Tag Archives: Carolina Panthers

NFL Offseason

What does success look like for your favorite NFL team in 2025?

The following conversation goes against what the NFL’s shield is trying to sell the public at the start of every single season – the idea of all 32 teams having a chance to hoist the Lombardi Trophy at the end of it. As much as I love how they strive for parity, conceiving anything but achieving the ultimate goal as a failure would always leave all but one fan base dissatisfied. Generally, I sway away from asking questions like the one in the title, but due to several factors, I thought laying out which factors we should pay attention to and what constitutes a “successful campaign” was particularly interesting this year.

I’m fully aware that this by no means is an innovative concept, but looking back at this past season, I thought the gap between “the rich and the poor” was as large as ever once we got to around Thanksgiving. So I do believe it’s important to offer a frame of context for how we should probably view what these franchises are about to put onto the field once we kick things off. For some teams, simply measuring it by where the journey ends for them in 2025 is fair, yet for others, showing growth in certain areas may be even more crucial for their future outlook.

We’ll go through them all by division here!

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NFL Film Breakdowns, NFL Quarterbacks

Has Bryce Young turned the corner?

After a lackluster rookie season as the number one overall pick, Bryce Young seemed to completely disintegrate in the first two starts of 2024. Yet, when he returned to the lineup after getting benched, he looked like a completely different player and brought some hope back for Carolina. Let’s dive into how he resurrected his young career!

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NFL Draft, NFL Offseason

NFC South Draft & Roster Review 2025

We enter the second half of our divisional draft and roster review series, where today we’ll taking a look at the Falcons, Panthers, Saints and Buccaneers. I’ll break down every single player they drafted, their roles on the roster, incorporating all the other offseason moves, and share my perspective on what they did overall.

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NFL Quarterbacks, NFL Rookies, Player Rankings

Checking in with the rookie and sophomore NFL quarterbacks:

Over the last two drafts, ten quarterbacks were selected within the first 33 picks respectively and now that all but one of them have logged double-digit starts, I thought it was time to review what they’ve shown. I will provide my general thoughts, aided by some advanced metrics, and express my level of confidence in their long-time viability at the pro level.

Just to be clear, I won’t be discussing this year’s eighth and eighth overall selections Michael Penix Jr. (Falcons) and J.J. McCarthy (Vikings), who only saw very limited action in mop-up duty and unfortunately got hurt after a promising preseason showing respectively. Therefore, we’ll be looking at four guys from each of those draft classes.

Let’s dive in, going by chronological order of when they got selected:


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Storylines around the NFL

Misery index seven weeks into the 2024 NFL season:

Unlike most weeks where one topic jumps out to me for a video or article I want to write or even there’s a point in the season where it makes sense to do power rankings or mid-season awards, there were several ways I considered going here. However, as I looked a broader view at the NFL landscape, my one grand thought I came away with is the state of affairs for the teams at the bottom of the standings and their gap to the rest of the league. In large part because I currently don’t see a path where those franchise massively turn things around and I don’t want to ignore them until draft season rolls around.

With some teams having already had a bye week, I didn’t want the cut-off to be two wins, but rather I chose to go with the nine squads at least three games below .500 – meaning 2-5 or worse. That also made sense considering the two teams that criteria excludes are the 2-4 Rams and Dolphins, whose campaigns have been heavily affected by injuries and still have some hope to turn things around.

To illustrate that rift between the franchises in question and those in legitimate position to compete for playoff spots ultimately, here’s a number to consider – and I understand of course that it has to exist for this make sense mathematically – but the nine teams I’m about to discuss have an average point differential of -53.1 for the year, meaning the median outcome for them every week is pretty much losing by just over a touchdown. I did not go back to recent years to really dive into how this stacks up, but it feels like quite an extreme line of demarcation – and that calculation includes the Saints’ clearly unsustainable start, where they led the league with a +62 point differential through the first two weeks.

So this isn’t meant to be a way for me to trash the bottom-third of the league, but rather trying take a step back and reflect on how we got here, by going through these teams. And maybe give an outlook for the near future, as we think about how things could be course-corrected.

We’ll go by record first and then alphabetical order:


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NFL Predictions

NFL teams most likely to go from worst to first in 2024:

Going through all eight NFL divisions, I ranked the teams who finished last across those last season by likelihood of going first in 2024! Let me know who you think will make a jump!

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NFL Offseason

Key position battles across 2024 NFL training camps:

With all veterans across the NFL arriving at their team facilities for training camp, it’s time to look at the most interesting and/or meaningful competitions for starting jobs. I want to describe what role needs to be filled – some more distinctly defined than others – with a quick summary of why the spot is up for grabs, present the candidates with some statistics to back up their case, discuss some schematic nuances and who I consider as favorites based on what those coaching staffs are looking for as well.

I settled on six position battles on each side of the ball, without repeating positions. Some of the them may be more critical, as we’ll get to in a second – while others may be more niche roles or at least could look as much, as these battles play out. At the very end, I added one more position group for all 32 teams, where there’s some competition to keep your eye on, listed by alphabet.

Let’s dive in:

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NFL Offseason, Storylines around the NFL

One burning question for each NFC team ahead of the 2024 season

Following my month-long divisional draft & roster review series, I’m back with a little two-piece project, where instead of diving into a bunch of individual players, I looked at each team as a whole and asked myself “what is the one burning question I have for them as I think about the 2024 NFL season?”

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NFL Draft, NFL Free Agency, NFL Offseason, NFL Trades

Most improved position groups across the 2024 NFL offseason:

After spending the last month reflecting on what the player acquisition process looked like for all 32 teams, with a focus on the names brought in via the draft, it’s now time to take a step back and identify the positional units that improved the most throughout this process, comparing the additions and departures at those spots.

This is purely based on the players that were brought in/let go from the point the 2023 NFL season ended onwards, not taking injuries into account. So you’re not going to find the Jets here for getting back Aaron Rodgers from the torn Achilles he suffered four snaps into his time with New York for example. Along with that, I like to take a broader look at this in terms of which position groups were stocked up best rather than just talking about a singular star performer they acquired.

Let’s dive in:

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NFL Draft, NFL Offseason

NFC South Draft & Roster Review 2024

We kick off the second half of this series with the NFC South – where one team made plenty of noise when the shocked the rest of the league with who they selected in the top ten.

Once again, I’ll be providing scouting reports on all the players selected, talk about their fits within the new team and share my general thoughts on how these rosters have been constructed.

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