This week on the Happy half Hour.
I don't think there's a reason to assume that they need to go all in and throw everything out in a preseason game.
And I agree.
I mean, the goal is to evaluate, stay healthy with your starters, and you know, see the fundamentals, especially with a guy like Bryce Young and all these new weapons. I mean, you look down and we talked about it, but the offense is completely different.
They're still learning at each other's.
Right, It's time for the Happy Half Hour with your friends Kristin Balboni, Augusta Stone, and Darren Gannon. All right, welcome to the Happy half Hour, preseason post Spartanburg edition.
Woo hoo, we're back.
We're happy to be home from Spartanburg. She's Augusta Stone. I'm Darren Gant podcast Mats behind the Board. We may involve him at some point in this broadcast. We were If we seem a little disheveled early in this podcast, it's because we're all running a little bit late. Matt got stuck in traffic and Augusta got stuck in one of the most common ways the Panther's digital network gets stuck.
By specialist in the cafeteria while acquiring coffee. Johnny Hecker was the culprit this morning, wasn't he hey?
To be fair?
We were both walking in together and I was in my classic quick trot, I would say, and then Johnny pulls up beside me. You know, I say, hey, Johnny, good morning, stops me. He goes, hey, Gusta, you're a writer. Do you play word games? And I immediately was on it. Yes, absolutely, I am a devout New York Times games person. And then he wants to talk about my favorite new game Connections and I was about to give him some spoilers, and then he stopped me. He was like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
I've only looked at it. I don't have the puzzles solved yet. And then I had to stop myself because this morning, unfortunately, it was a failure for me. And I wanted to talk about the last two categories and how frustrating they were, but he told me he would follow up. So I will, as Darren says, do a journalism later today find Johnny ask him how his connections went, because mine went very poorly this morning.
Yeah, it's a it's an addictive little game. I am.
I am into that. I have found the archive. I've gone back to the June ones. I've found the bootleg archive that New York Times doesn't actually show you yet. Big wordle person, big connection person, big spelling bee person, I am.
I am actually a little bit.
I am a little bit obsessive about spelling bee because I will sit there while I'm drinking coffee and will not rise from my chair until I reach the genius level each day. So it's like that's how I start my day. I refuse to accept amazing or nice as a benchmark.
I have to get to be. I have to get to genius before I even get out of the house.
So wordle person, absolutely, wordle person. And then also do you do the daily Mini Crossword?
Do the daily Mini? Sometimes not as committed to that as others. What your what's your wordal word to start with?
Okay, So I actually rotate, which is a wild vibe. I know this morning, I think it was risky. But I like to try to get I like to try to get a Y in there early and use multiple combinations of letters, so no repeating letters.
But I do not devote myself.
My mother actually starts out with stone every morning, and she is very set on that.
But no, what's yours.
That's fair enough. And Stone is a solid one.
It's got most of your classic Wheel of Fortune letters r STLNE and you get the E at the end, so that's always good. And I usually begin each day with chaos.
That's fitting.
Yeah, it feels like a metaphor or something for life. So anyway, we have spent a good five minutes talking about Wordle and New York Times games because we'd rather do that than talk about the Jets game. That was not great, Bob, And I think everybody knows it. And the best thing you know for these guys is it is now Wednesday morning, and they've got a walk through practice kind of today before they get on the plane tomorrow and go to New York to face the other
New York team. And I think everybody's just kind of ready to get to that one because it went so poorly last Saturday night, twenty seven to nothing loss. Here first preseason shutout loss since two thousand, believe it or not, for whatever that's worth. And the answer is absolutely nothing. And I think that's kind of the way they are approaching it. I mean, you don't want to minimize the
fact that they played poorly. And I'm not papering over the fact that it was a bad decision, but preseason games ultimately meaningless.
What's meaningfull is some.
Of the individual patterns that emerged during that game. And one of those patterns was the offensive line played far more poorly than they anticipated. I mean, five sacks on the night for Matt Corral took four of them, got the ball knocked loose, Wance sacked fumble through the Corral through the interception light. But the quarterback play, even though that's the thing most people lock in on in the preseason,
wasn't even that big a deal. But the offensive line was so far beyond the expectation they had of that group that it kind of stood out as an outlier.
And that's part of the thing I think we've talked about a little bit, and I've talked about with some of my friends, my parents. But if you looked at if you had gone back to when we recorded this like two or three weeks ago, and we were to outline maybe five or six groups that we were like, okay, let's hone in on this and see this. We thought the offensive line was pretty steady, so even past like, yes,
it was a really really bad night for them. It was also very distant from the expectations we had because last year went so well, and I think it would be a miss to blame it all on that one right guard spot. I think James Campen talked about how you know, everybody's being held accountable and that big meeting that you wrote about extremely well, and that James Campen was not in the mood to talk about the details of I think that's kind of rocking them, you know
in a way that's gonna help. I mean, we saw I saw in practice yesterday a lot of different guys they were putting in the right guard spot. I think that's gonna be something that a lot of people be looking at. But it was kind of across the board, just a tough day, and I think it it might be a necessary wake up call, you know, like, oh, we came in you know, all these high expectations, don't fall underneath the stone as it all falls down, you know what I mean. Like it's kind of like like that.
But I agree with you on the quarterback play. I've seen some people on Twitter talking about, like, oh man, like quarterbacks blah blah blah.
It's like, especially Bryce Young.
If you look at what Bryce did, Bryce wasn't bad when you think about what he was dealing with. I mean, popped up from those three hits counting the sack, didn't make any really poor decisions and kind of showed that poise that we talked about, like he was very calm while everything in front of him kind of collapsed.
And I think that's something that you.
Know, we should as much as you can surmise from what six pass attempts, I think that's kind of something you can you can rest on or look at and be like, Okay, this was a positive amid.
What was going on in front of him that was not ideal, right.
Right, And that's the thing, right Guard's gonna get a lot of attention because that's the one spot that's getting rotated.
The bunch of candidates.
I mean, there's basically four dudes who could end up in that job next week. And Frank Craig said he wants to make a decision kind of after this game so that whoever the five is going to be has an opportunity to work in the Lions game, the final preseason game and then through the preseason to get ready for the opener, So we should have news on.
That fairly soon.
And having chandlers of violins at or Nash Jensen back on the field this week should help as part of the evaluation process. But you know, Kid Mays wasn't out there practice yesterday and we'll see how things go with him. But there's still a lot of unknown with that position. That wasn't to me even the problem looking back at that game. You almost hate to say it, but iky Aquanu did not have a good opening night. Ikey struggled
a little bit. We know he is not that kind of player based on what he showed us last year, and Camping was very quick to say that. I mean, he was kind of giving me a hard time in the press conference of days, Like I remember early in camp Darren asking me, is Ikey ever gonna win a one on one in practice?
And that was the case.
Ikey was getting an education early in camp from Brian Burns last year, and he kind of settled into it. I mean, Miles Garrett got the better of him in the opener. There were some struggles early on for Ikey, but Ikey settled into a groove where I think this year is going to be a different challenge, though, is second half of last year when they were just teeing it up and running at fifty times a game that's built for iky Ikwanu.
That's his game.
He wants to lean on people, be aggressive. He's great in the run game. He struggled with those pass rushers from the Jets the other night, and I think that's something he's got to get cleaned up a little bit too, because obviously this offense is going to be different. I do you know, everybody likes to say, oh, we don't know what the offense is going to look like. We're not calling the regular season offense in the preseason. I do not anticipate fifty rushing attempts per game from Frank
Reich and Thomas Brown this year. I just don't think that's the direction this thing's head. And so it's incumbent on Ikey to be a little more polished, and I think this Giant's game. They've still got some good players in their front seven, and Wink Martindale, their coordinator, is kind of known for bringing people from different directions, doing a lot of stuff to try to create confusion. So I think this game ought to be a pretty good barometer for what they're actually going to be. Now we'll
see how it all develops. And if they fix everything in the preseason and they beat the Giants twenty seven to nothing, that does not mean all as well heading into the opener, anymore than losing to the Jets twenty seven to nothing meant the sky is falling. So I think it's important to keep preseason games in their appropriate context exactly.
And I had a question for you just out of curiosity, and I'm going to preface this with this week's specific I know Morgan Jenkins, who works in our website management side helps us out with a lot of the streaming
and stuff. She was talking about, Oh my goodness, all the questions about this vanilla generic offense, Like they this is a storyline that people are eating up right now, and we Frank called it himself generic, and then then we're vanilla got floated around somehow, and so generic vanilla whatever you're gonna call it. Like you've said in some of our conversations, vanilla is delicious and wonderful and there's no reason to have a negative connotation with it.
But when you hear a lot of that talk.
What is your I guess not concern level or your how much stock you place in Frank going up there saying we called a generic game, Thomas Brown yesterday saying we're not trying to necessarily show everything generic in the preseason.
In terms of evaluation, what is your thought on.
That, Darren Well, Basically, Frank let Thomas Brown call the plays in the second half the other night, which a is really good for Frank and good for Thomas as as he develops as a play caller and as a coach in the league. I think you've seen different instances, Mike Vrabel that Drell Williams, his assistant head coach call basically be the head coach for their first preseason game. And I think as you give guys opportunities, that's important. It's cool that Thomas got to order for himself. He
was ordering off the kids menu. I mean, I don't know the specific number, but the playsheet that was available to those guys going into the game.
Let's just say it was very limited.
You know, And if they have you know, X to the tenth power on the playsheet for the Falcons game. In the opener, it's about X in this game. I mean, they are not operating with a full deck of cards. They're I mean, I don't even want to hazard to guess at how few plays they were actually choosing from, but it's not a lot. And I think because of that, you know, they were just trying to get some of
the fundamental stuff together. Let Brice get them in and out of the huddle, throw a few passes, get out of that game clean, and you know they would have hoped it went a little better than that. But yeah, I just think that they are so And Frank even said he's going to air on the side of not showing anything because you know, I think there is a temptation.
You want a good result, You want guys to be able to move the ball down the field, but it's more important to them to a get out of the preseason healthy, be not you know, tip their hand for those two division games. And again, I think that's kind of an important point because this division has always seemed to be one full of word a word of the day chaos. So nine to eight is typically going to
have you in contention in this division. So I think from that standpoint, those first two games against Falcons and Saints. You want to have them guessing as much as you possibly can, so they're just not going to show a bunch of stuff exactly.
And that's what Frank talked about specifically after the game, especially in the context of, like you said, those early Division games, I mean, starting out at Atlanta and then I think it's the Saints right afterward on Monday, right like, if you're thinking about the schedule, I mean as back to back, and you don't want to you don't want to show your cards one, and you also want to look very good in those two because they are so important the way the schedule was arranged.
But no, I agree, I think I think it.
Also is a testament to what we've seen from Frank since he got here, about how he just kind of methodically and in a regiment kind of way, you know, goes about things. There's not a ton of panic from him, even though they lost twenty seven to nothing in a preseason game, which I mean, I put as much stock in preseason games as you do, and as most people should have, just like, Okay, it's an evaluation process and there's gonna be points on the board, but that's not
really the point. And I agree that when you think about it in the context of Thomas Brown calling the plays in the second half, obviously that's going to I mean, naturally, you're building trust right there. You're building a foundation, so you don't start throwing out everything.
And maybe, you.
Know, I think Thomas Brown may have alluded to a little bit, you know, spicing up a smidge, but it's not like he's throwing in, you know, a whole bunch of strawberries and syrups next week into his vanilla ice cream. You know, maybe they'll have a sprinkle of cinnamon perhaps, or maybe they'll just leave it like that. But I don't think there's a reason to assume that they need to go all in and throw everything out just to
you know, in a preseason game. And and I agree, I mean, the goal is to evaluate, stay healthy with your starters and kind of you know, see the fundamentals, especially with a guy like Bryce Young and all these new weapons. I mean, you look down and we talked about it, but the offense is completely different. They're still
learning each other. And I think that's part of the part of what we need to focus on as well, because we still have a little bit less than a month till September tenth, first game and my birthday.
Yeah, and you know what your birthday aside, God, we could talk about ice cream flavors, we could talk about birthday presents, we could talk about any.
Number of things.
Now, I mean, seriously, the preseason in the NFL it's basically get out a bit healthy, learn individual things about individual people. I was just sitting here thinking, and you know, because my brain is the way it is, I was trying to think the most memorable preseason.
Moments in Panthers history.
And you know, you could talk about individual plays or games or certain people.
You saw.
The one thing that sticks out in my mind because the last preseason shutout was in Pittsburgh and three Rivers Stadium, which no longer exists. In two thousand, I got to thinking about games in Pittsburgh and Steelers Panthers used to be the preseason finale every year, and I one of my fondest preseason memories was the day the Panthers had a young defensive tackle named Phillyami mau Mau, which I liked,
saying a whole lot. And in one of those games at Pittsburgh, Villyami mau Mau once tackled Chris Fuamata Mafalla.
And that was a lot of fun for me and I remember that.
I hope you got to talk about that on the radio a whole lot.
Yeah. I just liked saying Billiami Mau Mau.
Where's he at?
Now?
How's he doing?
I have no idea. We should probably look him up. That could be a research question for podcast mad over there. He could find Villiami Mau Mau for us and see if he's doing.
I hope he's doing well.
I hope we haven't made sport of the fact that he had a name full of vowels and he tackled a man with even more vowels in his name.
But yeah, you know, preseason, preseason, preseason. I think it is kind of that last slog.
You know, we get out of Spartanburg, we're feeling thrilled, you know, back in Charlotte, and now we're like, okay, you know, get through it, like you said, healthy and all that, and then you get to the first game. I think I think they were kind of in that lull right now of just trying to see what they got. And also I thought about it this way, but I don't know, we would be anticipating some cutdowns at this point, and now it's all at once, so it's kind of
not slowed down. But I guess from our perspective, sort of sort of given a time where training camp's like, whoa, everyone's in front of us, and now there is that roster, they're going to figure it out, and then it all goes at once versus whenever it kind of trickled.
I think that's kind of what we be focusing on.
Yeah, the league, the rules this year, instead of having a cut to eighty five eighty you know, et cetera, et cetera. There's one cutdown day, yeah, this year, and it's August twenty ninth, Tuesday, a week when you've got to take your roster from ninety to fit the quote unquote final fifty three. Even though that's always in a little bit of flux, I don't anticipate. I mean, my guess is you'll see teams start kind of parting ways with some guys maybe early next week. And I don't
know that teams will necessarily still carry ninety. They can if they want to, but my guess is you'll start to see some guys filtering away early on just because if there's a guy you knows not making the roster, you know, is it worth the risk of carrying him into a game?
That kind of thing.
So I think teams will begin that process gradually. But yeah, cutdown Day on the twenty ninth is going to be a big dramatic difference. I mean, personnel guys around the league basically are going to be looking at an extra three hundred names and what's.
A chaotic day for them?
And there's that word again, So we you know, we can we can get to that next week on the Happy half Hour. As we get closer to the season, we're going to be on a little bit more regular schedule for you guys with all our stuff with mail bags with Happy half Hours, and we've got some new stuff coming this year, with some new people and different things coming in, so it's going to be an interesting season. What else you got, Mad? Are you dialing up Jordan and Jake over there?
Are they?
Yeah? We were doing Jordan Jake this afternoon after you guys, and then I looked up mal Mal and I not if, assuming I spelled it correctly, there's not a lot of information on what he's up to.
That's right, that's all right.
There wasn't a lot of information on his career. He wasn't in here terribly long, but he did have a wonderful name, and we remember him fondly from tackling Chris Huama the ma Falla Darren.
I had a question for you, Jemmy, about we we talked about the preseason game and obviously a lot of the guys that were getting a ton of time, there aren't guys necessarily talk about a lot. Is there anyone in particular, especially through that second half that you were like, huh, you know, he could lobby for a spot on that roster?
I think if anybody stood out to me, And it's and again, this is kind of a dangerous game to play because when you go down, when you go down that road of trying to project roles for people who may not even be on the fifty three. The one guy I kind of figured he's going to be on the roster, but Eric Rowe stood out. He is a guy who is making a couple of big hits. He is going to He's a little bit like Kamu gruge Hill.
He is probably going to be on this roster as a core special teams player, but he can make some plays on defense. I mean, this guy's been around the block and played on some good defenses and been a part of things that matter. So seeing him step up and make some plays kind of remind you. Okay, even though Jamie Robinson's guy they've got some long term hopes for, they like the.
Potential he shows.
He's Roe is probably your third safety, and he's that guy who, if anything happened to Von Bell or Xavier Woods could step in and keep you at that same kind of level, that same smart veteran in the back, who's going to be who's going to be capable and able to step in. But he put a shot on a guy out here the other night that I think he still might be feeling. And Roe is, you know,
he's an interesting cat. Every team's got a couple of those guys, And because of all the turnover on this roster this offseason, some of those names you're used to see in those usual special teamers, whether the last couple of years it was a Sean Chandler or a Brandon Zilstra before that, they're gonna.
Be new guys in those roles.
And Kamu and Eric I think are going to be a couple of those this year who are going to be out there creating a little chaos with Sam Franklin and the boys.
Absolutely, well, I was gonna talk about Sam Franklin just because you know, we I don't think we've heard a ton about him from a defensive standpoint, because he is the special teams guy and he has his role there. But he was kind of if you look at that look at the game from the Panthers point of view, there were really a couple of plays, specifically on defense,
where you're like, oh, yeah, getting pumped. Like I think about the Barno sack, that was a big deal, and then I think about the Franklin pick and that was really exciting for him. I mean seeing him make a play on defense, I think was was pretty big, and that was late in the game. But you don't think of I mean you just mentioned you know, backup safeties and Eric Rowe is a guy. We saw him a ton. I saw him a lot during training camp. He was
out there a ton. He got a ton of looks, so you could tell that they were, you know, checking him out. But no, I thought Sam Franklin getting getting the pick, I mean you look at kind of the the lone flash points two of them, Barno and Franklin Barno specifically with that Sack. I mean, I tweeted about it, but I didn't see a ton you know, comeing deer in training camp and he just sort of flash and h he got a cool celebration.
We have a cool photo of it. I've seen a couple of times.
But yeah, he I think he was a guy that was a that was a positive spot, and there was I don't know if there was necessarily any point where, oh my goodness, would he make.
The roster because you know, he's just come off the draft last year. But I mean he looked, he looked good.
Sam Sam's such an interesting cat anyway. I mean, there are a couple of things about Sam. Number one, he's high energy. He lives to play special teams. He started to get recognized league wide as one of those guys. Every team's got that one. I mean, and there are people like Matthew Slater in New England who have made a fifteen plus year career out of just being a
special teamer. Sam's on the verge of becoming one of those cats who can just impact the game so much that they keep him around even though he doesn't have a well defined role on.
Offense or defense. Sam's also borderline insane, but in the best way.
He Sam is an agitator. Sam is a agent of chaos. Sam is a I'm gonna use that word as much as I can in this podcast. We should do, we should do account. We'll get Matt to add in a sound effect every time I say it, or it's like rip pee wee. Herman Paul Rubins died the other week, So in honor of pee wee, chaos is our word of the day.
Take a sip of water every time during says chaos at any rate.
But no. Sam is an agitator, and Sam is great at getting under the skins of opponents. One of my favorite parts of the joint practices was when they were doing punt drills, watching Sam get under the.
Skin of all the jets.
And I walked past him after that practice that afternoon in Spartanburg, and I said, Sam, just out of curiosity, how many almost fights did you get in?
And he kind of laughed and he said maybe one, maybe more than that.
You know, and he kind of he exists to stir things up in the special team, so he's a fun guy to watch during those settings and seeing him make a pick. I mean, Sam made some plays late last year when he had to play a little defense too, so he is a guy who can do some things. And I think that's kind of what you're trying to learn in the I mean, you've got a general sense right now of what the starting lineup's gonna look like.
I think you're trying to figure out what those depth pieces are and how you put together because Chris Taber and the special teams basically have to work with leftovers. I mean, his job is like being a chef on Chopped.
I mean you get the mystery basket and you got to make a meal out of it because you never know what you're getting until that roster set going into the opener, and you know, I think when you go through guys like Franklin, Rowe, cam O, those are gonna be some of his core pieces and then after that it's your guess as good as mine because everything is
on the table at that point. I do think there's the possibility for some degree of change in this roster because there's some spots that they're still looking at, honestly trying to improve this roster, going through final cuts and that kind of stuff.
So but for the most part, you're looking for your your depth.
Guys, you're trying to figure out who players twenty three through fifty three are on this roster. Yeah, probably twenty six through fifty three, because specialist we've got a pretty good idea about So, speaking of specialists, I think it's almost time just head downstairs for a cup of coffee with JJ Janssen. He will doubtless be in front of the coffee machine because I think he takes in about eight cups a day, and that will occupy the rest of our morning.
I believe, and it will definitely get us to lunchtime.
And one thing about JJ Jansen, I remember this from camp, but he is a hot coffee like devote.
He doesn't do it iced.
He will criticize your ice and say you need to drink it hot and it'll be ninety degrees. I remember moving day, I have my iced coffee and he's over here.
Like what are you doing. I'm like JJ w'arreing Sparnberg. It's eighty five degrees at eight am.
Hot coffee guy, and he will definitely be there and that will take you huge weelve.
He is a traditionalist. He is a hot coffee black guy, just like me. The thicker the better, give me a good cup of truck stop black. I'm not you know, I know you're an experimental with many. Yeah, your coffee label over there is about the length of many of the stories I write. It's that's got a lot of words on it. What does that say?
Okay, so it's very specific as well. This is a medium iced with two liquid cane sugar and almond milk, and it originally comes with three, but I figured out the perfect formula you only need two of the pumps. So this is about as specifically odd as it gets. And I hate I love doing on the app because on the app they don't ask you questions. When you walk up the and the nice barista is like, what do you like and you tell them specifically pump number, they kind of WinCE.
So but I am very specific.
So I fear as podcasters go, Matt, are we higher maintenance or lower maintenance than Jordan and Jake?
Then the two Prima Donna superstars, You guys are definitely more low maintenance.
Okay, Well, that coffee order of hers makes me wonder and.
I'm not the one having to fill the order though. That's fair.
So so for your podcast needs, we're low maintenance. For your coffee needs. You do not want to see young again.
I would not want that. Note. Yeah, I'd be like, I'm going to be out on my break.
I'll see I will be having a smoke on the on the loading dock when she comes walking in the door. But yeah, so anyway, all right, I think that's as good a place to leave this thing as any other. We avoided talking about the Jets game as much as we could. We talked coffee orders, ice cream flavors, New York Times, word games, and embraced the chaos of it all.