris, Amsterdam, London and it was amazing. And now I'm like, I want to go somewhere else. I want to get on a train, I want to

There's nothing quite like the rush of walking up to a counter with your passport and being like, I'm going somewhere.

Yeah, exactly, and I just like, you know, there's a curiosity of I wonder what we're going to see here, and you're going to see something you've never experienced before. That's the way it was for me in Munich. I mean, Munich is a very old center city. You know, it's very historic. It's got a lot of stuff that's been there for centuries. And despite the fact that wars have happened and knocked a lot of it down, but it's just such a cool cultural experience. And I think once

Absolutely, that was something that I was very very fortunate to be kind of raised with that mindset too, and fortunate to get to do it my first out of the country trip. I was eleven years old and we went to the Philippines that at one point meant twenty two hours straight on a plane that was the Detroit to Tokyo Hall.

Yeah, so after that, any flight seems doable.

And there was probably no Wi Fi or n seat entertainment on that one either were there.

It was a lot of like playing tic tac toe with my memo. But that was.

A big trip at a young age that you know, had some culture shocked to it, but also kind of sparked that love of traveling, like you said, and going to see what you can see in other parts of the world.

Yeah, no doubt.

And now that we're spreading the message of the Carolina Panthers, I would be remiss if I did not say there are some real heroes on this trip besides Juba Hubbard and dj Wanam and Ashawn Robinson and Josie Jewel, all of our folks in marketing who've been making this trip for the last year and a half to kind of set the stage for this trip or one thing. But the the ops people in this building, the people who

You know.

Dave kind of did this a little bit during his press conference the other day. But the people who pack the bus, the people who arrange the bus, the people who arrange you know, international transport, and how to get a football team through customs, how to feed a football team when they're over there, how to secure a hotel that a football state team is staying in in a different country.

There are so many people.

It's a small circus moving to town to town, and it's complicated enough when we're going to Atlanta and Philadelphia and Tampa Bay, as we'll be doing in the back half of the season, but to do it overseas just adds a layer. And so many many people in this building did such an incredible job making that all come together.

Everything went off flawlessly, and that's not something you can usually say. And to your point, to do it in another country was impressive. From the pub keg taps to the pep rallies they had at the FanFest. Simply getting from the hotel to practice on Friday. Everything went flawlessly and so yes, and like you said, Dave mentioned a few names, but credit to everyone that was a part of that. I think the only thing was is Tuba

Yeah, and I got to the bottom of that one too. It was wild.

I mean, Tuba is such a creature of habit. He has to catch balls from the jugs machine three hours before kickoff every single week, and his jugs machine wasn't there on Sunday morning, so he was looking around. Thankfully, Mac Whitehurst and Greg Almond from the equipment staff were able to.

Keep him hooking.

His name is Greg Almond.

Yeah, his name is Greg. That's awesome, like the nut, not like the.

Oh, not like the Brothers.

Yeah, not like no, but he they were able to get him taken care of. Tuba had a career high game, so obviously everything went well.

He may never use the jugs machine again.

I suspect Tube is going to be right back on that jugs machine as soon as he can. It was actually at practice on Friday at the Bayron, Munich facility. It just never made the trip across town to the stadium. So that was an NFL provided jugs machine. They told us we didn't have to bring our own, and so we relied on them and it got almost there, but not all the way to.

The Staateum, so Cuba had improvise.

But again, as I wrote on Panthers dot com, it worked out right, and everything.

Worked out that entire trip. I mean, it was just it was fantastic.

I mean, the team won, everybody's feeling good, fans are singing the songs despite a little hypothermia.

I was able to make it.

Through hypothermia in forty seven degrees.

Yeah you know, I told you while we were sitting in the breast box, I'm a delicate flower. I need to be preserved from the element. So at any rate, listen, it's the bye week. We've all got a chance to take a breath, and I intend to do it. We'll get back to our normal high jinks. We'll get back to the jukebox next week.

Well, we have to wait till next week because someone didn't do their homework.

No he didn't. I was.

I was too busy listening to eighties classic rock with my new German friends. Yeah, so we'll get we'll get back to all that normal stuff next week.

We'll get back to football next week.

Oh, by the way, some cat named Patrick Mahomes is on his way here, so we'll get to all that when we check in with you again on the Happy half Hour.

Bye.