Happy Half Hour Episode 84: Up In The Air

welcome to the Happy Half Hour. We are thirty three percent less happy this week because Kristin Balboni special assignment. But I'm Darren Gant, she's Augusta Stone, and we are here to give you your midweek fix of Carolina Panthers football and Augusta. One of the things I think sometimes we get caught up in the day today of what we do and what's going on and in that moment, and sometimes it's hard to remember what you've actually seen

here in your first NFL season. I mean again, we got caught up the other day and there's news and there's another quarterback change and Baker Mayfield's back under center and all this. But I think it's worth recapping since the start of the season. This is now four quarterback injuries, three quarterbacks who have played, one of whom is not even here anymore, and at least one more who is probably going to get his first action here coming soon

in the way in the next little bit. Oh by the way, a coaching change and a couple of star offensive players traded. Other than that, totally normal, exactly exactly. I mean it was we were talking about it yesterday. Is like sometimes and I appreciate this compliment coming from you, truly, it's like sometimes I have to sit back and be like, wait a minute, like you've never been through this normally,

and this is about as abnormal as it gets. But I will say the fun part about that is it keeps you on your toes, like, well, it's hard to slip into monotony whenever you don't really know what's going to come up. And you know, some days I'll be driving over and I'll see a Slack message. I'll be like, oh, okay, that's happening today, got it, and it's I've you know, it's still exciting, right, but you almost become numb to

the crazy news. I think there was a point probably in October where I was just like, you know what, like nothing really surprises me anymore. And I think that's awesome for like the first year, you know, you get rugged in that way. It's almost like a rugged nous. But um no, absolutely chaotic. It's funny. I want to

sit back. I wish there was a way to like close my eyes and replay my life, go back to training camp, and to see what we see now when we walk out on the practice field versus what we saw over there, just in terms of personnel, and be like, this is normal and you will react to this and you will survive with everything intact. It's crazy. And I mean when we were in Spartanburg and Baker Mayfield was in the midst of winning a competition for a starting job.

If you would have said, all right, Baker Mayfield starting and week eleven, you would have said, of course he is. Yeah, sure he won the competition. That's you know, normal, right, But nothing is normal around here lately, and it's interesting and I think it's gonna be fascinating see how the guy responds. I mean I I have told and I

told people around Baker during the preseason. I worked very hard to not get caught up in what I heard about Baker or what other people said about Baker, and I said, you know, I'm just gonna take this guy based on what I see here in Charlotte and what he does. And and listen, Baker knows that everybody's watching him. You aren't on commercials as often as he is. By

the way, the elephant one is really funny. The elephant one is that the Heisman House, in the Heisman House, where he says the elephant in the room, Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, Well I was gonna say too. It's like the celebrity of Baker Mayfield. It's when you actually get to know him, when you talk to him, he is He is just a guy. And that's something that when he came here. You know, I wasn't sure how that would how that

would emerge either. But the way he's handled, you know, being behind p J. Walker because you said, oh yeah, he's starting in week eleven. He's starting in week eleven because p J Walker got hurt. Sure, who thought we'd be saying that and not anywhere? Um so you know that's that's why we see him. But um no, I and I wanted to highlight too. He has been a really good teammate, like he really has. He watching him

in practice, he was always engaged. I mean, you know whatever the headbudding thing, how engaged you want to say that is. I mean, that's a whole I I see both sides of that where it's like, oh my goodness, Baker, what are you doing? But he he's like, I do it. And what was in the press conference yesterday? I was watching it, Uh he said, you know, they're gonna get

it either way. I love it. It's just that he's he's a very engaged teammate and at that point he could have never started again and and that didn't matter. So I think that's like something to be to be said about a guy who comes in is on TV, is Baker Mayfield, former number one overall pick and and he's over here behind then XTFL guy. You know, I think that's kind of cool. And listen. Baker Mayfield is a smart guy. Baker has an awareness about him, uh

that you don't often see. I mean, and and part of that comes from You're you're a Heisman winner, You've been on an national stage at Oklahoma. People been looking at you for a long time. And he does not. He does not rebuke the attention. He enjoys it. Uh, He's used to being in the focus of the camera. And I think he also knows, whether he talks about it or not, that how he handles this year, whether he's playing or not, it's going to go a long

way toward um his career future. I mean, it's the first five weeks did not go the way anybody wanted it to, not Baker Mayfield, not the Carolina Panthers, not people who are no longer employed here. And you know, because of that, I think there's been a big reset and Baker is smart enough to know that, based on the film he's put out so far, if he's going to play in the NFL next year, it's probably gonna

be as somebody's backup. And so I think behaving as a mature adult, you know, healthy backup quarterback is something he needed show people because again, the perception of football players take route and they take hold in every front office in the NFL, and people think they know him based on what they see on TV. And I think it was important for him to show, hey, I am

a good teammate too, and he has been. I mean, just in talking to guys talking to cade May's about the way he you know, reacts after the headbuts and what he's doing on the sideline and stuff. He does have a genuine appreciation for those guys in that locker room when he and I don't want to present this as Baker's trying to sell something. He kind of is um but the affection within that locker room is genuine. I mean, they do like the fact that he's got

an energy about him. Deante Foreman was laughing. They teased each other about Texas Oklahoma games when Baker first got here and and Baker's like, it's okay, now we can be cool. Well, it's also like you said, like, I mean, Baker's smart. The guys in the locker anymore smart too. If they if they sense that it was a job to him or it was we're I'm, you know, putting on this space so that you know, I can project some sort of image like there's a genuineness to it.

They would see right through and you would see it in the locker room that they see right through it. I think these last few weeks, whenever he was behind p J fully healthy backing up, was it to three weeks there. I think that was a pivotal moment, if as any, when it comes to just you know, be creating that atmosphere, creating that trust with your teammates. Because because that that was a there was a there was an opportunity for him to be miffed about that situation.

Sure he could be frustrated if I'm healthy now. And we saw how hard he fought back from that angle, you know, I mean he was out there running around at practice wanting to be like like please, you know, let me play, let me play. So I think that those three weeks were as pivotal as any when it comes to just behaving. And I mean he's a grown man. But you know what I mean. And I always tell people, I mean, you and I are reporters. We are classically trained to sniff out a phony. The but we we

also don't know these people. We see them for forty five minutes three or four times a week, and then out on the practice field during games, we don't know them. A locker room will sniff out of phony, the guys in that room will. If you're not genuine, you don't get the same kind of reaction. And and I will say to Baker's credit, I believe, based on the reaction of others around him, that that stuff on the sidelines of him wanting to be supportive, of him wanting to

uh kind of fit in, is real. And and I've talked to players in there who believe. They're like, no, it's it's not an act. It's pretty legit. So, you know, good for Baker for being a mature adult. Uh. Now it is time for Baker Mayfield to actually play some more football. And you know, I think it's incumbent on him to play it pretty well or else. The Sam Donald there, I probably will end up starting sooner rather

than later. I said the other day in the mail bag, I just feel like Sam's going to play, whether it's by accident or design, because that's just how this year is going. But Steve Wilkes said yesterday, you know, hey, they do want to see saying him at some point. They do want to mix him in. And you know, Sam's another one of those guys. Would he have preferred to have been playing the whole time, of course he would, everybody would, but Sam has you know, Sam doesn't have

the same personality. He's not a big head butt guy. Um, as Paul Blart said, nobody wins with a head butt, and I think Sam has taken that to heart. But um yeah, I mean Sam's going to get an opportunity there soon. But I I do think it's interesting and watching the way Steve Wilkes has handled this team, He's just like, listen, we're trying to win a game. And so I don't think he's beholden to any of these

quarterbacks necessarily. I mean, he's an interim coach and he's basically got three interim quarterbacks on his roster right now. It's true, It's true. I mean I think about I think back to Cincinnati, which, granted that was a special situation, because when you're down by five touchdowns coming out of half, why not make a switch with how PJ have been playing? And I'm not over here speaking into existence or manifesting

anything like that happening in Baltimore. However, if that happens and you're you're running off the wheels essentially, I mean knowing that you have a guy like Steve Wilkes who is kind of, you know, very fluid with that situation. I mean I asked him before we even knew about the PJ Walker injury. Whenever he told us that Walker would be starting, what was this Friday? My week is

all messed up. We played on Thursday. But when I asked some on Friday, you know, I was like, okay, so you're thinking week by week with the starting quarterbacks. What you know, like, is that going to be something moving forward? You know, like, oh, it's PJ this week, but maybe you know blah blah blah, and he's he's shown it in practice and in his words that it's just you know, opponent by opponent, week by week. This is the guy I'm going to send out here here here.

It's kind of an interesting philosophy on it. But when you are an interim coach with three quarterbacks that I mean, we've seen them all in different ways. We haven't seen Sam Donald this year. That's something that for some reason in my head did not click. I think I'm having issues splitting the regular season with the preseason. But I was like, dang, Sam Donald really hasn't played regular season ball since last year. That hit me. I was like, man,

because the time flies. So that's something also to put into into perspective. It's like, we bring Sam Donald out it's what week O leven he hasn't played since. That's something to think about. But there's there's just so many different factors, and I think that's something advantageous to him as an interim coach, the way that he is being

able to be fluid. I mean, he just wants to win, doesn't matter who's out there, and it's going to use all the tools in his arsenal, regardless of how sharp they are, well where they are, as long as they're healthy, which is the key there because the ankles he getting

hurt here in Charlotte's Uh, that's definitely a thing. And I think no matter which one of those guys is in there, one of the more important factors for this team as a whole, and probably the reason they've been able to get a couple of wins here at home lately is affected Everything around the quarterback is a little more settled, which you don't expect when you trade Christian McCaffrey. Um, Robbie was a different sort of deal. Robbie wouldn't produce

him before he was traded, and he was unhappy. So that's just kind of cleared the way and I did a good job the other day augusta breaking down kind of where they were and where they are and the first five and the next five are pretty different exactly, Thank you, first of all. And also, I mean it's it's and again one of those things where you're missing

Christian McCaffrey. Whatever anyone thinks about pat Elfly, I'm missing us or losing a center, and Bradley Bowseman is no you know, drop off, but that's still you know, a difference in chemistry and and there were some things about training camp and that was a really contested battle anyway before Bradley Boseman got her um week two of the preseason.

So it's one of those things where I mean, it was kind of a toss up, but but you switch those pivotal positions and you're just kind of like, you wouldn't expect the offense to be performing better in general around a quarterback, and yet with Deonte Foreman, Bradley Bowseman versus Christian McCaffrey pat Elfine, the numbers are there for the running game. And then then that could also be a testament to Steve Wilkes when he came in, that was the first thing he said. He was like we're

establishing the run, we're defending the run. That is like the proorities under Wilkes, and he's really put his money where his mouth is. The thing is about the Panthers when they've had success recently in the last was it four or five games, whichever I wrote about, it's always it's been through running, and it's been through Deonta Foreman, who hidden Jim that we didn't really even know we had here in care of the team, didn't know they

had in Carolina until until Christian McCaffrey left. And it was because you know, when you have a guy like Christian McCaffrey on the roster, you're gonna want to play him a lot. And then you just don't see a lot of For me, you don't see a lot of Cuba. You didn't see a lot of raheem Blacks here who came in week three. I think. So you have these guys who can do the thing, especially with Deonte Foreman, I mean, goodness, gracious, he just runs over Atlanta like

his Atlanta stats are insane. Three hundred yard games in the last four weeks, four touchdowns and and it's not complicated. I uh, it kind of reminds me and we'll see. I mean, one of the things I constantly have to remind myself is there's seven more of these. Um, this thing is only a little over halfway finished, so there's still a lot of football to be played. But right now, you know me, it goes to I'm contract actually obligated

to talk about something that happened fifteen or twenty years ago. Um, once upon a time there was a guy named Nick Goings, and Nick Goings was about the third or fourth running back or option in the backfield, and everybody else got hurt. And I remember having conversations with then offensive coordinator Dan Henning because when Stephen Davison, Deshaun Foster gets hurt, that's that's big time. That's you know, high level stuff. And you're down to Nick Goings and it's sort of like, oh,

what can you possibly expect? And Hittings like Nick Goings is really good. You're going to see that Nick Goings is really good. And Nick Goings ripped off four hundred yard games in a five game span and it was his career highlight. Okay, I mean that was outside the norm for Nick Going's career. He was a serviceable ve, of course, but we're gonna find out in the next seven weeks if Deonte Foreman is Nick Going's version two point oh or he's a guy you count on. And

I think there are certain guys. There aren't a lot of free agents on this team other than all the quarterbacks, and it's going to be interesting to see over the next seven weeks how they handle like a Bozeman or a Foreman and what those guys do, because they are absolutely playing for the their future as well as his team, So it's always interesting to do one of the other things. There were a couple of other things I wanted to ask you about why we had this time in the

absence of Kristen. Yeah, I think she always does such an amazing job of pulling back and maintaining a proper perspective. We we get caught up in the week to week so much that I don't think we ever stopped. And remember what we actually just saw last Thursday night was among all the first it was your first primetime game, it was first time in all black uniforms, first time

in black helmets, and it rained. Yes, you go out during pre game, you watch pre game, you're you're down there absorbing the atmosphere, both of the crowd and the players and all the elements. What was that like for you? Oh, it's so cool. First of all, I there there definitely was a different sense of energy. I mean we talked about it last week, but just the whole week here with everybody buzzing around constantly, all the Amazon folks and all of the trucks and so so it felt different

from the second I stepped on the field. I think the biggest difference was as as like basic as it sounds, but it's just something that I wanted to talk about. Every game I've covered, right, it's been during the day, so everything is lit up in the way, like the sunlights lighting it up, so so literally seeing the way the lights hit and then the way the rain looked in the lights. I love to look straight up and watch how the rainfall was. It looked like little crystals

falling from the sky. I mean, this is the this is the Augusta analysis, because that's like the thing I noticed. I look up and I'm like, whoa, this is so cool. Freezing cold. That's another thing I noticed. Um, But really, honestly, the energy, you could tell that the it was the black helmets and that black jersey combo and everything hyped the guys up so much. They were just so excited. It's who the whole you know, you look good, feel good,

perform good kind of thing. I mean that was terrible grammar, but you know what I mean. It's like they just they really did kind of lean into the whole welcome to the dark Side sort of thing that I thought. I thought that our digital team branded extremely well. I have a friend that's a Falcons fan who said it was awesome and loved the branding and thought it was spooky and great. But um no, the whole thing was super duper sick, and I think it really added some

extra extra mojo. I mean, you really, you to have the night game, rain game, and Black Helmet game, I'll be the same game. It was like, Okay, you can have one of these things independent of the other. You can have a rain game that would be kind of cool, you can have a black helmet game, you can have a problem tonge game. But to have them all together and then play the way that they did it was

an exciting game. I think. Um one of the things I realized stepping back from that game was how close it got at the end, and I hadn't really registered that in my brain. You know. I was like, as sports writers, I know you can relate to this because you write the rapid we sit there, we're like, okay, roughly mid third quarter, fourth quarter, kind of have an idea of the direction it might go. And obviously last time we played Atlanta or Caroline Plane Atlanta didn't do that.

But um it uh, I didn't realize how close it got there at the end. Roe. I'm just like I felt, you know, I that I had an idea what was going. And then I was like, oh, put my rewatch. I was like that that got tighter than I thought it did. Um, but it was it was an atmosphere for sure. I mean it was. It was really really cool. And like I said, I liked all the elements of it. So if we can like, have you know, maybe another really cool jersey game or yeah, I think ring games are cool.

I think I know that. Like you know, my my photographer friends and videographer friends probably wouldn't agree with me, but they look sick and you have beautiful art come from them. Yeah, I mean the photos in the video from that, I mean it just adds a cinematic element to the whole thing. But I the one thing I wanted to mention is I was actually surprised by the fans. And I try not to get into fan business too much because the results of games EBB and flow that

happens we got no control over that. I was actually surprised at the energy in this place. There were two things. Number One, that they showed up in the rain to watch a game between a two and seven and four and five team on a Thursday night in a city where everybody has to go to work in the morning. Um. They came and they stayed, which is not nothing when a game is pushing up eleven o'clock finishing time and beyond. Um,

and they were into it. There is a very real and tangible energy happening in this building the last couple of weeks. And listen, the home results have not been good the last few years, even going back to the end of the Ron Rivera era throughout that rule. But the last two games it has just felt a little

bit different in here. And while the story of this season will be told over the next seven weeks and we'll see what it all means, the fact that the last couple of weeks, fans have seemed a little more engaged, a little more into it. And maybe it's not an accident that they've won a couple of games at home, and I think people are starting to remember what that feels like and it's a reminder and Steve Wilkes has said that since day one, Hey, it's been good here. Yeah,

I've seen it with my own two eyes. I've lived it. And I think a lot of people are starting to remember that too. Because the atmosphere in this building. And I don't say this as someone who works in this building, but I say this as someone who's seen most of the games played in this building. I'm not gonna try to turn this into Chad Cota making a goal line

stop to seal a division title against Pittsburgh. I'm not trying to turn this into the nineties seven playoff win over Dallas where the fans players came out in high fived everybody after the game. It wasn't that, but this was not an ordinary setting for regular season football. There was something about it, and I think people are tapping into where this team is right now, and I think the fans were a non zero component of that special

atmosphere on Thursday Night. So it's gonna be interesting to see how it how it plays out over the next couple of weeks, because there is a lot up in the air. I mean, Steve Wilkes's future is up in the air, a lot of players is up in the air. But I think it's kind of it's kind of neat to see the fans react the way they have And there was one little moment and again you were You've

been in on this deal from the very beginning. Um Eddie Pinero was not a particularly popular man coming into that game, after the way the first Atlanta game went missing a couple of kicks late, and with fourteen fifteen seconds left in the game, he comes on to kick what could have been the field goal. That ice is it and nobody knew whether he was going to hit it or not based on Atlanta, and you could hear

it through the glass in the press box. There was this real low and J. J. Jansen looks at me the day after and he said, we're the fans chanting Eddie, and I said they were and it was and it was something I did not expect based on I didn't think he was going to get that reaction from the fans, or that the situation was going to play out the way he did. Eddie is suddenly popular again. But you've talked to him a lot over the course of this season, before and after, I mean, and and just what did

that mean to him? Oh? My goodness. Well, first of all, I remember when I called him the next day, and my first question was, just did you hear it? You know, because I always wonder, I'm like, do these players actually hear the stuff? Do they block it out? You know, especially you know, knowing what had happened to him in the last couple of games, you know, is it one of those things where he's just so zoned in? He

did hear it? Um, he told me. I didn't get to include this in the story, but he told me that they to do it at Florida back whenever he was in college. Um, and he was he was really you know, money down there, and he's he's generally money here, which is why the Atlanta thing was such a weird, you know, kind of outlier there. But Um, the thing about that game, when I talked with Eddie about it, was he told me, even when he was in Chicago, which he loves to talk about how awful the weather

was in Chicago. He's a Miami guy, and he's like, kicking in that weather is just awful. Like when he got here, the first thing he told me was, I'm just so happy to be here. The weather is so much better. However, he's at home and it's the Atlanta Redemption game, and he told me it was the worst weather he had ever kicked in by like a mile. He was like, it was windy in a way where

like I didn't know where the winds were going. He and Johnny like to pick out points, you know, in the crowd to aim for, and he was like, we were having to change it every single time because the wind gusts were constantly changing, like the directions weren't making sense, and the rain was just that level of annoying where it wasn't really hard, but it also wasn't really light,

and and he just went into all this detail. And then he has that game versus when they were in Atlanta and they were in Dome and he just doesn't get it right, you know. It's it was fascinating to me to hear him talk about how the it was a terrible weather game. You know, it could have been in his head. And and the thing was, he kept such a good even keel about him throughout that because I would go up to him in the locker room. I just talked to him and be like, man, you

know how you doing? What's going on? He goes, this is just part of it. He's like, I've had terrible games before, I've messed up on these huge scales. I'll bounce back, like I know I will. He's been He's like, I've been doing all right. In practice. He had the support of his teammates, which I think played a huge

role in it. And he had his support of his teammates, Like I said on a tweet in an article on this podcast, I mean from the jump, there were guys supporting him, like, hey, we're wrapping our arms around Eddie. We're not getting rid of Eddie. Eddie's our guy. He felt that connection. And I mean, to hear that from the fans, it was almost like the last thing, right. He had the support from his teammates, he had the

support from his coaches. He had that self belief, I believe, and then to hear it from the fans, I mean it was. It was special for Eddie and and he's he's a grateful guy. I I've enjoyed, you know, getting to work all inside him, and I was happy for him in his moment. I really was. It's been one of the neat uh scenes of this whole year is seeing the way you know, Eddie's come in performed. You know,

there's the career arc. He had a bad game in Atlanta the first time, comes back, does what he needs to hear, and to have that support was just part of a kind of a wild night all the way around. It's one of those things you have to step back from every now and then and think, WHOA all those things just happened here in front of me, all right. Wouldn't be the happy half hour if we didn't go

non football to close this thing out. We are coming up on Thanksgiving, and everyone's holiday experience is always different. I never try to take them for granted that my experience is shared by everybody's. But the one thing I believe is that the second greatest holiday film and or special of all time is the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Special, trailing only the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. Because later in the year in this podcast will break down the correct

Charlie Brown Christmas Special dance styles. Um, but if you were a guest at Charlie Brown and Snoopy's Thanksgiving extravaganza, what is your favorite dish toast? Pretzels, popcorn or jelly beans? Oh that's so tough. I M gonna say popcorn. I really am. I I love I love popcorn, big popcorn. Gow. Also, the fact that you mentioned Charlie Brown shout out to my entire childhood, both sides of my family. My great grandmother rest in peace. She's amazing. My mama. We watched

it all the time with them. They deserve it. I loved it. Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown is one of those things you need. I have, uh in my life. I have walked into uh watering holes before where nothing in particular was on TV and looked at the bartender and said, hey, can you put the Charlie Brown Christmas Special on? And he just looked at me and he was like, no, why not? Come on? Who doesn't who doesn't love Charlie Brown? So what's your side, Darren? I I am. I would

probably go toast. I like the way Snoopy was really committed to the craft. Uh perfectly golden brown. Uh so he had a lot of toasters going. I worry about the electricity burden on the Brown house when you've got a dog running multiple toasters at one time. But uh Snoopie's got control of this thing, and somehow or another, we've maintained control of this thing even without Kristen. So it's uh, we did it. I feel pretty good about the effort. And we will see you soon on the

Happy half Hour. Hope everyone's Thanksgiving and holiday journey is a joyous one, and we will talk to you soon.