Happy Half Hour.
Hello friends, it's time for yet another edition of the Happy half Hour. It feels like it's been a million years.
Since we happy give or take.
Yeah, I think the last time we actually sat in the same place at the same time.
Was it even before the draft?
It was before the draft. It was I think it was between free agency and the draft. It's been a minute.
It's been the week before the draft.
And that's because somebody as soon as the draft was over, decided to go on vacation and leave somebody else here by herself at the control of the switches for a minute.
But peace, have fun.
Yeah, I was like, here you go, we'll see you in a couple of weeks.
Well deserved vacation though.
Yeah, it was a good time. But the work keeps happening. And where the Carolina Panthers stop, I know, it really doesn't. And where the Carolina Panthers are right now where it's kind of that transition point.
It's like, this is the team. You now know what it looks like.
We've seen the ninety people who were out there on the field every day. Next week they'll start in with OTAs. Get everybody out there at the same time doing their thing. But just now that it's all collected and you can kind of get a picture of what's going on, you really do get a sense of what's being built here over the last couple of weeks. I mean, you were boots on the ground for Rookie Minni Camp and that's
kind of where it started. And as you go through that with Tetre McMillan and I still I'm not ready to commit to t mac yet. I may be too old of the humans.
Really want to ask him if he knows who Tracy McGrady is, you or Tim mckayre. I don't know who that is.
Yeah, he was the original the met in Panther's history.
My generation is Tracy McGrady.
Will Well, we'll go through that later. We'll do the history moment later.
But yeah, I mean you were out to Rookie Minnie Camp and seeing McMillan out here, seeing Jimmy Horn out there on the field and the rest of the draft class. What was kind of the vibe that first weekend when you saw him all together.
It was a lot of fun. And you know, as in to just to talk to to t mac about everything because he's coming in as a top ten pick. I arguably the face of this rookie class for the Panthers. And you know, is there any sort of pressure with that? And he said, you know, honestly, not really, Like this is what I'm here to do. This is what I'm supposed to do. And I think you see very very little like actual football during rookie minicamp. It's more drills
with a loose football like structure. And so that was it. But you you can't hide speed, and that's what Jimmy Horn Junior showed during that Rookie Minnie camp. Like you could you could feel the speed coming off of him. That cats just fast and he can hit a different gear. Yeah, now I can be really exciting.
I could throw a lot of Panthers history at you, Jimmy Horn Junior. I'm just gonna go ahead and call my shot now. He is going to be the fan favorite through Rookie Minnie OTAs and training camp in the same way guys like Jim Turner, guys like David get Us were the fan favorites in the day. Those were big guys who could run. He's a little guy who
could run. But he's captured a lot of people's imagination already, and you know, he's kind of When I got back from vacation, I stood out there and watched Ota practice a little bit the last couple of days, and just watching those guys on the field. One of the things you realize, and one of the things that's really stood out to me is, oh my god, there are so many wide receivers.
I think there's twelve.
You wrote about this this week and the competition for the job. But I mean, Adam Feelen remarked on it. I mean, he was the old guy who came back for a year with a young group, and then all of a sudden they kept adding to it during the draft, and I mean to bring a mc millan, to bring a Jimmy Horn into that group. I mean, Adam was you know, I thought it was interesting the way he told you. You know, this is what we needed, This is what we lacked.
Because I mean no disrespect to anyone who has been here in the past, because you NFL players are still have made it a lot farther than a lot of athletes. But there were times, you know, the past year or two where you're kind of conjecturing on who will make the final fifty three, and when you get to the wide receiver unit, it was kind of like, okay, well here's three. I guess this guy could be a four and this guy could be a five. It was a
little bit of that. Now you're going, oh gosh, we've already got six or seven on this list, like who are we cutting? And you know, even guys that were UDF that came in as udfa's still kind of stood out. In Rookie Mini Caamp can Aws mentioned jacolby George Kobe Hudson as two guys that he really really liked. One of them I think actually is not a rookie. I want to say it's somebody that Canals knew from the past. He came in.
Yeah, I mean Bryce and Tremain's THEFA and he's here, you know, along with TJ.
Luthor. You know, it was kind of the end of the.
Depth chart that people don't know as much about.
And Hunter Renfrow was still added in free agency too.
And I think, to me, that's one of the big lessons. And that's one of the things is I stood out there on the practice field this week watching it kind of comes in stark relief.
You know, you see all these.
Dudes out here, and you're like, that's the competition Dan Morgan's talking about, that's what they want to build toward with this roster, because all of a sudden, I mean, you look at this thing and you go, Okay, there's XL, there's McMillan, there's Adam Thielen. All right, check check check. Jalen Coker with Jalen Cocker played a lot of ball for this time last year, and you like him. David Moore, mister dependable, you know who's been with Dave Canalis in
multiple stops. He knows based on having seen it in three different cities, that David Moore can step in, play any position and make a play for you in December when it counts. You know Dan Chisenna, who's a speed guy who came in and made some plays on special teams, caught a couple passes last year.
You know.
Now you add two draft picks to that. Now you add a couple of undrafted guys who they like, and all of a sudden you're talking about WHOA there's nine or ten dudes whose names we just said. There ain't a six jobs, right, And that's the competition that Dan keeps talking about, is he builds his roster out not just for this year, not for last year, not for this year, but to become a sustainable hole.
That's where they want to be. They've found that with wide receiver.
Now, now you've the job you've got to do over the next couple of years is just expand that to the rest of the roster.
And you know what I think is interesting too when you look at this particular wide receiver group and I know you've got it pulled up over there is there were times last year where it was kind of like, okay, well, we want our guys to be versatile, and that was something that Dave talked about a lot, and they were, you know, like you said, David Morgan, play any position you need him to. They moved the land around, they moved to excel around, and you want guys that can
do that. But you've also got guys now that do very specific things.
Yep.
And because of that, you can kind of game plan I would imagine a little bit easier because you know, Jimmy Horn and t mac are two completely different receivers, yes, so what do you do with them? And those guys are different than excel and so it's like you can play around, I think with your chess like you always say, you want a chess piece that you can move around anywhere. But at the same time too, I don't even know chess.
This is all based off a movie. Like you also, you want to have your king, you want to have your queen, you want to have your rook. Does that sound right? That sounds like a chess word. You've still got certain pieces that you need to have in certain places and that can do certain things.
Yeah.
Well, And that's what's interesting to me about Horn is it gives them a chance to expand the playbook a little bit because there was a moment Devin Tompkins was in here a little bit the end of last year and had been with you know, Canalis and Idzi and those guys in Tampa previously. The Jimmy Horn edition gives them an opportunity to take all the stuff they were thinking about doing with him and kind of build on it a lioudle bit.
And that's the thing that's gonna I can tell that's going.
To be the word we use the most this year is build, because they're going to build on that playbook. They're going to add to the stuff they're doing because he does give you a different dimension. I mean, you can look at Hunter Renfro and say, Okay, well he's like Adam Thielen, except you know, you know, Jimmy Horn's a guy who's completely different from everybody else on this roster,
different skill set. So if you can draw some stuff up in the dirt for him, I think it's going to be an interesting addition the for the offense as the hole and give Bryce more stuff to think.
About on that note too, just like talking about things they can build off of with their previous playbook. Talk to Timac about like, you know, obviously, because of the stature and what you do, a lot of people are going to compare you to Mike Evans and what especially what Canalisson is it did with him in Tampa Bay. He is about fifteen pounds lighter than Mike Evans, but they're about the same height. He's obviously still a bigger receiver.
And I said, have you watched a lot of Mike Evans to kind of get yourself ready for this offense? And he goes, I'm sick of watching Mike Evans. That's all I've done and so I think that's something that I'm not saying T's going to come in as a rookie and immediately, you know, post a thousand yards in his first year, and what's Mike Evans going into Like he's trying to get your twelve straight of one thousand yards.
I think JJ Janssen says he's seen that Mike win K logo on the board and Tampa about eight times.
Yeah, I'm not saying that's gonna happen, but I think it is something that they have at least told t back like, look at this, this is some this is the way we can use you.
Yeah, And I think that's the thing he's got. The other thing that's cool that's happening now is you're starting to get a sense of these guys and Tetero's got a little personality about it.
It's a different dude.
I mean, you've already got Excel in there, and in case you people haven't noticed, Xavier league, it's got a little personality of his own.
He's out there and they're two completely different personality.
They are here and here, But it's going to be interesting to see those two kids kind of grow together.
See what this thing looks like here's to come down the road.
But it's uh, it has been fascinating. I mean, I in being out there again. I hesitate having done this as long as I have. I don't want to make global declarations in May and June when guys aren't wearing pads. But that same level of competition that you talk we talked about at wide receiver, you're starting to see at other places.
On the roster too.
I mean defensive line.
Those defensive linemen.
I mean, all of a sudden, you see Dereck Brown out there, and that's the big ad. It's like, Okay, you get to add one hundred million dollar free agent d tackle, a guy who just went to the Pro Bowl set a league record for tackles in a season. Cool, you get to add a Bobby Brown, a Turk Wharton. You go in and bring in Cam Jackson in the fifth round of the draft, and all of a sudden, you see that entire group and it's like, okay, there's one, two, okay,
six jobs, yeah, pick six. And you know last year, I mean you know last year they were bringing guys.
In late in the year just because they were available. It was hard.
It was a bad situation as people got hurt and they were turning guys over left and right. The results were what the results were. But now when you see the fact that you can platoon out almost Ashawn Robinson and Turk Wharton, the fact that you've got Bobby Brown and Dereck Brown, the fact that you've got a young guy in Cam Jackson who's competing for job with Lebrian Ray, with some of the other guys who were here in the past, shy tuttle, you know, all of a sudden,
that room that was not a strength last year. It's too soon to say it's a strength because these guys hadn't been in PAD yet. We hadn't seen what it looks like on the field. But Josie Joe and Trevin Wallace's life's got easier, Yeah, because they got more qualified, large people in front of them.
Yeah. And Cam Jackson certainly is large. You and I joked the other day that people didn't realize how big he was because he spent most of his college career lined up next to Desmond Watson.
Yes, and then you.
See Cam Jackson by his own and you're like, oh, he's still a pretty big guy too. Yeah, so that'd be something that again that's a tough spot for a rookie. That's a bigger upward, that's a bigger learning curve. Then people realize going from college to the NFL in that position or anywhere along the front seven, but especially on the line. So having a little bit of depth there will help him. But excited to see him on the field.
Yeah, no doubt.
And we're gonna see a lot more of all these guys over the next couple of weeks, about three more weeks of OTAs and mandatory mini camp to close it out middle of June.
You know, So I don't want to get to FOOTBALLI here. We're just you know, we're easing into the summer.
We've got about three or four more weeks before we get into that break before training camp and then it becomes real. So's it's definitely going to be interesting to see those guys out there on the field the next couple of weeks, just as they continue to kind of add and grow and get used to each other.
Speaking of it becoming real, you were not in the country when the schedule came out. Have you gotten a chance to look it over and kind of gather your takeaways.
I have gathered my thoughts about.
I would love to hear Darren Gant's thoughts on your schedule.
Here's how players look at schedules. Players want to know.
I just tell you what Derek Brown told me about the schedule.
All right, go ahead.
So before it comes out, we were filming the schedule release. Derek Brown and Robert Hunt were both sitting there and I asked him. I was like, what do y'all care about when it comes out? And they both said, like, almost simultaneously, I just want to know when Green Bay is. They were like, that's the only thing I'll gonna look at.
Yep. Weather is one of the first things.
I mean, players will players will look at when is there Thursday night game? And if so, when when's the bye week? This year it's late, but we've gotten used to late buys around here for the last couple of years, so that's not necessarily a big change. But I think the other thing people look at is where do you start, where do you finish both on the road this year?
Where are you at over the holidays?
And you know you got that Monday night game the Monday before Thanksgiving, so that's gonna be a little bit of a weird week. You'll you know, you're flying across country to play San Francisco on Monday night football.
You Dave Canal has got his respect.
They you know, the Carolina Panthers are out of witness protection. They actually have primetime game this year and people are going to get.
A chance to see them.
To me, the big red light item when I looked to schedule once I returned to the country, believe it or not, in Iceland, no one asked me about the NFL schedule.
That's crazy about the NFL is.
A global They didn't they didn't know when the Panthers were playing the Bucks, And I was like, they play the Bucks in week sixteen and eighteen.
They didn't put it on the side of a sheet and let it marks down the road.
To me, seeing those two Bucks games in the last three, that's like that little secret signal from the league. That's like the Bats signal going up saying we think you're gonna be okay.
And that that could be the NFC South right.
There, because the Bucks are the establishment team in this division. The Bucks are the team that's won it four years and four or five years in a row, and They're the standard that everybody in this division is chasing. So if the league is putting you against them coming down the stretch, they think that might be for a reason.
So I think it's gonna be curious to see how that goes.
Having a Seahawks game sandwiched in the middle there, you know, obviously with the Ties, so many people here and there is going to be interesting. But yeah, the end of that schedule is one of the first things I look at. It's like, when am I going to be cold? What's it look like around the holidays?
That kind of stuff.
I don't think you're going to be cold really much this year.
Yeah, you say that you lucked out.
You say that, I mean we'll be cold when we go to New Orleans regardless.
Because it's always sixty five degrees in that building.
Sitting up at the top of the dome under the ac events. But yeah, you know, you open with the Jaguars, and opening with the Jaguars is a good omen for the Carolina Panthers always.
Paid off well. Darin tell the people. The last two times that Panthers opened against Jacksonville, yeah road.
Yeah, that would be two thousand and three, in twenty fifteen.
Those nose numbers are significant.
Well, what else happened in those years? Oh, that's right, they went to Super Bowls. I mean, I can't believe you and Jake didn't talk about this.
I'm actually shocked we didn't either.
Jake like has It's almost like the toy story Woody Doll to pull his string and he says a certain set of phrases.
Jake's probably got a string that you can pull and.
Say, you know, I came in at halftime against the Jaguars and the three opener and let it come back through that game, win and touchdown to Ricky prol and set us on the course of Super Bowl.
I figured Jake tells that story all the time.
No, I mean Rodney Pete was the starting quarterback for the two thousand and three opener, Jake comes in at halftime, leads to come back. The rest is history. But yeah, I mean that one stood out to me too. It's like, okay, I see you. And then obviously twenty fifteen team started with the Jags as well.
So you know what I think is interesting and this is probably goes back to your point about like the league thinking okay, that this could be a race for the division. There is a division game week three, there's not another division game until week ten.
Yeah, well, and division games later kind of standard. They want, you know, the league wants these games to mean something in week sixteen, seventeen eighteen, you know, for television purposes. So they're trying to keep things as competitive as they can. But I do I look at the Bucks games two out of the last three and say, somebody's trying to tell us something.
Yeah, yeah, I agree, that'll that'll probably be where it's decided that we hope that's where it's decided.
We we shall see, we shall see. One of the one thing I know for sure about schedules is all the things we think we know in May we know nothing, turn out to be silly. You know, you look at him in December. Uh, because the first time somebody gets hurt, somebody gets on a heater, somebody surprises.
Yet you never know how these things are gonna go.
So do you ever watch Faulty Towers?
I did not watch Faulty Towers. That's an English TV show.
It is there's a character on there that's always like, I know nothing, I know nothing.
I could I could go Hogan's Heroes with You in honor of podcast Matt over Here Matt Hogan, our loyal producer.
Hogan's Heroes had and I know nothing.
I know nothing. It's a different Yeah, it's a different time period. So anyway, that's your h that's your obscure pop culture reference for this week's episode. We should get that segment sponsored. Uh but yeah, it's uh, it's that time of year. It's summer, all right, aland tell us about Iceland. I could I could do, Matt and I could do an entire episode of this Matt Today. Yeah, podcast Matt very into Iceland. After my first trip to Iceland, I am now also very into Iceland. I thought I
got on a seven sixty seven. It might have been a spaceship because when I landed, when I landed at Keflovic, I was not sure what planet I was on.
It is.
It's green in places you don't expect. There are rocks everywhere from the volcanoes that just went off. And I drove through a town that had been evacuated and has not been repopulated.
Yet since when was it evacuated?
April?
Oh that's a little scary.
Yeah, Iceland is a beautiful country. If you're into nature, if you're into camping, hiking, all that kind of stuff.
I highly recommend it.
But that that country, I started to say, that planet, that country is active, trying to murder you every second of every day.
I was almost blown off to protect.
Yeah, I've almost gotten blown off a cliff by seventy mile an hour wind gust while looking for puffin.
I saw no.
Puffin that day, but took the ferry down to the Westman Islands, which were lovely, and saw many many puffin.
Which I thought was a cartoon character until you's in a video. No, I didn't think they were real.
Not a cartoon character. I've seen actual puffin.
You know.
The other crazy thing about Iceland is I I was driving around for the first couple of days in a campra van.
Wife and I did nine nights.
I was actually van.
It was outstanding.
I again, I highly recommend it, and want to buy a van just to claim my American I think we.
Have two different ideas of what out standing.
It was tremendous because you can go wherever you want to go, see whatever you want to see. Yeah, But as I'm driving around Iceland, I keep noticing all these tire tracks.
Going off the side of the road.
Huh, And I thought, is this just American tourist jack assery, people out here doing to nuts in the parking lot like it's a Walmart in Arkansas. No, it's because there's a thirty story waterfall on the other side of the road, and as you're driving down the road just kind of looking, it's like, oh, look at that. You know, the next thing you know, you're in an Icelandic ditch. So it was. It was amazing. It was beautiful. The people were good.
The people were a little flinty. I think when you live in conditions that are designed to murder you around the clocks, it makes you hard as a human being. But you know, it was great. The people were fantastic. Here's the other thing.
Okay, hot springs really.
Sit in a thermal pool of forty degrees celsius water for a little bit and go jump in the lake.
It's like double it in ad thirty.
So that's right. You know what I don't do math.
You get in a hot tub, then you jump in a cold lake, and then you have a lovely beverage of your choosing. And that's a pretty good way to relax. Nice, that's a pretty good way to ret So it's uh, but it's Memorial Day weekend, it is.
And you know what that means now that I'm just back from Iceland.
That means you're going to campon.
I'm going to the happiest place on Earth. Baby can'ton Ohio.
Which is a not Iceland. Apparently it's uh.
I think I'm going to get an award from Marriott because I may be the only person on Earth who in a ten day span stays at the Kethlovik Airport Marriott, the Canton, Ohio Courtyard.
And you know some thing that you got like hijackedors.
What you know, a credit card fraud alerts is going to pop up?
Why are you? And Kenton?
Now we're gonna We're gonna go visit with friend of the program Jared Allen, Panthers legend going into the Hall of Fame this year. Of course, Jared Allen played his last season with Carolina Panthers, or at least most off in twenty fifteen. He was not around for that opener against the Jaguars. Question, but yeah, Jared came in a trade midway through the season when Charles Johnson got hurt. They need a dip, so they just go trade for a Hall of Famer, because that's what that team did.
And Jared has flat out said that twenty fifteen it was the last season of a decorated career. But he was like, that's when football became fun for me because he came in from a situation in Chicago not great, to a team that would go fifteen and one into the super Bowl. And so Jared was like, man, this is what it's supposed to feel like. And he's been
very great. I can't wait for you guys to enjoy some of the stuff we collect from him up there, just because he loves talking about being a Carolina Panther, even though it was for just a short time.
Yeah, it made an impression when you know it was a good time.
No doubt. What else you got? Where are you going for Memorial Day?
I'm hitting the road this afternoon and heading to my yearly family reunion. We always get together on Memorial Day weekend and do a big reunion, So it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of like sitting around looking at pictures, telling stories. Sometimes we'll get on foll wheelers and go riding or something. I think somebody's going golfing with a group. I don't think I'll do that, but no, it's fun. I just get to sit around and hang out with my family.
I want to see hill family on four wheelers in Alabama.
You know what we do sometimes because we'll go out in the field and I'll send you a video if we do it this weekend is we do what we call redneck surfing. And it's when you take the mat out of a horse stall, because like you have to
put mats in the bottom of a stall. So you take the mat out of the horse stall and you drill some holes in the front and you run a rope through it and you tie that to the back of the full wheeler and then you have another rope to hold on to and then the full wheeler pulls you around while you stand on the horse mat.
Kids, don't try this at home. That's a terrible idea, and we at the Happy half Hour do not recommend it.
Okay.
Also, like every year, every year, without fail, somebody goes to the emergency room.
See that's what I'm talking about.
And it's never been from redneck sledding.
No redneck surfing in Alabama. Please do not do that, but please have a.
Safe, happy, enjoyable Memorial Day weekend. Please join up us on the other side. We'll talk to you after a couple of days of OTAs the next time we get together on the Happy half Hour