This week on a Happy half Hour.
Every GM dreams about having more stuff. If you've got seven picks, you want eight. If you got eight, you want ten. If you've got nine, you want twelve. So if you can load up on stuff, if you could get somewhere between eight and fifty seven, I think that's something Dan Morgan absolutely would be interested in exploring.
What's up.
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, we are back again. It is Thursday, April seventeenth. We are recording. Let's call this your pre draft Bonanza episode Bonanza Bonanza.
Bonanza.
I mean, then, since we're celebrating, there's no other way. I mean, this episode of the Happy Half Hours, brought to you by our friends at Southern Stars, celebrate the spirit of the Carolinas. They are an official bourbon partner of your Carolina Panthers and frankly an official bourbon partner of Darren Gant. Right now, so maybe as soon.
As erring is the spirit of the Carolina that's.
Right, something like that, or the spirit of the Carolinas is inside of me. Here you go. No, we got a lot. It's almost party time. We are one week out from when all this goes down, yep, and we have got a lot to get through between now and then. Honestly, because it's a week out, you know, most of the mock drafts have been done, most of the work has been done. You and I have been putting stories in the can that are going to roll out days at
a time in advance. And it's almost here. It's that time, and you're about to get on an airplane and go to Green Bay and be right there in the middle of it all.
Yeah. It sneaks up on you every year around this time too, and this is when everything changes. For when everything can change for a team is very exciting. I've got to figure out since we are getting on a plane on Wednesday, Uh, the team returns on Monday, you know, off season programs kind of begin. I've got to figure out when I'm gonna fit in my annual viewing of
draft day. You know, it's not really the draft time until Kevin Costner writes on a post it note, so it's also Easter weekend, you know, it's it's gonna be a busy time, but that's really important.
Yeah, mixing Easter ends always tricky.
I've got who planned that.
Yeah, I've got deviled eggs to make before this weekend gets here. But uh, you're a big devil egg person.
By the way, I'm a big devil degg person. But I don't like it when people put a lot of mustard in theirs.
You know, I think deviled egg might be my number one pick in the Easter food draft.
Really, yeah, I can see that because it goes along with the whole egg thing too. Ham if done right, is good, but it can be done wrong really really easily. You know, we used I think we've usually have like baked beans, potato salad, macaroni, and cheese, but deviled eggs are definitely up there.
Yeah, I'm definitely going deviled egg number one. I might trade up to acquire deviled egg, and I might trade down to acquire even more. My wife asked me the other day, she said, how many devil eggs you plan on making? I was like, well, two dozen. She said, so like a dozen eggs and I said, no eggs.
So that's forty eight deviled egg that's correct. I can do that math, I can do.
Devil people are gonna be at your mom's house and man, I am nine or ten something like that, small gathering and uh and she was like, so four or five, and I said, don't I need deviled eggs to be left over? I just yeah, I'm sitting here like Scrooge McDuck in my pool of gold.
You don't want them left over too much, though.
Find two dozen deviled eggs at a time. So anyway, we should talk about football, because this is a football podcast. That's what they tell me. Yeah, you can you do anything we wanted to make you have got Uh. So you made this a tradition of watching Draft egg before every draft day.
It didn't really like I didn't mean for it to become a tradition. It just kind of did. Like I realized I was watching it because usually it'll be on TV around draft time as well. And then one year I couldn't find it on TV or I missed it, and I couldn't find it on a streaming service. So I bought it on DVD. And now the past like two or three years, I've made sure to watch it usually that Wednesday night, the night before the draft. It
just gets me excited. It gets me pumped because, like, I know, the Draft more than anything is like a TV event at this point, but it is still like fun to kind of get into it and to you know,
imagine what's actually going on in the rooms. I always want like I would love to be a fly on the wall in those rooms and find out, you know how many times each year there is really like a and David Putney just for the heck of it, like one of those moments it's have you ever seen the get and give me David Putney just for the heck of it moment. I'm paraphrasing because there's certain words I feel like we get fined for saving saying.
I feel like I am culturally aware of this movie without ever ha having sat through the entire day.
You've never watched Draft Day.
Not intentionally. I mean I'm aware of the premise. I know how I know the build up and trust me, we we got Scott Fitterer to hold up the post it note in the palm of his hand that sip Rice Young the other year, So we've done all.
That, Darren. It is. It is cheesy. It puts a Hollywood spin on football, there's an unnecessary love story. It is a fantastic movie.
Wow, it's I don't know, maybe, And there are.
So many like cultural references that can be made around draft time to the movie, like and I do appreciate too that, like they didn't make up teams, like everybody in the NFL was completely on board with being it's really an NFL vehicle. But because everybody was on board, Like they filmed scenes at the actual draft, and you know, it's the commissioner, what, it's Roder Goodell walking out to
read a name. And there's also just a moment in there where you just remind yourself that every year at the draft, this is somebody's life on dream coming true.
Well, and that's the key, and a lot's going to change for these individuals and teams in particular, because we, you know, we're gonna do all the build up. We have been doing the build up. I was joking with some friends on a local radio station earlier this week. I said, you know, maybe just maybe we've started too soon.
When we start doing mock drafts around Thanksgiving Thanksgiving, Yeah, that's probably a little early when we start thinking about draft position, because it it does, I mean you always watch draft day, I always try to go into a dark room with no input whatsoever and just kind of vege for five minutes because I feel like I've been
swimming in the school for the last four months. But but anyway, I mean, it's just with all of that build up, there is an excitement, and I think for the Carolina Panthers, there's the realization that they have an opportunity coming up this week to really change this football team for the better. They've got nine to picks right in the first five rounds, including that sweet, sweet number
eight spot that gives them a lot of opportunities. I mean, there's been a lot of talk about this player, that player, but when you just look at having eight picks in the first five rounds for a team that's looking to build on the talent and make those big strides on defense and continue to develop the roster as a whole, I think this weekend's big, big opportunity.
Anytime you have a top ten pick, that's a potential franchise chasing pick, because you either are getting a top ten talent or you're trading back and you're getting a lot of picks to build your team around. So you can really kind of control your own destiny when you're sitting there with a top ten pick, especially when you have units that are as deep as they are this year and you've got so many teams ahead of you
that have very specific needs. That kind of puts you in a really really good position if you're the Panthers at number eight overall and knowing what you.
Need right And listen that Derek Carr news last week when the Saints find out they're starting quarterbacks got a shoulder injury that may or may not preclude him from beginning this season or being able to play, depending on whether he needs surgery or not. It's kind of gone dark since that's an early word that's you know, put
the Saints on everybody's radar in terms of quarterback. And you know, if you if you're in the top ten or if you're on the fringes of the top ten and you want to get a guy and everybody knows it, then they're probably going to be calling Dan Morgan to see what aids worth to them. And you know, I think there are a lot of there are a lot of defensive players that they like, and we've talked about
a lot of them at length here and abroad. Jalen Walker's name is attached to the Carolina Panthers impractically every mock draft, and there reason for that. Jalen Walker's really good in football, and it would be and it would be pretty easy to imagine him slotting right in here for his hometown team. He grew up right up the road in Salisbury. Cheerwine's not a sponsor, but will make an exception for one day to get Salisbury in the house. But I just think that if it's him, that may
makes a lot of sense. But there's a lot of different ways this could go. When we talked to Dan earlier this week at his annual pre draft press conference, which is an exercise in trying to say anything revelatory.
Which he did very well at.
He did a great job. He did a great job. He got asked a lot, though about the idea of trading back, and as tempting as that top ten impact player is, the idea of adding more stuff is appealing because through deals that were made before he became general manager, the Panthers got a big gap between eight and fifty seven, a thirty ninth pick that would have been theirs is still with Chicago. That's the remnant of the Bryce Young trade, the last thing that's hanging out there, you know, keeping
them from being hold. But they did get a late second from the Rams in a trade last year, So you know, I think it's natural and every GM dreams about having more stuff. If you've got seven picks, you want eight. If you got eight, you want ten. If you've got nine, you want twelve. So if you can load up falling stuff, if you could get somewhere between eight and fifty seven, I think that's something Dan Morgan absolutely would be interested in exploring.
And he bought himself a lot of flexibility with what they did in free agency, and he also has a little bit of flexibility considering again kind of just going back to this, considering what their positions of need are and how deep those particular classes are in this year's draft. You know, yes, you want the top ten pick. And if you're sitting there, you know, I think he said, if we're there, like, obviously we're gonna we're gonna take
somebody that's gonna be great. You've got you've still got that game changing talent that you could maybe get in the late teens the twenties with this particular ad rushing class, maybe even with this like safety class, this the trenches, like you've got some flexibility with this particular class, and how it's unfolding this year, which may not be the case next year.
Right, And again, pass rushers are always a scarce commodity. And if you're the Carolina Panthers, yes, you've got dj Wanam Patrick Jones signed this offseason, Davin Clowney is still here. You've got people if you have a chance to add impact to that, that's something every you know, those those guys get picked high for a reason. I still remember a couple of years ago there was a pass rusher
that they had their eyes on. They thought they were going to try to trade up into the late twenties and get and he went, and he went in the middle of the first round. He went about ten twelve spots higher than they were talking about trading to get to to select him. So it's it's always valued commodity. It will be again. But with so many guys at that position this year, that makes this kind of a rare draft. And it makes that idea of Okay, what
if we're picking sixteenth, what if we're picking twentieth. What if we're picking twenty first, You know, can you still get guys that help this team? And I think with the makeup of this year's draft, the answer to that should be yes.
What's gonna They're gonna have to be careful with those two is when you have a position like that, there are times that those players can be very scheme dependent. You know, this defense runs a three four, which means you can also usually drop into a four to three like you've You've gotta make sure that you're not And Dan Morgan knows this, he's not I'm not telling him anything. He doesn't know. You can't just grab an outside linebacker.
You're gonna need to grab, you know, somebody that might could be, you know, a stand up or it's not necessarily going to be a hand in the ground guy, although those exist too, And maybe it is. If you're gonna get a hand in the ground guy, that kind of changes what your defense is gonna look like. There is some scheme dependency that is still there within that.
Class, Yeah, no doubt. And I think even with that, you just got to think about impact. I mean, when you when you're thinking about the Carolina Panthers defense Right now, you're not thinking good thoughts because it was thirty second in all the categories. Last year. Gave up a league record all time league record points allowed, second most yards allowed, third most rush yards allowed. What they need is people who are good at playing defensive football. This guy right here,
Derek Brown, he needs friends. This is the theater of the mind is happening right here. We've got Derek Brown on a stick here in the podcast studio, and uh, once we put this bad boy on video, you'll be able to see all my friends. We've got props and we're gonna use them. Uh, But Derek Brown needs help. Jac Horn needs help. You've got a couple of guys there and those two who are those culture builders? Who are those guys who set the tone for the entire defense?
Now you need somebody at that second level, somebody who is that you know, choose your football cliche of preference war daddy, you know, whatever happens to be. That was. That was one that our friend Dave Canalis used down at the UH and I just did the Dave Canalis on a stick. If you're imaginings, which you should be, I'm having fun with this anytime you've got an opportunity
to have Derek Brown on a stick, you should. But they need guys who can help create a new culture on that defense and they there's a story I'm in the middle of writing right now that'll go up on Panthers dot Com later this afternoon. The way they built the offensive line over the last couple of years kind of informs what they ought to be doing or want to be doing with defense, which is, you put money in it at a certain point to raise the level.
Then you're able to kind of fix a piece or two at a time by saying, Okay, we know we've got to find a guy who's better than this guy, or if we're trying to do this, is there anybody who's better than this guy? So I think getting to that point on defense is going to be easier because there aren't enough of those guys to go around. But J. C. Horn, Dereck Brown need a friend. They need somebody to create a little pressure to help set the to for what needs to be a significant.
Turnaround, and he could take a couple of years, No doubt, it will take a couple of years. So even with the top ten pick, you're not gonna change an entire defense.
Well, this was not a one year fix, and it never was going to be. I don't think anybody had that illusion when Dave Canalis Stan Morgan took over a year ago, and and to see the kind of progress I mean when Dave was talking down at the owners meeting and he said, listen to what we saw out of these guys second half of the year was enough
to make us think there's something to build on. So you know, that's why there's been a lot of clamoring for target for Bryce and where's your Bryce, Where's my Bryce? Here's my Bryce? Would bright would Bryce like a big pass catching target in the first round? Sure he would. Would Bryce like to have somebody like a big old six foot four volleyball playing Ted McMillan, who's a go fetch that's right? He was, Uh, he is a big up and go get it guy was at Arizona and
I could they use one of those guys? Of course they could. And if the right defensive player is not there and they don't trade down or something, I think that's a very real possibility at number eight. But I just keep coming back to that defense, and I keep thinking about Hey, how not great it was last year. When you give up six hundred or when you give up six straight games to close the year of over two hundred rushing yards allowed, that speaks to a problem.
And you know, they did the things in free agency. They added linemen, they added Pat Jones, but they still need dudes, and so we'll see, we'll see how that goes.
Do you do mock drafts to kind of figure out where you think it's gonna lie.
I do. I think I'm like everybody else. I've been looking at mock drafts, thinking about mock drafts, mocking mock drafts for a long time. There seems to be some degree of consensus when you look at the way this top ten of this draft's gonna go. I think there's a general expectation at this point the Camlord is going to be the number one pick going to Tennessee. Then you've got your Travis Hunters, your Abdul Carter's many many people believe that the New England Patriots love Will Campbell.
I mean they need to tackle the tackle from Ellens. They need to tackle.
Many people believe that he's a Mike Vrabel kind of guy. So that kind of blocks in those four And as you go through this thing, you hear all the same names. I mean, you're hearing that Jacksonville. I mean, Jacksonville's got a brand new GM, brand new head coach. So there's a little bit of mystery. But that GM came from the Rams. So how do the Rams do business? They've generally the last couple of years found impact players in the defensive front seven. Yeah, when they've got premium picks.
So maybe the jet edguiers go with Mason Graham the big defensive one. Right, I can see that Michigan. I mean that is that has become the conventional wisdom. Okay, now you get the five and here comes the Raiders, you know, and everybody wants to give them a running back or maybe a tackle, you know. And there's Genti, there's Bimbo Can.
I'll see he's a quarterback.
They could use a lot of things. But you know, I think that as you go through this thing, there's a consensus of at least at first five and what happens in spots six seven is going to have a huge impact on what happens here. Because we were talking about Jalen Walker earlier, and there's been a ton of conversation about Jalen Walker here in Charlotte for the last
little bit. Other teams like him too, you know. And so if the Jacksonmouth Jaguars decide to build that defensive front seven around a guy like that instead of a defensive tackle, then maybe Mason Graham comes into play. If the Raiders see the opportunity to find a guy like that to put with Max Crosby, it's like, oh wow, okay,
imagine what that could be like. And so while Walker has become the object of fascination for so many people, boll, I don't know that we can safely assume that he's absolutely there.
Yeah, that's a good point. He could be off the board already. And then you you really can kind of look at my beat, maybe trading back and dip it into a much bigger bucket, or like you said, going after one of those receivers somebody. We did a video last week with Trevor Second, the draft analysts from PFF. He put a name on my radar that I had, I had heard of, and I'd looked at, but I'd not looked at closely until he said it. And it's as Arakku from Boston College.
I I was gonna say, Donovan say his last name as Arakku.
He was second in the FBS last year, was sixteen and a half sacks. I mean, that's what we don't think about Boston College much unless it's really kind of in relation to Luke Keigley.
I was gonna say, I think about Boston College defensive players quite.
Often unless but this is a guy that's before he's big. He could stand to put on about fifteen to twenty pounds. That's something you know, you get around here with a bunch of Bojangles and that can happen a little bit easier. He counts stand to put on a little way. But he's tall, he's lengthy, he has he has a killer swim move, and clearly it works. He's getting in the backfield sixteen and a half times.
No doubt. And there are a lot of those guys in this year's draft. I mean, when you're talking about you know, Dan talked the other day about liking production. I mean, and I think one of the things that amuses me that we do as a media is we take the most innocuous press conference of the year and try to extrapolate it into oh that means.
You know what's funny is when he said that, I did extravulate it, and I started thinking about who he could be talking about, right, I mean, you loo get a guy like Shamar Stewart who has so much promise but so little production, right.
I mean, Shamar Stewart's got all the testing numbers you'd ever want to see in a defensive end outside linebacker, but he had three sacks in three years, right, And that's not a lot. So I just think when Dan said, oh, yeah, obviously you prefer guys who have had that kind of production. You know, I think people some people were probably crossing names off the list. I think that's probably premature because
if you get to a certain level. You know this still when when my friend Dave Canalis here likes to talk about this team, he uses the word developmental an awful lot and they're good coaches here, you know, on the defensive side of the ball, on a Varro's staff, And I mean Dom Capers is like the godfather of three four outside linebackers. He was here with Lamar Lathan and Kevin Green and had a lot of success in a lot of places with a lot of different guys.
So could they coach up somebody who had those kind of measurables into that player. I like their chances, but yeah, I would caution people against reading too much into any particular thing that falls out of a GM's mouth.
It's also important to remember they could be measuring production different than we do. We're gonna look at a stat sheet, it's just in our nature. But these guys are watching hours upon hours of tape and again, and not just to narrow in on one guy, but for an example, Shamar Stewart. So he sent over and over turn on the tape. You'll see how I affected the game, even if I didn't get a sack. And so you know, what is the what is Jero Evro and Dan Morgan
considering production that maybe a box score is not. And so you know that's something to keep in mind as well.
Yeah, it's gonna be so so much. And again we're gonna get locked in. We're going to talk about that first pick an awful lot. Having those two picks on Friday fifty seven and seventy four give them an opportunity to add guys to this team who can make a difference. I think if if it goes if it goes defense early, I think there's a reasonable expectation they're still in the market for wide receiver. Yeah, and that second third round area, one of those fourths is probably the shelf where you
want to go get a guy like that. So we'll see how all this develops. But it's gonna be a lot, and I want everybody to stay tuned the amount of stuff we've got planned, the amount of stuff that's coming. We're gonna have our live draft show day of the draft. Check the Panthers YouTube channel. Checkpanthers dot com for that. We're gonna have written pieces throughout the next seven days. By the way, it's Jason Baker days away from the draft. You're familiar with Jason.
Baker, right, I feel like I need to be.
Jason Baker was, of course the punter for your Carolina Panthers in the UH late two thousand's, the late oughts to about a l Yeah, from the late adds to eleven. He's the record holder for most punts in franchise history and was part of one of the great trades in Panthers history. He was he was one of two things acquired for one sour brind so when they finally got tat out of here, but it's yeah, it's all coming. We're gonna have it covered Panthers dot Com, our YouTube channel, uh,
throughout the day, We're just gonna reach this point. You know what you do, You watch Draft Day every year to get ready for this. I practice not sleeping because these are long.
You need just sleep to get your energy out.
Yeah, these are long days, and they're days full of content. But it's the exciting time of year because the next time we join you here on the Happy half hour, this team's gonna look a lot different. Yeah, we are gonna have a lot more to talk about. So until then, friends, watch your Draft Day, mock your mock drafts, and we'll see you in a week.