Happy Half Hour Episode 78: Fat Bear Week

and Darren Gannon. It's that time of the week. This podcast is brought to you by Prowling Vineyards, which is the official wine brand and wine club of the Carolina Panthers. Each handcrafted wine mirrors the panthers bold attitude and the iconic flavors honor the two states we are proud to call home. Plus a portion of the proceeds support the Carolina Panthers charities, So learn more at Prowling Vineyards dot com. All right, it is Thursday morning, guys. How we feeling

a stuff? I feel great. I have my coffee. I got some new disposable cups so I can stop like having to wash the same one over and over. Um, what are we putting in the coffee because I know there was a while where you were on a coffee and lemonade kick. I was, I was, So this is I just got the creamer yesterday. It's an almond sweet cream something like that. It's delicious. Now, something tells me, Darren is a black coffee. You know what, Darren? I am too. Yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't need a

lot of stuff. It's just about the drug. I need caffeine inside me. So it's uh, it's just a delivery. Dre just gets an ivy of Yeah, just shoot it right into my vein every morning. It's like going in getting the old changed. Let's go. So we're gonna talk about everything today. We're gonna talk about the office. We're gonna talk about the defense. We're gonna you know, some good, some bad. But before we do, we're gonna have a

little palate cleanser with Darren. Darren, you told me something right before we came on the air, as if I should know about this, and I'd never heard about it. So can you please explain? It's only the greatest thing on the internet this week It's called fat Bear Week. It's Fat Bear Week. Everybody, let's celebrate um a National park in Alaska takes pictures of its bears every summer

and fall, and then you know the bear. Yeah, the bears try to bulk up for hibernation because you know, if you're not gonna eat for a couple of months, you gotta load up in advance. There's a bear called Otis who wants ate forty two salmon in one day. It's amazing, um But they take before and after pictures of these bears, and you go online, if you just google Fat Bear Week, you can see the fat bears, and you know, you vote for your favorite fat bear.

And I'm not trying to influence democracy. I want everybody to have a voice in this. But the correct fat bear this year is Bear nine oh one. Some of them just have numbers, but Bear nine oh one may or may not be pregnant, and she has loaded up. She is the bestest fat bear of them all. So vote early, vote often. I've today's the day nine o one is on the ballot, so maybe we're in the quarterfinals. I don't know. But Otis is a like a three time champion. I mean, my god, if he forty two

salmon in a day, you ought to do something. But yeah, I think nine oh one is coming strong this year, and she is a big fat bear. I did just google Fat Bear nine oh one, which is not something I ever thought I would google. And I see exactly what you're saying. I hope everyone who's listening is googling as well. She does look pregnant, yes, but awesome but not but and also yes, that's one of those things

my wife taught me. She said, when you start a sentence with I love you, but you don't, don't do that. That's I love you, but you folded my shirts wrong, and I love you anyway. Where where are we fat Beer We? Yeah? I think that's what the whole podcast is going to be about. Right to talk about William the refrigerator Perry that brings it right back to football? Are all ramp out of this? Also, forty salmon in one day? Not all right? I appreciate Darren you setting

the tone. I mean, it is the happy half hour podcast after all. But but now we've got to get to some business. Yeah. Um, look, let's let's talk about the offense here. I mean, I don't know what another transition from Fat Bear Week to the Panthers is so we're just going to talk about the offense. I think if you're listening to this podcast, aside from learning new things about fat Bear and i Oh one, you want

to know what's going on. And I think the two of you have great insight into um the tenor around here, what what people are working on, and what you think. Yes, it's less happy, Uh this week the news hasn't been great. I mean, the offense is not in a good spot right now. And one of the things I've yelled about for years and years and years. When you watch this stuff, when you talk to coaches, when you talk to players, when you watch practice, you realize it's very seldom as

simple as one thing. Absolutely, people want to make it about one thing and it's only this and only that. And listen, there are things that the Carolina Panthers are doing offensively that do not make it easy on Baker Mayfield. But right now, Baker Mayfield is kind of the biggest thing that's not working. I mean, Baker is not the

player they've hope they were going to get. They've all they've been talking for three years about building a defense so that if you can just get league average quarterback play we're not close to league average quarterback play right now, Baker's down near the bottom. I mean, oddly enough. As I was going through this week's stats, he's actually third in the league and fourth quarter passer rating, which is weird. But I think a lot of that was built on

a couple of big plays. The Robbie play that Levis could play, and then that long drive at the end of the Cardinals game the other day, when you know, the Cardinals were up to scores, which makes it a little bit easier. But Baker has not been great. He's not been great on third down. Uh, He's getting past his battered down Atlanta scrimmage. He's tired of hearing people ask him about that already. But until the narrative changes, until he does something to give us something different to

talk about, that's gonna continue to be a thing. Because when passes get batted down the client of scrimmage, they get picked off. Cardinals take short field and score all of a sudden, defense that's been playing really well for the first four weeks is just sitting there exhausted, like, you know, we can hold these guys to field goals, but we're still down now, and it's just until that stuff gets squared away, you don't know you see things.

I mean, I honestly I talked to these people downstairs and they're like, there are moments when it looks right there, moments when it looks put together, but out there on Sundays it hasn't so far. I think one question that the fans have, and I mean maybe a lot of people have, is is why are the passes getting batted down? I don't necessarily think it's a high thing. We saw and Kyler Murray is wick and and shorter than Baker Mayfield.

We've seen like Drew Brees, right, yes, right? Do you have insight for either of you from from talking to people about what that is? And if it's a fixable problem, it can be fixable, and it can be fixed by offensive lineman. I mean, I guess to talk to Austin Corbette the other day about this and and the stuff that they do exactly exactly well. I mean the first thing is, you know, getting out in front of them, making sure you're going at them on their shoulders, keeping

their hands, getting there. It's all about placement and like things like that. One person I did talk to was p J. Walker. He had a lot of just very specific mechanical things like he's like, I mean I've seen this, I know what it is, and he you know, as tangible as an answer he could, He's like arm angles sometimes to look less predictable, um of where exactly it's

going to go. Um. But yeah, a lot of it's where you kind of attack people and you've got to make sure if you see their hands going up to it's like a visual thing. There's a lot of different pieces to it, sounds Brady Christiansen kind of made it sound kind of complicated, you know what I mean, Like

there's so many different factors. I think there are. And that's the thing what Darren said, as we all try to pin it on one thing, but football is a chess game and there's so many different things that go into it. I think it's a great point, exactly exactly. I mean, I think about all of the roles that they have to play, and that's just another one of them. I think in general, I mean, I would say the

offensive line looks pretty good. I mean, you know, in general, but it's just those tiny, tiny little things and and they're very focused on, you know, trying to figure that out. But at the same time, it's like, you know, sometimes they just beat you and they're just all I gotta do. Just hands up. You watch the place happen. It's just so quick. And that's what D linemen are trained to do, is get your hands up. J. J. Watt is someone that's done that for years. And some of it is

some of it can be solved by play calling. You can do certain things, I think one of the things. Yeah, and again, all this stuff is very complicated. But right now, I know people roll their eyes every year when they hear a coach talk about getting back to basics. But right now, Baker looks like a guy was making two men decisions at the line of scrimmage, and could they streamline things for him? Could they make it a little bit?

You know, there's there are a lot of things going on, and when there's a lot of stuff going on, I think what you want to strip down and do is, um, you know, take the things you're good at, do more of those. The stuff you're struggling with, don't worry about that right now. Do the stuff you know you can do. And I think they can. That's the coaching cliche put guys in positions to succeed, and I think that's kind

of where they have to get to right now. They've got to take the things Baker can do well we've seen some of them, and just do more of that. And also it would follow and we've heard um, Matt Rule say this, uh, and players other members of the coaching staff. Um. If you want to the capitalize on things that are done well in this offense is run the ball right. Christian two straight hundred yard games, gets

eight carries last week. That's probably not enough carries out They're running the fewest offensive plays of any team in the league because their last in the league and third down conversion percentage. So again, this thing spirals a little bit, but I think if you people could have a do over, they would probably want to put the ball in Christian's hands more than two times running in the second half

of last week's game. As our friend Jake Delone will say on the radio broadcast, you can't go wrong by putting it in the hands of your best player, or very rarely can you go wrong. Um. Another one another question that I you know, have been hearing a lot and that has been focused on a lot in the press conferences in the media is Baker's footwork. So I wanted to get you guys insight on what you've learned

about that. I was talking to Matt Ryle yesterday for our TV interview and I said, you know, what are you challenging Baker with this week? When you want to see he said, I want his footwork to look the way it does in practice. And we see him in practice as well. So you know, again knowing that all the stuff is way more complicated than than the three of us know or anyone at home knows hypothetically, what are the reasons in which your footwork would look good

in practice but it doesn't in games? Been in a hurry thinking about a lot of stuff. I mean being in a new environment where you don't know. I think that's the biggest thing too. And and listen, if they could you want to talk about getting in a time machine, if you could make this trade in April, so he had O T A S. So he's had plenty of practice time with all these people. You do that, but they trade for him in July for a lot of reasons, and um, you can't do that over now. But it's

just a matter of reps. I think it's one of the things I looked at the other day is Baker has always and somebody made this point in the mail back in a question. You know, he's changed offensive coordinators a lot, and his best numbers came in weeks nine through twelve, you know, I mean, and it makes sense the more you do something, the better you get at it, and getting more reps and getting more comfortable seems to

be a reasonable answer. But at the same time, it's week five o'clocks sticking and you're one in three right now, so you need to get some stuff fixed in a hurry if it's gonna get fixed. And I think it's that goes back to what I was saying earlier about looking like he's in a hurry because he knows what to do, he's been told what to do, he's seen how to do it. But when the game, when he takes a snap from pad elf Wine, all of a sudden, a lot of stuff gets loose. And when you're get

in a hurry, bad things happen. So coaches talk about all the time, and I know, you know Matt's answer is the correct one. You know, be the same guy every day do the things you know that are correct and do them over and over, and things ought to work themselves out. But it's frustrating when you get in the course of a game and things the one thing goes wrong and then it's just this cascading series of problems. Well,

the margin of air is so granular too. I talked with widers eivers coach Joe Daily last week just kind of about you know, we hear building chemistry with receivers all of the time, and last week Matt Role challenged the receivers to you know, just all of these things

like get open and all that. But but I've found Daily's insights so fascinating because, um, I kind of hearing him talk made me think about my marching band roots where it's like they need to be in step, and I mean from like the second, like the way Baker's feet need to mirror the receiver's feet in the way where they know exactly what's going on. It's so much more. It's so just the margin marror is like so tiny, like you can't see my hands, but like I'm just

it's eat batty. He's like there's no space between her and none zero. No, it's just so gran granular is so small, and and when you're like, like Darren said, you know, panicked isn't the word, but just you know, kind of getting in, getting loose, you know, thinking in your head too much. It keeps that from progressing. So you see these throws that you watch them and you're like, where in the world was that going? But it's because

they're they're these tiny little things. And and whenever Joe Dailey told me that, I was like, wait a minute, this makes a lot more sense because you know the receivers there, d J. Moore and Robby Anderson, they're very you know, generally pretty calm, cool, collective people in general. But and you have Baker over here, who's still getting adjusted to things. He's still but but again, like Darren said, it's week five times a chicken, and there hasn't been

marked improvement. There's an argument that things have not gotten any better, if stagnated to worse almost, So it's like where where do you go from that point? But it's it's the walking and step thing was just so fascinating to me. It's like you have to know exactly where the steps are planted, and that's the way to kind of get that chemistry, the word that we always hear, and it's fascinating. And again, the little things make big differences. You go back to that Giants game and you look

at that thing again. One of the things that I think as armchair analysts look at films and read pff gray. It's that kind of thing. You don't know what the play call is. But but if a guy is who is supposed to run a fourteen yard route or break at fourteen yards and he breaks at twelve, he's gonna make his quarterback look like an idiot. And without knowing all that, you know, you know, people say, oh my god, Baker,

did you know? That was horrible? How can he And a lot of times it's not necessarily Baker, and a couple of times early on it wasn't necessarily Baker. But he's also missed. I mean, he has straight up missed some balls and not been accurate. That's what's amazing is he is, you know, effectively a sixty percent career passer or completion percentage guy, and he is not at sixty percent guy right now. As he said, I think it was a week one, there was some excuse between him

and Chi Smith. He said, I'm a very accurate quarterback and so I should put the ball And that is what you would associate with him in college, and um, with the Browns, you know that that is not something that has ever been an issue. And so that's why I appreciate you guys insight into these things because I think that's what what fans are wondering, which is like, on a granular level, what are these things that we hear about that we see in the games, and can

they get fixed? And he talked about it yesterday. I asked him if he kind of compares it to last year in Cleveland when he was hurt and not playing well. But and that's the weird thing about what's going on right now, what he's done over the last four weeks is worse than what he was putting on the streets when he was hurt last year. So that's kind of the red light that indicates it's more than just one thing. Um, because he's not been the same guy we're we're used

to seeing. And I think, uh, he knows that. But he his whole thing yesterday was it's not philosophy, it's not a theory, it's I've got to do X, Y Z in the correct order and then everything will start to That's that's a thing when when Rule talks about we see it on tape. That's that's what he means when they turn on the tape. They're very specific. And Christian was funny, not funny, but insightful talking about it yesterday in the locker room. He's like, you know, they're

not coaching bad football. The stuff they're showing us is correct, it works. It's on us to do it. And that's kind of where they are with Baker and everybody execution. Now that we've had a lot time to do it, let's talk about the defense. So we'll get the unfortunate news out of the way, because there's a lot of optimism going forward with this defense. They are an impressive unit. But unfortunately bad news. First, Jeremy chin Um is on

injured reserve now with a hamstring injury. Darren, what is the what is the latest with that? When you heard you could tell that one wasn't great. Uh. During the game Sunday, in the moment I play he plays six snaps, comes off the field and he tried to get on that bike. He tried to keep it warm him. He tried to move it around and then there was just you could tell there was that recognition of yeah no. Uh.

And it's a shame because Jeremy is such a valuable piece and the way they move him around, do different stuff with him. You know, we saw when he was blitzing and impacting plays early on. I mean, they can do so many things with Jeremy. You don't replace that with one guy. And I don't think they planned to. I mean it's gonna it's gonna be some combination of Miles Hartsfield, Justin Burroughs, maybe even Marquise Blayer, you know, different guys. Sean Chandler is primarily a special teams guy,

but he can play some defense too occasionally. And and they're just going to have to mix and match personnel because you don't replace somebody like Jeremy with one guy. Uh. And it's tough. I mean, that's that's the thing. When you look at this defense for all the spots they've been in, they're pretty good in red zone rankings because they're holding people to field goals when they have to defend short fields, They're they're getting pressure on people. Then

if there aren't big sack numbers. You know, Burns is playing well, frank you luvuh my god, playing out of his mind. Yeah, I mean, and he's he's doing he's beat up and and Frankie's on the injury report with those shoulders again this week. And I think that's just gonna be kind of the way with him because he's a guy who's probably been a snap a game on defense guy, and because the defense is playing a lot of snaps, suddenly he's snap a game guy and that

comes with a physical toll. And Frankie's starting to show some of that right now. But he's also always on the field and always around the ball, so I um, you know, there are a lot of things to latch onto. The They're in a similar spot to places they've been previously. And I don't just mean in twenty and twenty one. I mean I think back to oh two when Rodney Pete was the quarterback, and it's like, we're gonna win games twelve to nine, We're gonna we're gonna play you

sixteen thirteen games and be perfectly tent with it. And that's kind of the spot they have to get themselves to right now. While they're getting stuff stored in on offense. And it should be said that Myles Hartsfield Shohn Chandler came in and played very well. Um, as you said, Jeremy Chin just six naps before you tell that that hamstring immediately, uh something was wrong and did not play most of the game. And this defense looked really good

and performed well without him. And as you said, Justin Burrs now on the active roster from the practice squad, someone who has familiarity, has started a lot of games for this defense and cannot replace Jeremy Chin with just one person, as Darren so eloquently said, But good plan in place going forward considering that he will not be around for at least four weeks potentially more, and the defense is just going to have to continue make him place that's on them and they will. I fully, I

fully believe that. And you know one guy who I always see on the field really being a difference maker. You hear the coaches talk talk about him, but you know when you're down there, standing there, you really see it in real time is Xavier Woods and Augusta. I know you are writing a piece on him or have written a piece on him, depending on when this comes out on Panthers dot com, tell me about what you've

learned about him. Yes, so yesterday in the locker room, it was honestly just fascinating out to speak with J. C. Horne, Dante Jackson, and a little bit of C. J. Henderson, who's known as you know, more of a quiet guy. But um, he even got like some insight on just how much of an impact he has is as a veteran, as an older guys, a guy who've seen a lot but even past you know, his experience and all of that, which is extremely valuable. Everyone was talking about. He just

has a very high football I you. Um, the thing about Xavier, just like as a person is, you know, on the sidelines and in the locker room, he's very you know to himself, he's reserved, he's mature and um. On the field, Hunt told me he's like a completely different person. He is super vocal, very communicative, and the things that he's communicating, I mean, j C. I love the way j C put it. Um. He I don't want to give like the context to j C. You know,

he played three games last year. He's still getting used to the league. He was talking about how you get out, you run out of the tunnel. You have all of the the pageantry, the loud noise, and you go out on defense and everyone's cheering for you. And you can spend all weeks studying for like, you know, Okay, if I see this formation, this is what we're gonna do.

X y Z. He's like, and we study and we know it, and then at that moment you're just like, oh my goodness, you know, the moment is big and everything is loud, and I'm so excited, and he's like an Xavier Woods is back there and he's like a coach on the field and he like, you know, gets us back in line. And in a way, it's like, okay, you see the way the defense is performing, how much of that is truly like Xavier Woods? You know, Hey, j C, this this that you know, it's it's just

hearing the impact that he has. You know, he can calm people down. He has that presence and he's just a completely different animal. And and again, one of the other things j C told me was like he doesn't say a ton, So whenever he's off the field and he's telling you something, you're gonna listen because it's like,

oh my gosh, he's saying this. So he just has that kind of commanding presence to him, and I think that's such a valuable piece in a second ary that is so incredibly young, I mean, second, third, fourth year people just like kind of lining the ways there. I mean, he he has experience, but more than anything, he's just he's intelligent. He Jacey's like he knows a play book better than anybody and he just got here this year, you know. I just I think that's absolutely extremely valuable.

And I think sometimes he can be overshadow because he isn't you know, the Dante Jackson personality or you know, J. C. Horne's kind of status. But he's and also you don't always don't always hear his name called in the game on big plays, but there is. But what he is doing is making sure that defense is playing together and making those big plays. He's the type of a field general, you know, and we've seen a lot of them on these Panthers defenses in the past, and we know exactly,

um how important that is. You know, Luke Keekley, who's doing radio broadcast with us, cannot say enough about him. And I think that that says a lot about the type of person um and the type of leader that he is on the field, along with some of those other guys as well. I can't wait to read that a Gus. You know, it's great. There's all sorts of good stories in there, and J. C. Horne is just an awesome interview to you. Just got to give that shout out. Yes he is, Yes, he is one of

the best voices too. I know that doesn't come across in written articles, but man, that like tenor of his voice, the gravelly thing, It's like, Man, that's a that's a good voice to have. He'd have it. He'd be good on a podcast. A great way to put that audio, But I would listen to an audio, but that's for sure. Well, speaking of defense, we're gonna end this with a live

call from our very own Panther stats guy. Right. Usually Darren goes tracks him down and um and gets the stat of the week will stat of the week, But today we are going to do this live. I cannot wait. What a great way to end this. Okay, we have our very own Panther stats guy on the phone. You're in roots somewhere, Will, Where are you going? Well, this time,

I'm not going to cone To That's right. I'm actually I'm actually going past lukeoff Eligant for all of you South Carolina's small town UH connoisseurs, I think you're just you just make up names. Are these two different places? Is that hyphenated? What are we talking? I think I think it's a hyphen The high school is hyphened. I think that they may fight each other over who has control of the river. I don't know if there's a river, but I think they're on both sides of it. I'm

pulling for the loo. Goffs Augusta seems familiar. I've definitely seen the hyphen. I don't know if it was a high school, but my vague knowledge of South Carolina high school football. Yeah, yeah, that's exciting. So you're just you're just going to this, You're just going to this high school football game. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm going past it. Actually, we're going to uh to the coast to do a little Hurricane Ian clean up. Oh that's awesome. It's awesome. Yeah,

you know, giving back to the community. I love it. I love it. I love it. So you have a stat for us today in the midst of all, you're doing driving, going to clean up, and you're still making time for us with a great defensive stat right. Yeah. So last week Carolina scored a second straight defensive touchdown and consecutive games. Markis Haynes had the first one against the Saints. Frankie Luvu with the pick six against the Cardinals. The last time Caroline has done that was two thousand five.

I think it was Chris Gamble and Will Witherspoon back to back games with a defensive touchdown. And don't even ask me when they've ever done three in a row, because I don't know because I haven't looked it up. But I do know that the last time that they hosted the forty niners in Bank America Stadium, Shack Thompson had a defensive touchdown. I like the sound of that, Will leaving us with some optimism here, Darren. Do you remember those two defensive touchdowns in five? I actually do that.

That was a Chris simms uh interception in that first game, and the Will touchdown, the Will Wheelerspoon touchdown came off Jets legend Brooks Ballinger. Yeah so, and then Augusta just for funzies, how old were you in oh five? Oh five? I turned seven. Okay, all right, I'm out here watching Will Brooks Bollinger in the house. I'm sorry I had to do it. Will. We miss you. Thank you for the stat Please get there safe. And before we let you go, what are your thoughts on fat Bear week?

I mean, that's gotta gotta take it right. We have discussed nine oh one already on this podcast. That was perfect. That that was not planned everybody, that was amazing. It's no better place to leave than that. Who sticks the landing better than panther stags? Oh my gosh, nobody will thank you, Darren Augusta, thank you, and thank you all for listening. We'll see you next week on The Happy Half Hour Podcast