January 23, 2025 • 29 mins
This week on the Happy Half Hour, Darin and Kassidy survive a "blizzard", recap the divisional round of the NFL Playoffs, look ahead to the 2025 draft and so much more!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
This week on a Happy half Hour.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
The one thing I can tell you for sure about
Dan Morgan, if he tells you he's gonna draft the
best player available.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Regardless of position, believe him.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Dan is one of those guys who is going to
trust that board. He's going to see what it's telling
him and he's just gonna follow it.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
What's up, Cow, It's.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Time for the Happy Half Hour, presented by Southern Star,
an official bourbon of the Carolina Panthers. Here are your hosts,
Darren Gant and Cassidy Hill.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Hello friends, and welcome to a post blizzard edition the
Happy Half Hour.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Have we all survived or we're all here?
Speaker 4 (00:52):
There was a little bit of ice in the grass
outside of my porch.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
D L's in the room podcast, Matt is safely behind
the monitors.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
You're here, I'm here. We seem to have made it.
We survived.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
My parents in Mobile, Alabama got seven inches.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
See, I think to my thing on this is, if
it's this cold for this long you only get a
half inch of snow, That's that's mean. That's spiteful on
somebody's part. So good for your parents for being able
to enjoy it in Mobile in suburban mobile Alabama.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
That's my thought process. When it's like starting to thunder
and it gets humid, just rain, Like, don't be obnoxious
about it. Just rain.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, you're new here in the Carolinas, aren't you.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I was gonna say, you come from Alabama where they
actually got snow.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Previously, you lived in Green Bay.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Where there is right now where it snows like starting
in September and ending in May or something. You know,
so you've got to be treating this whole thing your
first good Charlotte blizzard as.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Come on that.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
I was running around yesterday running some errands and there
was no one on the road, not a thing, like
maybe two other people on the interstate when I went
to my hair appointment. And I get to the hair
appointment and the lady's like, yeah, a lot of people
didn't come in today. And I was like, you know
what's so funny is I have a car that I
bought when I lived in Wisconsin because I didn't know
how to drive in the snow when I first got there.
(02:22):
And I just pushed a little button that says winter weather,
and the car goes and does what it needs to
do to drive in winter weather and I didn't even
have to push that button yesterday.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Wow, I just drove. Yeah, I stayed at home.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
I was out in it a little bit Tuesday night
when it started covering the roads and I had to
drive a grand total of about five blocks back to
my house. And at one point I was the only
car on a particular street, and just because I'm a jerk,
I jammed on the brakes just to see what would happen,
and I slid a little bit.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
It wasn't dramatic.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Everyone is safe, but at that point I was just like, Yeah,
there's nothing for me out here in this world. I'm
just gonna park, going to house, have a glass a
eggnog or something, and call it a night. Speaking of which,
we were neglectful coming out of the top of the podcast.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
We got distracted quick, my bad.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
This is the Happy Half Hour Prevented, presented by our
friends at Southern Star, an official bourbon partner of the
Carolina Panthers celebrate the spirit of the Carolinas, which Matt
might have to take that out and put it back at.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
The top at some point.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
But a blizzard edition of The Happy Half Hour presented
by our friends at Southern Star, an official bourbon partner
at the Carolina Panthers celebrate the spirit of the Carolina.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Does reading it twice make up for not reading it
at the top?
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Yeah, maybe it does.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Matt's gonna work his podcast magic on this when it
make us sound professional. But yeah, as Matt, yeah, there
you go, there you go. So you're probably pro blizzard, right.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
I love a good snow day. I if I have
an excuse to not have to leave the house and
don't have to tell me twice, I'll light a candle.
I like to have the house clean for this, So
if I know a snow day is coming, I'll clean
the night before so that I can just sit and enjoy.
I'll light a candle, I'll make some soup, and then
(04:12):
I usually will turn on like one of about five
different entertainment things. I'll either turn on Lord of the
Rings Two Towers. Sometimes you're Turn of the King, depends
on what mood I'm in, or an episode of the
BBC series Classic Sherlock with Bennerdict Cumberbats, or any of
the Harry Potters, Okay, preferably the first one if it's
(04:34):
a snow day, or like Pride and Prejudice, The Kiera
Knightly Version or football.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
I you know I tend to my main thing on
snow days is I like to prepare in advance, right,
Thank the boy Scouts for that. When I grew up
in it, I lived it. Yes, I was an Eagle
Scout the whole nine yards. So be prepared has kind
of been instilled in me from an early age, and.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
I take it to ridiculous extreme.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
So in advance of Charlotte blizzards, I'm that guy who
goes to Harris Teeter.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Now, I don't go crazy with the bread and milk.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
That's a cliche and I avoid cliches as often as possible.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
So instead you get just at whatever.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
I feel like cooking.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
And it may be you know, it's oftentimes suit, but
a lot of times it's just whatever wife and I
feel like cooking. Whatever we feel like eating, will buy
a bunch of that, and I just cook for days
and days and days.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
So when we get a blizzard to like this week's blizzard.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
That's gone by the middle of the next afternoon, No,
it's a Charlotte blizzard.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
I mean, we hadn't had snow here.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Get humor us, Okay, we hadn't had snow in over
three years in any measurable amount.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
So I did get one blizzard when I lived in
Green Bay or what classified as a blizzard. Do you
know how much?
Speaker 3 (05:56):
What's a Green Bay blizzard?
Speaker 4 (05:58):
I went out and measured it and at one point
we were up to eighteen inches.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Holy cat, foot and a half. A foot and a
half's a lot of snow.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
That was a lot of snow. That was pretty much overnight.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Yeah, I still remember.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Somebody went to work the next day. It was crazy.
What do you people do with?
Speaker 2 (06:14):
This is how you can tell I'm an old because
I start these stories with.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
I remember back in the winter of ninety three, we had.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
A blizzard in Alabama in ninety three, the Great Blizzard.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
The Great Blizzard, I mean, listen, the Great Blizzard of
ninety three hit during my spring break of my second
senior year in college.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
Was in March.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
It was March, so spring break I had come off
the mountain and spring break got extended two weeks.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
That year the mountain. John couldn't get back up the mountain.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
I mean it was there was over a foot of
snow in suburban Hickory, which is only an hour away
from Boone and you couldn't get back to Boone proper.
So everybody got a nice two week spring break that year.
But I still the elders speak of the blizzard.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
In the Blizzard of ninety three is actually one of
my first, like real core memories as a child, like
I was. I was three years old, and it's not
like I can remember a lot of it, but the
one thing I remember about it. So we lived in
Birmingham and we got a good bit of snow. Obviously,
(07:20):
my cousin Daniel was born during the Blizzard of ninety three.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
That's a good story.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
Yeah, But we were at my Aunt Dot's house, my
gret my great aunt's house in Bessemer home with Jameis
Winston and my Aunt Dot, and we knew snow was coming,
but nobody knew it was going to be that bad.
This part my parents had filled in over the years.
So we got stuck at my Aunt Dot's house for
three days. And when we went back home, my parents
had put our dog in the house because they just
(07:47):
knew it was going to be cold. But we were
thinking we'd be back home that night. Well we would
get home three days later. Oh God, and this is
what I remember. My dad opens the door and that dog,
her name was Lady. She was a black German shepherd.
She runs out, she just does her business for like
twenty minutes straight.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
That's amazing.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
If my dad goes into checks. She never once messed
in the house the whole three days she had held it,
held it for three days.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
See, that's a good dog.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Right, that's a very good dog. She was a good dog.
And I just remember standing there on the front porch
and watching her go get in that snow for twenty minutes.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
That also means that Lady didn't eat for three days.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
I know.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
It was awful.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
We felt so bad, but we had no idea we
were gonna get stuck.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
See.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I had my favorite dog ever. I had an old
beagle named mister Bean. And I could leave mister Bean
at home alone for like four hours and he would
get into something. Yeah, I mean he was a beagle.
He sniffed thing. So if there was ever loose food
in one of my you know, in my work bag,
if there was ever a granola bar or something in
side pocket, he ate zippers out of my work bags
(08:57):
to get to food that was inside the back. When
I had like gone to the grocery store. So I
could only imagine leaving him home alone for three days.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
He would have eaten.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
He would have been fine. He would have found food.
You know, I wonder if.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
Lady found food. And I just obviously was not old
enough to remember that part of it. I should ask
my parents.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Mister Bean was bad about like if I ever had
a bag of potatoes sitting on the floor of the
pantry or something, he would eat a raw potato.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
So, at any rate, So now we've covered blizzards and
and dog stories. Dogs and blizzard stories. Good dogs, They're all.
They're all good dogs. But at some point we got
to talk about football. It's in our contract. You you
mentioned watching football. I've got a weird thing and and
(09:46):
I have done this for a long time. I love
the game of football. Let me just say this right
out at the top.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
An interesting wild card weekend.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I work very hard to avoid football, and I only
and I only watch football if I think it's going
to be good, because wild card weekend is usually bad
football fun. So so last weekend was the weekend where
I re engage with the football industrial complex. Because after
an eighteen game regular season or an eighteen week regular season.
(10:17):
Darren needs a break, all right, Darren needs to turn
off for a minute and not football for a second.
But I usually tune back in this weekend because Divisional
round is when it gets good.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
That's the good stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
So I was like, everybody else in America is like,
take this Baltimore Buffalo game and shoot it straight into
my vans.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
I need more of that.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
In my life, and you wat, I saw parts of that.
When things that happened late at night are often lost
on me, but I did see the end of that one.
Hats off to our old friend Jeremy Chen. Yeah, he's
definitely a friend of the program. We're very happy for
Jeremy and Frankie Luvu that they're enjoying success in Washington both.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yep, no doubt.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
And I just think though that that I thought that
Buffalo Baltimore game. I don't know about you, but I
kind of approach that as well, there's your super Bowl,
the rest you'll just figure it out.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
I approached it the same way, and I was slightly
disappointed that I felt like it wasn't as good of
a game as we were should have gotten, and it
was purely because of Baltimore mistakes. Granted, it was still
a close game up until the very very end, because
you know Baltimore is good enough to overcome some of
those mistakes. It almost makes you wonder, well, of course,
(11:31):
it makes you wonder, like without those three mistakes, does
Baltimore win that game? They probably do, But you know it,
being in Buffalo was always going to be hard to overcome.
Especially you have to wonder too if some of those
drops were because of how cold it was.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
It didn't help. Yeah, and that's Mark Andrew's heart.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
By the way, I know such a good player and
I hate that this is what's gonna get remembered.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Well, the good news about it is it happened in Buffalo,
and the Buffalo fans, who you know, I tease the
Buffalo fans, most of whom live in Charlotte now, And
they came and never went back. Nobody ever, other than
Brandon Bean and Sean McDermott, no one has ever moved
from Charlotte to Buffalo. They're the only ones. They blazed
(12:17):
that trail and took some of their old friends with them.
But the Buffalo fans respond to stuff like this. They've
been making donations to Mark Andrew's foundation. They did a
similar They did a similar thing when the Bengals, quarterbacked
by our friend Andy Dalton, beat somebody to get Buffalo
into the playoffs for the first time in a long time.
(12:38):
They flooded Andy's foundation with donations. So I love the
fact that they're responding in the right way. And it's
just it's a shame to see because Mark Andrews has
been so good of a player for such a long
time for that to be the kind of thing that's defining.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
I love that their pettiness is still kind. Yeah, so
Buffalo of.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Them, Yeah, it's nice.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
I mean it's almost a menace, o'de a nice kind
of thing, But yeah, I do like that about them.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Yeah yeah, fun fan base. And I will say this,
Baltimore I thought was one of the best teams in
the NFL this year. That was kind of who I
wanted to see make it to the super Bowl, just
to kind of put a cap on all they've done
this year. But Buffalo's fan base has waited a long
long time to be in this place again, and they
had what four super Bowl appearances in a row in
(13:24):
the night race with no when So you've got to
feel for that fan base who has been so dedicated
even in the dark years, and so it'll be cool
to see that fan base on a national stage if
that's where they if they make it through this weekend again,
of course, they've got their big bad wolf that they've
got to get through. First. They've lost to Kansas City
(13:47):
in this round how many times?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Now, all of the times, all of the time, all
of the times, every time, I mean at three of
the last four years. I think it was because I
remember looking that up when they traded in the draft
and Buffalo traded the pick that turned into Xavier Worthy,
you know, to the Chiefs, and I was like, why
would you give a speed receiver to the team that
knocked you out of the playoffs three of the last
(14:09):
four years, So that part of it baffled me.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
And the Chiefs are doing their Chiefs things. They're getting
super strong.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
And they've now reached that point that the Patriots used
to occupy. In my head, I was the idiot who
for a while said, this is the year the Patriots
finally fall off the cliff.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
They can't keep doing this forever.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
And then they kept doing it, and they kept doing it,
They kept winning and they've just kind of reached that point.
I almost assume Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes are going
to win until they don't, and even then, even when
they don't, I'm gonna assume they're going to come back
and win the next year too.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I mean, they've just kind of reached that point.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
I agree that Buffalo is probably the better team over
the course of this season. You know, we had a
good up close look at the Chiefs and it reminds
me a little bit of what happened he in twenty fifteen. Uh,
it's the worst nine and oh team I've ever seen.
This is the worst ten and oh team I've ever seen.
This is the worst fifteen to one team I've ever seen.
(15:09):
They weren't very good. Yeah, offensively this year. They aren't
that same product that we're used to seeing Patrick Mahomes,
but dang, they keep not losing.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Right. They find their ways, and I'm sure people would
say part of that is because of help, and we
can talk about that later, but they find ways. When
you're a defense and you're letting Travis Kelcey get between
you and just sit in a soft part of the zone,
he's gonna beat you. Every time he's somebody said the
(15:40):
other day and they're so true. He has reached that
point of his career where he now just outslows everyone
else around it.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
That's my goal. I want to outslow somebody, and.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
That's where he's at and he's doing it well. And
you can't let Travis Kelce and Patrick Mahomes figure out
that they're really really good together. And that's exactly what
happened the other day against the Texans. That being said,
I do want to ask you a question about this.
Yeh Do you think let me provese it by saying this,
(16:11):
I can't really blame Patrick Mahomes for using the rules
to his advantage when they can do so. He's just
playing the game the way it was set up to
be played.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Do you foresee a world where some of these rules
are changed in response to how he is playing the game.
As far as the sliding, the fake sliding, the flopping out.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Of bounds, well, I mean flopping ad bounds fake slide.
I mean you can penalize somebody for a fake slide
I mean, or just the thing that I think is
never gonna happen, is the league's gonna make it easier
to hit quarterbacks. That's not a thing Big Shield's ever
gonna do.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
So I don't foresee roughing the passer ever going.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Back, right, I mean, it's not ever going to go
back to the old days where Dan Fouts was being
carried off on a stretcher after no. I mean, I'm
just saying people of his era had to take shots
that guys these days never have to experience.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
But I don't fault him for it. I mean he's
found the edge.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, that's and that's the name of the game, especially
when you get to this point in the playoffs when
there's four teams left, find that small edge, and that's
how they maintain that level. It's how the Patriots maintained
that level for a long time. You know, Tom Brady
was Tom Brady, but Bill Belichick was good at finding
that little thing that he knew and you didn't, right,
And you know that's what great ones do. So I
(17:32):
don't hold it against Patrick Mahomes. I also don't think
anything's ever going to change in terms of protecting quarterbacks.
And I don't think it should because you know, I
want to see you know, I wouldn't have wanted to
see whoever Baltimore's backup quarterback versus whoever Buffalo's backup quarterback
happened to have been. I don't even I want to
(17:53):
see Josh Allen versus Lamar Jackson in January. I want
to see Josh Allen versus Patrick mahoonme. So these guys
have to be protected, you know the other side of
that bracket. The Philadelphia Eagles just annoy me, and not
for the reason they probably annoy other people.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
They don't run enough. Yeah, a pass is a wasted play.
And listen.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Aj Brown is a brilliant player, and he's leading book clubs,
and I support literacy, so I'm pro aj Brown here.
If there's ever been a team that should run more,
it's that one. And you've over complicated it, Sirianni. You've
you've made this harder than it needed to be. You've
(18:37):
got that offensive line, and you've got Saquon friggin Barker.
Turn around and hand it to that man, even when
Hurtz was dinged up and wasn't as mobile as he
usually is. Just turn around and hand it to big Boy,
over and over and over until it doesn't work. For
about ten plays in a row, And here's the thing too.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
I have said this ahead of the Eagles last like
three games, and this is not in any way to
toot my own horn. It's just to prove I don't
think everybody is watching the Eagles as closely as they
think they have until it comes time to end a
game like this. The Eagles, and I think I saw
this when we went there to play them. They have
(19:20):
a passing game that has some superstars and AJ Brown
and DeVante Smith. They do not have a passing game
that can carry them a whole game. If you shut
down Saquon Barkley and so like, or if you go
away from Saquon Barkley, that passing game should supplement the
running game. It should never be the game plan. It
can't carry them through a whole game. So well partnered
(19:41):
with your point of like, why are you not handing
the ball to Saquon Barkley, Yeah, I think they're making
it more complicated than it needs to be.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
I think it could. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
I don't know that Jalen Hurts is the quarterback to
necessarily do it. I mean, yeah, you look at I mean,
give Patrick Mahomes, AJ Brown and Devontae Smith right, and
see what happen happens, and that still looks a lot different.
And that's no slight. You know, Hurts has figured out
his lane. He's figured out how to make it work
as good as what he does.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
He just needs to be allowed to do what he does. Yeah,
and she's only throwing one downfield down twenty yard pass
a game.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
That's fine, and that might be too many. Just do
nothing but run, I just I I. The games that
stick out into my mind often are the ones that
are weird for one reason or another and include a
lot of running, because I do like a short football game.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
We almost got to score a gomi this past weekend,
but then somebody, oh the Chiefs, yep, and then they
took the safety.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
And that once I figured out how to find score
agami on the internet, that changed a lot of stuff
for me, because every now and then you just see
random scores and wait for somebody. Our old friend young
Will I would be like, young Will, is this score gomi?
Speaker 4 (20:53):
And he would where did you find it? I just
wait for somebody to tweet it.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Yeah, it's there's an inn.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
There's a website that's got Yeah, it's got the whole
graft On there so you can look to every possible value,
see it's either filled in or not, and it'll give
you the games played and all that kind of stuff.
So fun with Scoregami. But I do love a good
two and a half hour football game, and I think
about I think about Christmas Eve two thousand and six
(21:20):
more often than I ever should, not because of warm
holiday memories, but because that was today. The Carolina Panthers
effectively invented the wildcat and did nothing but single wing
run the whole game with the Angelo Williams, and they
were down quarterbacks. Jake was hurt. Back up Chris Winky
(21:42):
was also hurt. He was had a rib thing, couldn't
really throw. The only touchdown of that game was a
one yard pass from Chris Winky to Jeff King, because
that was about as far as Chris could throw a
football that day, was one yard away. But the Carolina
Panthers ran the ball fifty two times and it was amazing.
(22:02):
It was awesome to watch. I think about Detroit. I
think about Detroit here a couple of years ago when
it was about a million degrees below zero or twenty.
Once you get under thirty, it's just like absolute zero.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
I stationed Zebra. It's the worst ever.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
I lose sight of the differences in degrees once it
reaches a certain point. But when the Lions came in
here the other year and the Carolina Panthers run for
three to twenty, yeah, I mean Deontay Foreman, I think
was one sixty five two but one twenty five and
you know, hung thirty seven points on the lines and
kept that, you know, playoff push alive in twenty two.
(22:42):
So those are the kind of games that stick out
into my memory. That's why I was secretly hoping for
Eagles Ravens. Yeah, because a good two and a half
hour Super Bowl would have been a thing to behold.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
And Sequon Barkley versus Derrick Henry would have been fun
to watch. Man's talk about Lamar Josh. Let me get
see Saquon versus Derrick Henry.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
That's old man, Hey.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Speaking of Detroit, I thought about Detroit a lot during
our blizzard, as one does. While I was watching their
coordinators go on and become head coaches all over the NFL.
Ben Johnson finally took a job. Aaron Glenn gets the
Jets job. Best of luck to both of those guys.
But the main thing that kept running through my mind was,
(23:24):
ain't me right?
Speaker 4 (23:25):
Don't have to do with a courage and search this year.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
No coaching search for this kid this year.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
And I was just sitting there on the couch yesterday
watching it not snow anymore and again, if it's going
to be this cold for this long and it's no
more snow than we got, and that's hateful. I was
just thinking how fortunate the Carolina Panthers are to be
in this position where on January twenty second and twenty third,
(23:51):
nobody's talking about them.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
A friend called me on my way in today and
he was like, what are you doing. I said, I'm
heading to work and he said, Cassidy, it's eleven forty Jake,
I don't have to deal with the coaches search this year.
I'm going in when I want to.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
And that's that's not only good for me and you,
that's good for the product here because for the first
time in a long time, the Carolina Panthers are in
a spot where they can build year after year, and
that's just gonna help in so many ways. I mean,
you still see, you know, most of the people are
out of the building. You'll still see some of the
coaches and some of the injured guys coming in for
(24:25):
you year every stuff like that. Those guys are here,
but things have gotten quiet, and it needs to be
quiet because with any you know, it's just like when
you're lifting weights working out, You've got to have recovery time.
And the Carolina Panthers have that recovery time right now,
and they've got a chance to build on something year
after year for the first time really since it Cam
(24:47):
Newton was the quarterback.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
Yeah. And as we've said a few times now, being
able to have so many people on the same timeline
in the same window is mixed for an exciting time
and excited to see what next year could bring.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
And I was gonna say, and before you know it,
it's going to be back into off season mode. I mean,
you're going to Mobile next week Senior Bowl kicks in.
Dan and Dave will celebrate their one year anniversary together.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
Could we get them a gift?
Speaker 2 (25:16):
We should or one year's paper, right, yeah, one year's paper.
We should print out Panthers dot Com and present it
to them or something. But no, those guys are going
to be right back to work. Next week scouting and
getting ready for and it's on.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
And then we'll be heading to East West here in
the next day or two.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Yep, Dan's head to the East West.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
I know, uh, he'll join Dave down in Mobile at
some point. And then it's on because then you go
straight from the the All Star Games, the Combine, free
agency and its own. Yeah, and it's on for the
next couple of weeks. So the good news is we've
had our opportunity to rest during the blizzard.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
Right but thank god we had that blizzard so we
could get an app. I'm excited about this year leading
up to the draft as well, because I think we're
in a fun position, at least for us. I don't
know how the scouts feel, or Dan and Day feel,
but for me and you, it feels like a fun position.
It's not high enough where it feels inevitable of who
it will be. There's still a little bit of mystery there,
(26:16):
but it's still in the top ten, so you know
you're gonna get a big name. You know, we spent
most of we spent all the way up until the
last possible second of last year's draft cycle. I think
we didn't have a first round pick, and it was
you know, a lot of speculation about who's still gonna
be there in the second round. Year before that, everybody
(26:36):
knows who's probably going to number one overall, And so
I think this year is gonna be kind of fun
to kind of look at who is available, who is
a top ten talent versus what they might need. You know,
do you go for who's still there versus what you
need to feel? I don't know. It's gonna make for
an exciting combine, exciting Senior Bowl, exciting pro days.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Yeah, no doubt about that.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
The one thing I know for sure, and we've got
all spring to talk about, you know, draft prospects, this,
that and the other. The one thing I can tell
you for sure about Dan Morgan, if he tells you
he's going to draft the best player available.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Regardless of position, believe him.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
I think Dan is one of those guys who is
going to trust that board. He's going to see what
it's telling him and he's just going to follow it
to the letter.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
And the Panthers honestly aren't a spot where, you know,
if the right receiver is there, they can't say no
to that.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
If the right whatever I mean.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Pass rusher is obviously going to get a lot of attention,
Defensive lines obviously going to get a lot of attention.
But I just think that they're in a position where
they can listen to what that board's telling him, and
if somebody's sticking out there in front of them, then
I don't think you hesitate taking you know, whether it's
a fill in the blank, it could be one of
(27:57):
any number of positions, and they're roster is not to
the point yet where you say, oh, they absolutely can't
draft one of those.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
You know who I'm really excited to kind of look into,
and I don't admittedly know enough about him to know
where he is projected. I'll kind of find this more
out in Mobile next week, but after watching that National
Championship game, I'm really excited to see Xavier Watts at
the Senior Bowl. He's a Notre Dame safety. He was
one of the few bright spots on Notre Dame's defense
(28:25):
on Monday Night and is a ballhawk. He's like he
leads college football and interceptions the past two years, but
still can come up and you know, tackle in the box.
He's a good little safety and he's big for a
safety too.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
You just described him as a good little safety and
then I know it.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
A good little safety is like the way a girl
would say it, like that's the good yo. He's such
a cute little thing. Oh okay, you know, like a puppy.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
So anyway, all right, Well, we will get in depth
into all the pre draft stuff in future editions, but
for now, we've covered the blizzard, We've covered the playoffs,
championship game week in tune in next week we'll break
down the pre super Bowl stuff.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
You may be on the road. We'll have to we'll
figure out, we'll figure out the scheduling and all that.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
Matt recorded our entire conversation about the ocean before we
got started, and we can.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
Just roll in and just run that in.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Just remember, folks, the sea is a road game. Nothing
good happened happens for you there.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Take that.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Be prepared for the next blizzard, which may come and
it may not.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
I have no idea.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
I'm gonna put a snow machine in your front yard
Speaker 3 (29:27):
And we'll see you next week on the Happy Half Hour.
This week on a Happy half Hour.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
The one thing I can tell you for sure about
Dan Morgan, if he tells you he's gonna draft the
best player available.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Regardless of position, believe him.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Dan is one of those guys who is going to
trust that board. He's going to see what it's telling
him and he's just gonna follow it.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
What's up, Cow, It's.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Time for the Happy Half Hour, presented by Southern Star,
an official bourbon of the Carolina Panthers. Here are your hosts,
Darren Gant and Cassidy Hill.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Hello friends, and welcome to a post blizzard edition the
Happy Half Hour.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Have we all survived or we're all here?
Speaker 4 (00:52):
There was a little bit of ice in the grass
outside of my porch.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
D L's in the room podcast, Matt is safely behind
the monitors.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
You're here, I'm here. We seem to have made it.
We survived.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
My parents in Mobile, Alabama got seven inches.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
See, I think to my thing on this is, if
it's this cold for this long you only get a
half inch of snow, That's that's mean. That's spiteful on
somebody's part. So good for your parents for being able
to enjoy it in Mobile in suburban mobile Alabama.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
That's my thought process. When it's like starting to thunder
and it gets humid, just rain, Like, don't be obnoxious
about it. Just rain.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, you're new here in the Carolinas, aren't you.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I was gonna say, you come from Alabama where they
actually got snow.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Previously, you lived in Green Bay.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Where there is right now where it snows like starting
in September and ending in May or something. You know,
so you've got to be treating this whole thing your
first good Charlotte blizzard as.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Come on that.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
I was running around yesterday running some errands and there
was no one on the road, not a thing, like
maybe two other people on the interstate when I went
to my hair appointment. And I get to the hair
appointment and the lady's like, yeah, a lot of people
didn't come in today. And I was like, you know
what's so funny is I have a car that I
bought when I lived in Wisconsin because I didn't know
how to drive in the snow when I first got there.
(02:22):
And I just pushed a little button that says winter weather,
and the car goes and does what it needs to
do to drive in winter weather and I didn't even
have to push that button yesterday.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Wow, I just drove. Yeah, I stayed at home.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
I was out in it a little bit Tuesday night
when it started covering the roads and I had to
drive a grand total of about five blocks back to
my house. And at one point I was the only
car on a particular street, and just because I'm a jerk,
I jammed on the brakes just to see what would happen,
and I slid a little bit.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
It wasn't dramatic.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Everyone is safe, but at that point I was just like, Yeah,
there's nothing for me out here in this world. I'm
just gonna park, going to house, have a glass a
eggnog or something, and call it a night. Speaking of which,
we were neglectful coming out of the top of the podcast.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
We got distracted quick, my bad.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
This is the Happy Half Hour Prevented, presented by our
friends at Southern Star, an official bourbon partner of the
Carolina Panthers celebrate the spirit of the Carolinas, which Matt
might have to take that out and put it back at.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
The top at some point.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
But a blizzard edition of The Happy Half Hour presented
by our friends at Southern Star, an official bourbon partner
at the Carolina Panthers celebrate the spirit of the Carolina.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Does reading it twice make up for not reading it
at the top?
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Yeah, maybe it does.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Matt's gonna work his podcast magic on this when it
make us sound professional. But yeah, as Matt, yeah, there
you go, there you go. So you're probably pro blizzard, right.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
I love a good snow day. I if I have
an excuse to not have to leave the house and
don't have to tell me twice, I'll light a candle.
I like to have the house clean for this, So
if I know a snow day is coming, I'll clean
the night before so that I can just sit and enjoy.
I'll light a candle, I'll make some soup, and then
(04:12):
I usually will turn on like one of about five
different entertainment things. I'll either turn on Lord of the
Rings Two Towers. Sometimes you're Turn of the King, depends
on what mood I'm in, or an episode of the
BBC series Classic Sherlock with Bennerdict Cumberbats, or any of
the Harry Potters, Okay, preferably the first one if it's
(04:34):
a snow day, or like Pride and Prejudice, The Kiera
Knightly Version or football.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
I you know I tend to my main thing on
snow days is I like to prepare in advance, right,
Thank the boy Scouts for that. When I grew up
in it, I lived it. Yes, I was an Eagle
Scout the whole nine yards. So be prepared has kind
of been instilled in me from an early age, and.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
I take it to ridiculous extreme.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
So in advance of Charlotte blizzards, I'm that guy who
goes to Harris Teeter.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Now, I don't go crazy with the bread and milk.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
That's a cliche and I avoid cliches as often as possible.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
So instead you get just at whatever.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
I feel like cooking.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
And it may be you know, it's oftentimes suit, but
a lot of times it's just whatever wife and I
feel like cooking. Whatever we feel like eating, will buy
a bunch of that, and I just cook for days
and days and days.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
So when we get a blizzard to like this week's blizzard.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
That's gone by the middle of the next afternoon, No,
it's a Charlotte blizzard.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
I mean, we hadn't had snow here.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Get humor us, Okay, we hadn't had snow in over
three years in any measurable amount.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
So I did get one blizzard when I lived in
Green Bay or what classified as a blizzard. Do you
know how much?
Speaker 3 (05:56):
What's a Green Bay blizzard?
Speaker 4 (05:58):
I went out and measured it and at one point
we were up to eighteen inches.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Holy cat, foot and a half. A foot and a
half's a lot of snow.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
That was a lot of snow. That was pretty much overnight.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Yeah, I still remember.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Somebody went to work the next day. It was crazy.
What do you people do with?
Speaker 2 (06:14):
This is how you can tell I'm an old because
I start these stories with.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
I remember back in the winter of ninety three, we had.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
A blizzard in Alabama in ninety three, the Great Blizzard.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
The Great Blizzard, I mean, listen, the Great Blizzard of
ninety three hit during my spring break of my second
senior year in college.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
Was in March.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
It was March, so spring break I had come off
the mountain and spring break got extended two weeks.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
That year the mountain. John couldn't get back up the mountain.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
I mean it was there was over a foot of
snow in suburban Hickory, which is only an hour away
from Boone and you couldn't get back to Boone proper.
So everybody got a nice two week spring break that year.
But I still the elders speak of the blizzard.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
In the Blizzard of ninety three is actually one of
my first, like real core memories as a child, like
I was. I was three years old, and it's not
like I can remember a lot of it, but the
one thing I remember about it. So we lived in
Birmingham and we got a good bit of snow. Obviously,
(07:20):
my cousin Daniel was born during the Blizzard of ninety three.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
That's a good story.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
Yeah, But we were at my Aunt Dot's house, my
gret my great aunt's house in Bessemer home with Jameis
Winston and my Aunt Dot, and we knew snow was coming,
but nobody knew it was going to be that bad.
This part my parents had filled in over the years.
So we got stuck at my Aunt Dot's house for
three days. And when we went back home, my parents
had put our dog in the house because they just
(07:47):
knew it was going to be cold. But we were
thinking we'd be back home that night. Well we would
get home three days later. Oh God, and this is
what I remember. My dad opens the door and that dog,
her name was Lady. She was a black German shepherd.
She runs out, she just does her business for like
twenty minutes straight.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
That's amazing.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
If my dad goes into checks. She never once messed
in the house the whole three days she had held it,
held it for three days.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
See, that's a good dog.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Right, that's a very good dog. She was a good dog.
And I just remember standing there on the front porch
and watching her go get in that snow for twenty minutes.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
That also means that Lady didn't eat for three days.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
I know.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
It was awful.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
We felt so bad, but we had no idea we
were gonna get stuck.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
See.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I had my favorite dog ever. I had an old
beagle named mister Bean. And I could leave mister Bean
at home alone for like four hours and he would
get into something. Yeah, I mean he was a beagle.
He sniffed thing. So if there was ever loose food
in one of my you know, in my work bag,
if there was ever a granola bar or something in
side pocket, he ate zippers out of my work bags
(08:57):
to get to food that was inside the back. When
I had like gone to the grocery store. So I
could only imagine leaving him home alone for three days.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
He would have eaten.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
He would have been fine. He would have found food.
You know, I wonder if.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
Lady found food. And I just obviously was not old
enough to remember that part of it. I should ask
my parents.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Mister Bean was bad about like if I ever had
a bag of potatoes sitting on the floor of the
pantry or something, he would eat a raw potato.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
So, at any rate, So now we've covered blizzards and
and dog stories. Dogs and blizzard stories. Good dogs, They're all.
They're all good dogs. But at some point we got
to talk about football. It's in our contract. You you
mentioned watching football. I've got a weird thing and and
(09:46):
I have done this for a long time. I love
the game of football. Let me just say this right
out at the top.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
An interesting wild card weekend.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
I work very hard to avoid football, and I only
and I only watch football if I think it's going
to be good, because wild card weekend is usually bad
football fun. So so last weekend was the weekend where
I re engage with the football industrial complex. Because after
an eighteen game regular season or an eighteen week regular season.
(10:17):
Darren needs a break, all right, Darren needs to turn
off for a minute and not football for a second.
But I usually tune back in this weekend because Divisional
round is when it gets good.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
That's the good stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
So I was like, everybody else in America is like,
take this Baltimore Buffalo game and shoot it straight into
my vans.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
I need more of that.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
In my life, and you wat, I saw parts of that.
When things that happened late at night are often lost
on me, but I did see the end of that one.
Hats off to our old friend Jeremy Chen. Yeah, he's
definitely a friend of the program. We're very happy for
Jeremy and Frankie Luvu that they're enjoying success in Washington both.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yep, no doubt.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
And I just think though that that I thought that
Buffalo Baltimore game. I don't know about you, but I
kind of approach that as well, there's your super Bowl,
the rest you'll just figure it out.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
I approached it the same way, and I was slightly
disappointed that I felt like it wasn't as good of
a game as we were should have gotten, and it
was purely because of Baltimore mistakes. Granted, it was still
a close game up until the very very end, because
you know Baltimore is good enough to overcome some of
those mistakes. It almost makes you wonder, well, of course,
(11:31):
it makes you wonder, like without those three mistakes, does
Baltimore win that game? They probably do, But you know it,
being in Buffalo was always going to be hard to overcome.
Especially you have to wonder too if some of those
drops were because of how cold it was.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
It didn't help. Yeah, and that's Mark Andrew's heart.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
By the way, I know such a good player and
I hate that this is what's gonna get remembered.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Well, the good news about it is it happened in Buffalo,
and the Buffalo fans, who you know, I tease the
Buffalo fans, most of whom live in Charlotte now, And
they came and never went back. Nobody ever, other than
Brandon Bean and Sean McDermott, no one has ever moved
from Charlotte to Buffalo. They're the only ones. They blazed
(12:17):
that trail and took some of their old friends with them.
But the Buffalo fans respond to stuff like this. They've
been making donations to Mark Andrew's foundation. They did a
similar They did a similar thing when the Bengals, quarterbacked
by our friend Andy Dalton, beat somebody to get Buffalo
into the playoffs for the first time in a long time.
(12:38):
They flooded Andy's foundation with donations. So I love the
fact that they're responding in the right way. And it's
just it's a shame to see because Mark Andrews has
been so good of a player for such a long
time for that to be the kind of thing that's defining.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
I love that their pettiness is still kind. Yeah, so
Buffalo of.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Them, Yeah, it's nice.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
I mean it's almost a menace, o'de a nice kind
of thing, But yeah, I do like that about them.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Yeah yeah, fun fan base. And I will say this,
Baltimore I thought was one of the best teams in
the NFL this year. That was kind of who I
wanted to see make it to the super Bowl, just
to kind of put a cap on all they've done
this year. But Buffalo's fan base has waited a long
long time to be in this place again, and they
had what four super Bowl appearances in a row in
(13:24):
the night race with no when So you've got to
feel for that fan base who has been so dedicated
even in the dark years, and so it'll be cool
to see that fan base on a national stage if
that's where they if they make it through this weekend again,
of course, they've got their big bad wolf that they've
got to get through. First. They've lost to Kansas City
(13:47):
in this round how many times?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Now, all of the times, all of the time, all
of the times, every time, I mean at three of
the last four years. I think it was because I
remember looking that up when they traded in the draft
and Buffalo traded the pick that turned into Xavier Worthy,
you know, to the Chiefs, and I was like, why
would you give a speed receiver to the team that
knocked you out of the playoffs three of the last
(14:09):
four years, So that part of it baffled me.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
And the Chiefs are doing their Chiefs things. They're getting
super strong.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
And they've now reached that point that the Patriots used
to occupy. In my head, I was the idiot who
for a while said, this is the year the Patriots
finally fall off the cliff.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
They can't keep doing this forever.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
And then they kept doing it, and they kept doing it,
They kept winning and they've just kind of reached that point.
I almost assume Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes are going
to win until they don't, and even then, even when
they don't, I'm gonna assume they're going to come back
and win the next year too.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I mean, they've just kind of reached that point.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
I agree that Buffalo is probably the better team over
the course of this season. You know, we had a
good up close look at the Chiefs and it reminds
me a little bit of what happened he in twenty fifteen. Uh,
it's the worst nine and oh team I've ever seen.
This is the worst ten and oh team I've ever seen.
This is the worst fifteen to one team I've ever seen.
(15:09):
They weren't very good. Yeah, offensively this year. They aren't
that same product that we're used to seeing Patrick Mahomes,
but dang, they keep not losing.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Right. They find their ways, and I'm sure people would
say part of that is because of help, and we
can talk about that later, but they find ways. When
you're a defense and you're letting Travis Kelcey get between
you and just sit in a soft part of the zone,
he's gonna beat you. Every time he's somebody said the
(15:40):
other day and they're so true. He has reached that
point of his career where he now just outslows everyone
else around it.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
That's my goal. I want to outslow somebody, and.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
That's where he's at and he's doing it well. And
you can't let Travis Kelce and Patrick Mahomes figure out
that they're really really good together. And that's exactly what
happened the other day against the Texans. That being said,
I do want to ask you a question about this.
Yeh Do you think let me provese it by saying this,
(16:11):
I can't really blame Patrick Mahomes for using the rules
to his advantage when they can do so. He's just
playing the game the way it was set up to
be played.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Do you foresee a world where some of these rules
are changed in response to how he is playing the game.
As far as the sliding, the fake sliding, the flopping out.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Of bounds, well, I mean flopping ad bounds fake slide.
I mean you can penalize somebody for a fake slide
I mean, or just the thing that I think is
never gonna happen, is the league's gonna make it easier
to hit quarterbacks. That's not a thing Big Shield's ever
gonna do.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
So I don't foresee roughing the passer ever going.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Back, right, I mean, it's not ever going to go
back to the old days where Dan Fouts was being
carried off on a stretcher after no. I mean, I'm
just saying people of his era had to take shots
that guys these days never have to experience.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
But I don't fault him for it. I mean he's
found the edge.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, that's and that's the name of the game, especially
when you get to this point in the playoffs when
there's four teams left, find that small edge, and that's
how they maintain that level. It's how the Patriots maintained
that level for a long time. You know, Tom Brady
was Tom Brady, but Bill Belichick was good at finding
that little thing that he knew and you didn't, right,
And you know that's what great ones do. So I
(17:32):
don't hold it against Patrick Mahomes. I also don't think
anything's ever going to change in terms of protecting quarterbacks.
And I don't think it should because you know, I
want to see you know, I wouldn't have wanted to
see whoever Baltimore's backup quarterback versus whoever Buffalo's backup quarterback
happened to have been. I don't even I want to
(17:53):
see Josh Allen versus Lamar Jackson in January. I want
to see Josh Allen versus Patrick mahoonme. So these guys
have to be protected, you know the other side of
that bracket. The Philadelphia Eagles just annoy me, and not
for the reason they probably annoy other people.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
They don't run enough. Yeah, a pass is a wasted play.
And listen.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Aj Brown is a brilliant player, and he's leading book clubs,
and I support literacy, so I'm pro aj Brown here.
If there's ever been a team that should run more,
it's that one. And you've over complicated it, Sirianni. You've
you've made this harder than it needed to be. You've
(18:37):
got that offensive line, and you've got Saquon friggin Barker.
Turn around and hand it to that man, even when
Hurtz was dinged up and wasn't as mobile as he
usually is. Just turn around and hand it to big Boy,
over and over and over until it doesn't work. For
about ten plays in a row, And here's the thing too.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
I have said this ahead of the Eagles last like
three games, and this is not in any way to
toot my own horn. It's just to prove I don't
think everybody is watching the Eagles as closely as they
think they have until it comes time to end a
game like this. The Eagles, and I think I saw
this when we went there to play them. They have
(19:20):
a passing game that has some superstars and AJ Brown
and DeVante Smith. They do not have a passing game
that can carry them a whole game. If you shut
down Saquon Barkley and so like, or if you go
away from Saquon Barkley, that passing game should supplement the
running game. It should never be the game plan. It
can't carry them through a whole game. So well partnered
(19:41):
with your point of like, why are you not handing
the ball to Saquon Barkley, Yeah, I think they're making
it more complicated than it needs to be.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
I think it could. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
I don't know that Jalen Hurts is the quarterback to
necessarily do it. I mean, yeah, you look at I mean,
give Patrick Mahomes, AJ Brown and Devontae Smith right, and
see what happen happens, and that still looks a lot different.
And that's no slight. You know, Hurts has figured out
his lane. He's figured out how to make it work
as good as what he does.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
He just needs to be allowed to do what he does. Yeah,
and she's only throwing one downfield down twenty yard pass
a game.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
That's fine, and that might be too many. Just do
nothing but run, I just I I. The games that
stick out into my mind often are the ones that
are weird for one reason or another and include a
lot of running, because I do like a short football game.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
We almost got to score a gomi this past weekend,
but then somebody, oh the Chiefs, yep, and then they
took the safety.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
And that once I figured out how to find score
agami on the internet, that changed a lot of stuff
for me, because every now and then you just see
random scores and wait for somebody. Our old friend young
Will I would be like, young Will, is this score gomi?
Speaker 4 (20:53):
And he would where did you find it? I just
wait for somebody to tweet it.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Yeah, it's there's an inn.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
There's a website that's got Yeah, it's got the whole
graft On there so you can look to every possible value,
see it's either filled in or not, and it'll give
you the games played and all that kind of stuff.
So fun with Scoregami. But I do love a good
two and a half hour football game, and I think
about I think about Christmas Eve two thousand and six
(21:20):
more often than I ever should, not because of warm
holiday memories, but because that was today. The Carolina Panthers
effectively invented the wildcat and did nothing but single wing
run the whole game with the Angelo Williams, and they
were down quarterbacks. Jake was hurt. Back up Chris Winky
(21:42):
was also hurt. He was had a rib thing, couldn't
really throw. The only touchdown of that game was a
one yard pass from Chris Winky to Jeff King, because
that was about as far as Chris could throw a
football that day, was one yard away. But the Carolina
Panthers ran the ball fifty two times and it was amazing.
(22:02):
It was awesome to watch. I think about Detroit. I
think about Detroit here a couple of years ago when
it was about a million degrees below zero or twenty.
Once you get under thirty, it's just like absolute zero.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
I stationed Zebra. It's the worst ever.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
I lose sight of the differences in degrees once it
reaches a certain point. But when the Lions came in
here the other year and the Carolina Panthers run for
three to twenty, yeah, I mean Deontay Foreman, I think
was one sixty five two but one twenty five and
you know, hung thirty seven points on the lines and
kept that, you know, playoff push alive in twenty two.
(22:42):
So those are the kind of games that stick out
into my memory. That's why I was secretly hoping for
Eagles Ravens. Yeah, because a good two and a half
hour Super Bowl would have been a thing to behold.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
And Sequon Barkley versus Derrick Henry would have been fun
to watch. Man's talk about Lamar Josh. Let me get
see Saquon versus Derrick Henry.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
That's old man, Hey.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Speaking of Detroit, I thought about Detroit a lot during
our blizzard, as one does. While I was watching their
coordinators go on and become head coaches all over the NFL.
Ben Johnson finally took a job. Aaron Glenn gets the
Jets job. Best of luck to both of those guys.
But the main thing that kept running through my mind was,
(23:24):
ain't me right?
Speaker 4 (23:25):
Don't have to do with a courage and search this year.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
No coaching search for this kid this year.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
And I was just sitting there on the couch yesterday
watching it not snow anymore and again, if it's going
to be this cold for this long and it's no
more snow than we got, and that's hateful. I was
just thinking how fortunate the Carolina Panthers are to be
in this position where on January twenty second and twenty third,
(23:51):
nobody's talking about them.
Speaker 4 (23:52):
A friend called me on my way in today and
he was like, what are you doing. I said, I'm
heading to work and he said, Cassidy, it's eleven forty Jake,
I don't have to deal with the coaches search this year.
I'm going in when I want to.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
And that's that's not only good for me and you,
that's good for the product here because for the first
time in a long time, the Carolina Panthers are in
a spot where they can build year after year, and
that's just gonna help in so many ways. I mean,
you still see, you know, most of the people are
out of the building. You'll still see some of the
coaches and some of the injured guys coming in for
(24:25):
you year every stuff like that. Those guys are here,
but things have gotten quiet, and it needs to be
quiet because with any you know, it's just like when
you're lifting weights working out, You've got to have recovery time.
And the Carolina Panthers have that recovery time right now,
and they've got a chance to build on something year
after year for the first time really since it Cam
(24:47):
Newton was the quarterback.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
Yeah. And as we've said a few times now, being
able to have so many people on the same timeline
in the same window is mixed for an exciting time
and excited to see what next year could bring.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
And I was gonna say, and before you know it,
it's going to be back into off season mode. I mean,
you're going to Mobile next week Senior Bowl kicks in.
Dan and Dave will celebrate their one year anniversary together.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
Could we get them a gift?
Speaker 2 (25:16):
We should or one year's paper, right, yeah, one year's paper.
We should print out Panthers dot Com and present it
to them or something. But no, those guys are going
to be right back to work. Next week scouting and
getting ready for and it's on.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
And then we'll be heading to East West here in
the next day or two.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Yep, Dan's head to the East West.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
I know, uh, he'll join Dave down in Mobile at
some point. And then it's on because then you go
straight from the the All Star Games, the Combine, free
agency and its own. Yeah, and it's on for the
next couple of weeks. So the good news is we've
had our opportunity to rest during the blizzard.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
Right but thank god we had that blizzard so we
could get an app. I'm excited about this year leading
up to the draft as well, because I think we're
in a fun position, at least for us. I don't
know how the scouts feel, or Dan and Day feel,
but for me and you, it feels like a fun position.
It's not high enough where it feels inevitable of who
it will be. There's still a little bit of mystery there,
(26:16):
but it's still in the top ten, so you know
you're gonna get a big name. You know, we spent
most of we spent all the way up until the
last possible second of last year's draft cycle. I think
we didn't have a first round pick, and it was
you know, a lot of speculation about who's still gonna
be there in the second round. Year before that, everybody
(26:36):
knows who's probably going to number one overall, And so
I think this year is gonna be kind of fun
to kind of look at who is available, who is
a top ten talent versus what they might need. You know,
do you go for who's still there versus what you
need to feel? I don't know. It's gonna make for
an exciting combine, exciting Senior Bowl, exciting pro days.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Yeah, no doubt about that.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
The one thing I know for sure, and we've got
all spring to talk about, you know, draft prospects, this,
that and the other. The one thing I can tell
you for sure about Dan Morgan, if he tells you
he's going to draft the best player available.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Regardless of position, believe him.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
I think Dan is one of those guys who is
going to trust that board. He's going to see what
it's telling him and he's just going to follow it
to the letter.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
And the Panthers honestly aren't a spot where, you know,
if the right receiver is there, they can't say no
to that.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
If the right whatever I mean.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Pass rusher is obviously going to get a lot of attention,
Defensive lines obviously going to get a lot of attention.
But I just think that they're in a position where
they can listen to what that board's telling him, and
if somebody's sticking out there in front of them, then
I don't think you hesitate taking you know, whether it's
a fill in the blank, it could be one of
(27:57):
any number of positions, and they're roster is not to
the point yet where you say, oh, they absolutely can't
draft one of those.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
You know who I'm really excited to kind of look into,
and I don't admittedly know enough about him to know
where he is projected. I'll kind of find this more
out in Mobile next week, but after watching that National
Championship game, I'm really excited to see Xavier Watts at
the Senior Bowl. He's a Notre Dame safety. He was
one of the few bright spots on Notre Dame's defense
(28:25):
on Monday Night and is a ballhawk. He's like he
leads college football and interceptions the past two years, but
still can come up and you know, tackle in the box.
He's a good little safety and he's big for a
safety too.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
You just described him as a good little safety and
then I know it.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
A good little safety is like the way a girl
would say it, like that's the good yo. He's such
a cute little thing. Oh okay, you know, like a puppy.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
So anyway, all right, Well, we will get in depth
into all the pre draft stuff in future editions, but
for now, we've covered the blizzard, We've covered the playoffs,
championship game week in tune in next week we'll break
down the pre super Bowl stuff.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
You may be on the road. We'll have to we'll
figure out, we'll figure out the scheduling and all that.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
Matt recorded our entire conversation about the ocean before we
got started, and we can.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
Just roll in and just run that in.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Just remember, folks, the sea is a road game. Nothing
good happened happens for you there.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Take that.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Be prepared for the next blizzard, which may come and
it may not.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
I have no idea.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
I'm gonna put a snow machine in your front yard
Speaker 3 (29:27):
And we'll see you next week on the Happy Half Hour.
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