Kicking off the second half of this divisional draft & roster review series, today we’re heading down South – discussing the draft classes of the Falcons, Panthers, Saints and Bucs, and all the other offseason moves through that lens.
Tag Archives: Carolina Panthers
MEGA 2025-26 NFL PLAYOFF PREVIEW
The NFL playoffs here and we’re left with a very interesting, largely unexpected field of contenders! I put together the most info-packed preview of the tournament, introducing all 14 teams individually and breaking down each matchup, leading up to Super Bowl LX!
Discrete developments for surprise NFL playoff teams (2025):
Happy holidays, everyone! As we approach Christmas eve and I didn’t have the time to write a full-fledged article, I thought this was a good time to talk about one critical area of growth for the Jaguars, Patriots, Bears and Panthers, who all won yet again this past weekend and are in the driver’s seats to home playoff games, after being projected to have losing records, based on betting odds. In fact, Carolina is the only one among those that hasn’t secured playoff berth yet.
The purpose of this isn’t to sing the praises of Drake Maye or talk about the Bears defense still leading the league in turnovers forced. Rather, I want to shine light on one piece of the puzzle for each of these teams, which has allowed them to get to this place, but is rarely ever being talked about.
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!
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!
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.
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:
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:
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!
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:
Halil's Real Footballtalk 