Panthers answer question about team's direction

J_Ray · Apr 26, 2010

For anyone who doubted the Carolina Panthers when they said they had a plan, all the questions should have been answered this weekend.

Because now more than ever, the Panthers have the kind of roster general manager Marty Hurney's probably always wanted, a project years in the making.

Looking back, they clearly envisioned doing it this way from the moment the 2009 season ended, because every move made and not made pointed to the decisions executed this weekend.

"Over the last several years, our belief and our philosophy has been to build through the draft," Hurney said in February, the day they announced they wouldn't franchise Julius Peppers again. "I believe our philosophy works best for us.

"And that is bringing guys in, getting them young. You can teach them your ways, you can bring them up. They know the organization, they know what we expect of them."

The Panthers left the weekend with a 10-man class of 2010, but the impact expands when you consider the three players they acquired last year in trades using this year's picks.

Defensive linemen Everette Brown, Tank Tyler and Louis Leonard could end up being 75 percent of the starting defensive line, and were acquired for the 2010 first, fifth and sixth-rounders.

That's an injection of young blood into a team that needed it.

Last year, the Panthers tried to keep the 2008 team intact, hoping to reclaim the magic of that 12-4 season. That meant franchising Peppers, which led to extending quarterback Jake Delhomme's contract and stripping away much of their veteran depth.

When that didn't work, they chose to keep the pieces they could count on three and four years down the line and start over.

This year's version should still look familiar, however.

Of the 71 players under contract after the draft (not counting the undrafted rookies who will sign this week), 41 were drafted by the Panthers, including 17 of the 22 projected starters.

And while signing big-name, big-money unrestricted free agents was once a regular part of their personnel strategy, they've gotten far away from that. Only two members of the current roster (kicker John Kasay and defensive end Tyler Brayton) were signed as unrestricted free agents.

The rest were either acquired through trade (five), claimed off waivers (four) or signed as street free agents (19, which includes undrafted rookies and guys who were released by their previous teams).

Clearly, this team is going to be defined by the guys they've picked, and you can see what they value most. The five starting offensive linemen and the top two reserves were draft picks, along with three of their first four running backs.

The quarterbacks drafted - Jimmy Clausen as a gift from above in the second round and Tony Pike in the sixth - represent the team's new direction. For six years, the Panthers were fortunate to get good-enough play from Delhomme. When his elbow and his game left him in 2008 and 2009, they had nothing left behind him.

They knew they had to fix that and they did.

On the day they cut Delhomme, Panthers coach John Fox admitted a degree of unease with it, at the same time acknowledging it was the way the league was pointing.

"I think inherently speaking, around the league, coaches are more comfortable with guys they've seen do it," Fox said. "There's no question about that, that's not just the Carolina Panthers, it's across the league.

"However, it's a young man's game. Part of it is being successful developing young players. It's a catch-22."

The last time the Panthers rebuilt a roster, they did it differently. When Hurney and Fox took over in 2002, they worked to backfill the roster with cheap free agents they could trust, without enough picks that first year to remake the team exactly as they wanted. And the Super Bowl year that followed was built on the backs of a host of veteran free agents.

But if the Panthers are going to make another such run, they'll do it with their own, the homegrown players they grow more fond of with each passing season. In their ninth year, they've been able to lay enough bricks down that it's beginning to look like the home they dreamed of then.

"I think we said when we came in that we would build our team around the draft and complement through other areas," Hurney said earlier this offseason. "In recent years, that philosophy has gotten even stronger because we have had some success with players in the draft.

"We're going to stick with that philosophy. It has probably gotten stronger each year."
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I wish they would at least sign SOME veterans. This is ridiculous to waste Smitty's last years rebuilding.

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Panthers answer question about team's direction

J_Ray JBB JustBBall Member

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Panthers answer question about team's direction

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