This week on a Happy Half Hour.
We've seen five wins around this place recently and often, and this is a completely different feeling because Rice is the same guy every day and now that he's continued to be the same guy over and over through the bad and the good, that creates a confidence in all the cats around him. What's the 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 a new Year's edition of the Happy Halflower was that that was a New Year's Eve horn? A little?
That sounded like a deranged rooster.
I don't know. It could be. We'll get into the chicken discussion later. Do that all day long.
We don't have three hours, But right now we've got a happy football team to talk about on the Happy Half Hour, which presented as always by our friends at Southern Star, an official bourbon partner of the Carolina Panthers, celebrate the Spirit of the Carolinas.
Spirit of the Carolinas feels pretty good right now.
Maybe we should raise a glass to the twenty twenty four Carolina Panthers Salute in salute in honor of the happiest five and twelve football team I've ever been around in my entire life. It is kind of wild. And this story is going to appear in the next edition of the Ask the Old Guy Mailbag. We got a big year in wrap up editions, very special edition coming at soon on Panthers dot com. But I was out buying socks the other day and this was before. This
was before Bryce turned into a stone cold killer in it. Okay, this is before our quarterback turned into Steph Curry. The guy behind the counter at the local independent merchant where I like to buy my socks says he recognized me, he knew me, and we started talking about the team twenty he was like, he was like, I'm really digging what's going on here. This is good. And that was it. Four and twelve on the heels of a forty eight fourteen loss, and people are still pretty happy about this thing.
And it's because in part of what we saw last Sunday in Atlanta, because this team is pointed in a direction that's kind of hard to arget.
So much to pick through what you just said, But let me start with the most important. You buy your socks from an independent retailer. Do not look at you. You're such a great little small business guy.
I like to sport local independent business. And you know, maybe one day they'll sponsor me and get the full plug on the Happy Half Hour presented by our friends at Southern Star, an official bourbon partner of the Carolina Panthers Carolinas.
I get all of my socks from Santa. They show up at my stocking that year and they get me through the next year. I don't know where they come from.
This local independent merchant. I said. You know, when I was a kid, I used to get annoyed at getting socks for Christmas, And now all I wants good socks and nobody's.
Coming forward to it. That's the only time I get socks every year.
Got to be at any rate to your.
Point, the happiest five and twelve team, And we saw a lot of if you said at the beginning of the year, these are the things we need to see from this team this year to feel like they are moving in the right direction. I feel like they hit pretty much all of them, at least on the offensive side of the ball. And you saw Bryce take a massive step forward. I mean, think about Bryce in week two versus Bryce in Week eighteen. Those are two different people.
Someone made a comment the other day on a podcast. I don't think it would ever happen, but it's an interesting little discussion. Is comeback player of the year. Should it be a guy who was always good and then got hurt and then returned to being good or a guy that we saw come back in the span of
one season. And he said, if it's somebody that truly came back from from you know, not being good and then made himself good, he said, you could almost make an argument that Bryce Young should when't comeback player of the year. I don't think that ever happens, but it's an interesting discussion.
I mean, it's an interesting point. One of my internet friends, klu Haywood out in Arizona, sent me a similar message the other day. He said, can you win comeback player of the year from coming back from what happened the beginning of the season? And I was like, you know, hey, who says no? Because it's a different guy. Yeah, I mean the guy we saw week one week two compared to that guy we saw a Sunday, right I don't
even know that it's the same person. There's just such an incredible difference in the play on the field and all the other stuff comes with it. I mean the posing they hidden, that pose while the ball still in the air, that was that was baller. And I mean Tommy said after the game, he looks to me, he said, that's what ball do. And there were some other guys who had some more colorful ways of saying the fact
that they believe Bryce is that guy now. And nobody was saying that in September, and that was only because Bryce had played to a level to open the door to all those questions. But what we've seen in these last ten weeks, the last ten games his passer rating combined is over one hundred. The first twenty games he appeared in, which goes up to the Andy Dalton car wreck, his passer rating was like seventy one. Just again, are
we playing the same sport? Did somebody explain the rules of football to him in a way that he understood somewhere between week six and seven. I don't know, But all the credit in the world of Bryce for being able to turn that ship around and really change the entire conversation about him. Yea, you know, he went from a guy being a cautionary tale for first round picks to a guy who's like, well, yeah, they took him first overall.
Yeah. You know what I wonder could be part of it too, besides what Rod Wave might would have said to him, is we talked so much this week, and so many guys in the locker room talked this week about how consistent Dave Canalis has been all year, and JJ Jansen made the comment he said, when you have a coach that comes in every day like that, it calms us down as players to know he's not reactionary. And I know somebody's gonna come back with the argument, well,
benching Bryce was reactionary. No, it wasn't. It was a long process, I would imagine to kind of get to that, to get to that decision to bench Bryce. And I think when you have a guy that's always looking over his shoulder, it can create a lot of ups and downs. But when your coach is letting you know, day in and day out, we're gonna keep doing the same thing. Even if you are benched, you're gonna keep doing the same thing every day, it levels you out. Like JJ said,
it kind of calms you down. It levels your breathing. It's like, Okay, no matter what, I'm gonna go out here and i'm gonna do this drill. I'm gonna do this drill. I'm gonna do this drill. If I go into a game and I have a bad drive, I'm still gonna go out there there. You know, there's and he's done that with other players too. You know, Cuba has a fumble, Juba gets the ball again on the
next drive. Things like that. Like that, it's been Okay, we're gonna do the same thing again, and we're not going to get emotional in a bad way just because something happened. And that can calm you down to go, Okay, I'm gonna go out there the next drive and we're gonna do it again.
Yeah. And I think it helps too that that's just kind of Bryce's asthetic anyway. Right, He's mister be the same guy. Every day, He shows up early, he does all the things. He does it with that kind of blank expression on his face sometimes where he doesn't give away what he may be thinking because he's so deep in thought about what he's trying to do. But you know, that's just kind of his deal. Anyway. We've seen a little more of that outward personality type stuff, but that
stuff's always been there. You know, We've got clips from last year that never saw the light of day of postgame win celebrations. There wasn't but two of them, so it ain't hard to find. But we've got clips where you see those glimpses of Bryce even then, where you can tell he's asserting himself and being that guy. There's a lot harder last year when you're two and fifteen and again five and twelve, not great, Bob, But we've
seen five. We've seen five wins around this place recently and often, and this is a completely different feeling because Bryce is the same guy every day and now that he's continued to be the same guy over and over through the bad and the good, that creates a confidence in all the cats around him. I mean, this is still you know, we're going to talk a lot about off season plans and need some priorities. This just in most of the work's going to be done on defense.
You don't break an NFL record for points allowed in the season, you don't finish second all time in total yards allowed. Thanks Saints for being you know, ahead of them on that chart. You're not third all time in rushing yards allowed without making big changes on that side of the ball in terms of personnel. And they're gonna there's still work to be done on offense. I mean, it's it's worth remembering. Bryce put up bl blah blah forty four points in a game in which he didn't
have Chewba Hubbard. He didn't have that one a receiver they traded for him to be his lead dog all off season. He did it in the second half without the first round pick that they took for him to be a more productive quarterback. He's out there doing it with Tommy Trimble and David Moore and Adam Thielen and Jalen Cocher and Dan Chasenna. That's not normal, gang. What Bryce has.
Does it remind you at all? And this I'm reaching it this point, but whatever, let's play this game. Does it remind you of all of what Cam did with his cast of characters.
A little bit? He had that ability to elevate and you know, Bryce did run for two touchdowns the other day. Nobody's comparing him to Cam Newton don't do that to us. But Bryce does have the ability to get out, move around, make some plays with his feet. I don't think that's ever going to be a feature of his game the way it was with Cam, but he's got that mobility that makes things happen. But they both do have that ability to elevate the cast around them. Yeah, and again,
nothing against any of those guys. They're out there busting their tails. They're taking advantage of their opportunities, doing the things coaches tell you to do. They just weren't highly drafted all of them. So I think that's probably a good sign because there will come a point when they'll put more talent around Bryce. There will come a point when Chuba Hubbard's back there behind him again. You know, again, you're doing it without Chewba, You're doing it without your
star arding center from the beginning of the season. You're doing it without Rob Hunt right, probably your your best offensive lineman who is the second alternate to the Pro Bowl. And you're doing it without all those targets that we talked about. So, you know, credit to Bryce for doing that. But it was it was a heck of a game that was I have always said over the course of
this season. Somebody asked me during an interview the other day about when was the moment you knew he had turned it around, and that Cardinals game when Kaiser White drills him in the chest while he's delivering that ball downfield to Tommy Tremble. That was always kind of that past that. It was like, okay, yep, there that one right there, that's when we knew. That passed to Tommy Tremble in the back of the end zone where he just so casually turns said, you.
Flick at the wrist, nailed it.
I mean, it's like me sometimes when I tell a funny joke, my wife laughs at me because she was like, you're looking for more of an audience. You want more people to laugh, And so I just walk around the house Hans raised. You've been a great audience. Thank you so much.
You know what was another one that was just like wow and in the moment, okay, let me back up the throw to Miles for the touchdown. First of all, huge credit to Miles for getting free on mat out of two defenders and getting free so that you know, Bryce was able to kind of hit him. He didn't it wasn't in front of him, but it didn't need to be because Miles had so much room. So it was a perfect marriage between the two of them. Where the press box sits in Atlanta, we were kind of
at an angle. I was watching Miles live and I saw him get free, and it's like, oh, if Bryce gets it there, he's got him.
Yeah.
So I was watching Miles, went back and watched the tape and the clip of all of our great videographers at different parts of the field. That was a hard throw that he made look so incredibly easy. He just floated it. He floated a thirty three yard rainbow right into a bucket, and that was just a really, really impressive throw from that part of the field. So yeah, the whole game.
That throw is very similar to the one very first play of the game in Tampa the other week where he threw it to Adam Thield. We're in that press box. It was coming straight to us and it was like, oh, wow, he just put that in a bucket, didn't Yeah that, you know, I mean, he's had a number of those those big time throws. That's and that's huge for this team.
He leads pff are, He's second in PFF's Big Time Throws behind Joe Burrow.
Yeah, those tight window throws that big time quarterbacks make, he's making and that just allows That was the other theme on clean out Day the other day. There were so many guys saying different versions of it. But you can build now. I think the very biggest thing that's happening for the Carolina Panthers this offseason is they're going to go head coach, gm quarterback the same three guys in those three jobs two years in a row for the first time since two thousand.
That's crazy.
It just doesn't even make any sense. And to not even have to go through everything that's behind us. Everybody who's listening to this podcast is well aware of the last couple of years of Panthers history. But to think you're going back to Cam Newton, Ron Rivera, Marty Hernie the last time they were able to build something year after year, and that's the key you can build. I mean, Dave said it the other day. We've now got all
this stuff that we know Bryce is good at. We start there rather than going into a year where you're trying to figure out what Bryce is good at and work to that point we now start at the two hundred level and you can add to it from there. So it's going to be interesting to see what he looks like next season because everything he showed us over the last ten games is an evidence of, well, yeah, they drafted him first overall.
The GM, head coach, quarterback thing. Back to that for just a minute again, Our friend of the program, J. J. Jenson made a great point on Monday, the People's Lungs, the People's lungsnapper that not only has it been a while since that's happened here, he said, you know, guys, that's rare in the NFL to have all three of those positions on the all together and on the same timeline. The timeline part of it is really kind of I mean, Chicago Bears can't get those three on the same page
to save their lives. And it's rare to have a GM, a head coach, and a quarterback who, for all intentsive purposes, this was a Mulligan rookie year and to have them on the same timeline. So you're not it's not a GM that's looking at one part of the roster and a head coach that's been there for you know, six or seven years, So it's like I've got to win this year to keep my job, and then a rookie quarterback. You've got all three in the same timeline, moving the
same direction and with the same vision. And as JJ said, he said, you've got to take advantage of this window. That's not to say it's a small window. Some people say, well, this is our championship window and it's one year or two. It can be a larger window, but it is a window when you've got three of the most important positions in the building on the same page, the same timeline, moving in the same direction, and so it makes it exciting.
No doubt. There's also, I mean there's also the small matter of with all the work that was done offensively last year bringing in Robin Damien to playguard, you know, there is a question about who's going to play center next year. Austin Corbett, Brady Christians and kve May's all some degree of free agents. So they've got to find somebody to put in that spot. But you feel like, because Ikya Kwani say, it couldn't be one of them, right, I mean, they any of the group of them could
resign and be that guy. But you know you've got Ikiakwanu on one side, Robin Damien at card Taylor Moten looks like. I mean, I've got all the respect in the world for Taylor Moton because I see what he looks like on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and then I see what he looks like on Sunday. That quick on Thursday, that guy looks like he's my age. On Sunday, he looks like one of the best right tackles in the NFL, because that's what he is. I mean, Taylor played at
an exceedingly high level. I think I saw I was looking at some PFF stuff the other day, and I believe he might have been the highest graded Panthers player on offense over the course of the season. He just he's so consistent and so steady. And again, you're kind of coming in new to this. You've covered the Carolina Panthers for about three hundred and seventy five days now. Having that kind of stability on the offensive line with the quarterback, that was one of the shames of the
Cam career. Cam had some elite talent in the middle around him in Ryan Khalil, Trey Turner, some different guys Andrew Norwell, but he never had the tackle talent that is on this team right now. And so it was always a question about who's it going to be, Is at Byron Bell, Is at Matt Khalil who you know. We could go down the list and it ain't a great list. But their stability around Bryce in the middle. He knows Tuba Hubbard's gonna be here for the next
four years. He knows Robin Damien are here for the long term. Dan Morgan says the other day, Icky's a guy you want to build around. You know, he's a guy we want to keep around here long term. And I take Dan at his word, but that's I mean, they're starting at a different place offensively than any of us could have imagined in Week one, and especially after Week one, right, just the idea of what we thought this offense might be, and then what it looked like
in New Orleans against the Saints. To be hanging forty four on anybody, to be three and one in overtime to that's.
An impressive statute.
You know. I mean, these guys have done some work on that side of the ball. Now it's time to do some work on the other side.
And it cracks me up when I like scroll through social media and I do the wrong thing and I read the comments and you see the.
Comments. Never ever read the comments.
It's like a it's just it's a compulsion and you open them up and people are like, all Bryce needs now is a good offensive line. It's like, my brother, we're in week eighteen. Have you not watched a game yet? Yeah, trust me, that ain't the problem.
Nope, that is.
And not to say there's problems, but you know what I mean, Like, that's that's a positive. Ye, it's his offensive line. And can they do that on defense this year? They've got options.
That's that's the goal. And Dan flat out said it when they said they were retaining Gero Everro as defensive coordinator. He said, my job is to get him better players. My job is to put better people around him. Here's the good news. You know what Carolina Panthers need in this season. They needed him a big goal, three hundred and forty pound defensive end who gets about one hundred tackles a year and goes to Pro Bowls. So another
Oh so Derek Brown? Oh yeah, yeah, they get a Derek Brown back next year wouldn't be.
Nice to have a Derek Brown just walk into the building.
Yeah, they do. So getting Derek back on the field like having another top ten pick. It really is. Because he talked the other day, you know, in the locker room as everybody was cleaning out, and says, you know, he's feeling pretty good about being back on the field, back on you know, running on grass and OTAs and that kind of stuff, and getting him back out. I mean, again, the run defense was not great this year, and it was not great in large part because Derek went out
in Week one, didn't come back. Shaq Thompson, your signal caller went out Week four and didn't come back, and that just kind of created that spin cycle of trying to patch things on the fly, and it was not good. So Dan's gonna spend his off season scouting looking at defensive guys, looking at guys like he knows what looks like.
Right.
I was about to say, if you want somebody picking out some dogs on defense, you would want Dan Morgan to be the one doing it.
There was a moment this this season when I was talking to Dan. My computer was sitting there in front of me, and there was a picture on my screen of Dan and Chris Jenkins and Brinson Buckner and Julius Peppers and Mark Fields, and I said, hey, you know, you know, Dan, you go get you four or five of them this offseason. Everything's gonna be okay. And that's his job right now to go find dudes to shore up that side of the ball. And you know again, Dan has built up a little trust in that area.
So where did Chris Jenkins sun land last year?
I do not know where Chris Jenkins Junior ended up. He was the second round big or so. But yeah, I mean that's the thing. They if you could find you another Chris Jenkins to park, I have.
To say you they got to go get Christian Kinson. But it just made me think of it.
But to go up there and park a big body next to Ashan who had really quietly one of the best seasons of anybody around here this year. I think he was seven and a half sacks unless they took that one away. Played a bunch of snaps. All those dudes played a bunch of snaps. Xavier Woods played over twelve hundred snaps of defense.
One of only two defensive players to play one hundred percent of his team.
Snaps, which you read about on Panther Stocks.
That's exactly where I read about it.
There you go.
So ASHN Robinson I think played more third down snaps this year than he has in his entire career.
Yeah, it's uh, he had heck of a season and again it's it's gonna be lost to the sands of time. But you know, there are some things I think you can build from on that defensive side of the ball. JC Horn going too the Pro Bowl. We heard about that last week and he totally deserves that. He's that kind of player when he's available, and he was available this year played he was again, he was probably top twenty five in the league and defensive snaps played despite
missing two games at the end of the year. So it's there's some stuff to work with, but there's more work to be done. But you know what, it's off season. It is we got we got a chance to bring There's still a little work. We're still tying up some of the loose ends, getting the last of the wrap up stuff done in the next couple of days here at Panthers dot Com. But there's gonna come a point, maybe this weekend when the blizzard rolls in when we get a chance to just stop and breathe for a second.
Here's my question to you, faced with your first good Charlotte blizzard. Would you rather or would you prefer to be watching playoff football or be watching non football?
That's a very interesting question. I actually won't be here this weekend. I have a wedding. Maybe you do, that's true. I did actually get a text message about two minutes ago that said inclement weather could affect my upcoming flight, So we'll see. I may be here. I actually prefer this time of year to still go with the playoff football during a blizzard. That's that's kind of you know. You get enough stuff to make, like a chili and
some cookies or something, and settle in very quickly. I will turn to my off season viewing schedule when there's no more football and there's no more holidays, so there's no like Hallmark Christmas movies or anything like that. I turned to what I call like them, like the I don't know the best way to say this, that we're not gonna get in trouble, like a shoot them up show or movie, like you know, I want something like
I want some sort of like spy thriller. I want to watch some like a building blow up, Like I want to like watch people run through the streets of Washington, DC, like way too fast and you know, not calls destruction while they're going like you would think they would in normal life. Yeah, I like to watch something like that. Yeah, it just turns my mind off. And I'll do about two months of that and then I'll flip and start getting ready for the draft.
Yeah, I gotta do it my uh and and again that could be coming this weekend with the winter blast twenty five. I should have been a local news weather guy, but Brad Pavich is so good at the job already. Well look at the weather, but it ain't great. But it's a perfect weekend to stay inside watch a little playoff football if that's your deal. I got a feeling I'm gonna do my postseason tradition, which is to sit
on my couch and watch The Big Lebowski. That's always That's always that moment when I sit on my couch, dead eyed and just watch The Big Lebowski for the for two hours, maybe with or without a white Russian one never knows. But when that happens. It's like, Okay, Darren's in off season mode now, yeah, and I just
you need a little bit of that. We all need a chance to recharge because again, for the first time, not that anybody cares about us, but for the first time in five years around here, we're not going into an off season where January is chewed up with coaching search, GM search. What are you going to do at quarterback? And that's going to allow us to come back fresher. It's gonna allow it them players to come back fresher and and every law. Yeah, yep, everything's everything's coming up
us at the moment. So we got that going. We got a couple of Panthers Legends is finalists in Hall of Fame voting, which is coming up soon. So there's good news all around. Potentially things are things are trending in a positive direction at the moment. And isn't that really all you want?
That's all you can a year, So it's all you can with that.
Will we wish you all a merry blizzard. Don't forget go to the store, get your bread, get your milk, get your eggs, get your white Russians or egg nog or whatever you please to get you through this long weekend. Enjoy it. Enjoy the first weekend of playoffs. We will see you on the other side, on the happy half hour