Who would you rather have?

Living here, I at least want the Panthers to have watchable football, but it seems like Hurney is hellbent on making that not happen. I actually got mad when I heard the haul that a 28 year old rb who missed 14 games the last two seasons got. Hurney seems to be bidding against himself over and over, the worst one being Jake, but that just kills the chances to fill in holes. Mare? Seriously? Its just been a disappointing FA season to watch from a distance. I do think CJ has the tools, just pricey, and Olsen was a nice addition.

 

How would you guys feel watching CJ, Davis, Anderson, Beason, Smith, Kalil leave the team? Maybe we overpaid but at least we are keeping some talent. I would not have done the deal with DW either but it is better than being the Bengals.

 

Exactly how I feel. I was reading the article on pro football talk this morning about how the Bengals didn't resign Jonathan Joseph and the frustration of their Defensive Coordinator Zimmer felt. If I was a player I would get the he'll out of Cincinnati too, as fast as I could. I was really pissed at Jerry Richardson last year, but I can see that he at least wants to win, even more than just lining his pockets with cash. If Cam Newton plays at even a serviceable level this year, we could very well get back to 8-8. He'll, look how the Bucs turned it around from 3-13 the year before and finished 10-6 last year. Cam has all the tools to be as good, if not better than Josh Freeman. We now have a young creative coaching staff that seems enthusiastic and wants to win. Did we overpay for some players? I think we did. Do we have the cap space to still add even more talent? You damn straight. I'm optimistic that we are going to turn this team around this year. Something that I wasn't last off season when we cut all of our players like it was a firesale.

 

there is no intellectual honesty in requiring validation. I really don't care about your referendum on Marty Hurney, or your decade long grudge on me.

 

but again, you can't live in retrospect. In a world where you know exactly what they sign for, you would still have to outbid, and then every other team would know they can outbid again, including the team that just signed him. A $30 mil contract becomes a $45 mil deal quickly if you make it an open auction environment, which teams just don't do.


I know Carolina didn't check with Ray Edwards. Edwards is a fine player, but they didn't want Ray Edwards. They paid a premium for the best DE in free agency, and in retrospect they could've bargain shopped. Atlanta got a much better deal and I've said that since he signed.

But let's not pretend Edwards didn't get chumped. He signed for a lot less than he should've. He signed for a lot less than I expected, but Johnson signed for about what I anticipated.

 

yeah, that's the thing. We went from being $2 million different to suddenly expecting twice the player or half the contract.
Plus, I said I'd gladly put an extra mil into Johnson than lose him. I mean, that couldn't have been more clear.

As for being twice the player, of course not. Beason won't be ten times the player he was last year, either. That shows the disparity between rookie contracts and top contracts, not realistic expectations. Getting a Beason at a mil a year or Gamble at a mil a year doesn't mean that's their longterm value.

 

OUr spending is out of fucking mind. It's NOT okay. I would overpay for Johnson, but not give him some fucking blank check he could scribble an amount on. We paid him more than the Eagles paid Nnamdi. Un fucking believable.

To me, this reeks of Richardson and Hurney waiving their fists at the media, saying..."call us cheap!? TAKE THAT!"

To make Beason the highest paid in the league? Why.

What are we trying to prove here!?

Meanwhile, it sucks seeing the rest of the league sign guys like Mebane for reasonable contracts. And to lose out on Joseph. That could've really helped us.

Ugh. There is no way to color this situation with a rose hue. The only guys that should be stoked w the money being thrown around are the players. Fans should be really worried.

Meanwhile, the Bucs are sub degrees under the cap.

 

I don't know how they work, but if Johnson was so surprised at the amount, it tells me no one ever asked "what will it take to keep you from looking around"? Surely he had a number in mind.

 

You're going to talk about grudges when you sucked up to Gantt by taking shots at me on Twitter before we were even arguing again? I don't like you being a dishonest homer, no. I feel you have the potential to be much more than that, and it annoys me to see someone intelligent and knowledgeable being wasted because you're just not honest. For instance, still after all these years you still haven't admitted that you were wrong about Shawne Merriman being a "DE-only." You're a coward, magnus. You can't ever admit that you said anything wrong, and you can't admit that Hurney has consistently screwed this franchise. You support management as if you were living in North Korea.

Again, overspending for guys like Delhomme, Gross, Wharton, Gamble, etc is what got Carolina to be 2-14 with a huge cap number. What do the Patriots do? Do you they overspend to keep all their own players? No. The good teams don't do that. You spend what is appropriate, but if someone wants far more than they're worth, then you let them walk.

But the point is that Hurney didn't have to spend what he did in order to keep them. He offered tens of millions of dollars more than other teams did. That's doing a bad job as a general manager, and in a hard salary cap, it hurts the team.

No, actually they don't. Once Kalil is taken care of, the team is done with significant contracts for 2010.

Exactly. The Panthers care way too much about P.R. The idiotic local media and the ignorant fans thinking that throwing a shitload of money at a 2-14 roster somehow means you actually improved.

Again, Charles Johnson is the one who told us that no one even came close to the Panthers' offer, while Denver also made it clear that they weren't willing to go anywhere near what the Panthers were offering to DeAngelo. This team could have gotten in on Brandon Mebane and Jonathan Joseph. They could have gotten in on Josh Wilson and Ray Edwards. They could have added talent to the roster and brought back the team's own free agents, but they couldn't once they dramatically overspent. So now it's on Cam Newton and Greg Olsen to turn this 2-14 roster into a playoff team.