Happy Half Hour Episode 148: America's Long Snapper

This week on the Happy Half Hour, Darin is joined by JJ Jansen to discuss the 2024 season, the upcoming NFL draft, Jansen's relationships with Luke Kuechly and Greg Olsen, the general manager role, and so much more!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
This week on a Happy Half Hour.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
There's probably nobody that I've played with in my career
that would be better suited for daddy daycare than Luke.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
One of your theories is that dudes need quest. One
of my quests in life is to find something that
Luke Keigley stinks at.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Yeah, I think that that might be a long quest.
What's the cow?

Speaker 1 (00:26):
It's 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 3 (00:43):
Hello, friends, and welcome to a very special episode of
the Happy Half Hour. Normally Cassidy Hill would be sitting
here in the other chair, but she's a mobile on
special assignment covering the senior ball for Panthers dot Com.
So I went to the bullpen, got a very special
guest for the Happy Half Hour and listen, our friends.

(01:05):
The Happy Half Hours, always presented by a Southern Star,
an official bourbon partner of the Carolina Panthers, celebrate the
spirit of the Carolinas. You can celebrate it double this
week because this week's very special co host is none
other than America's long snapper, The longest tenured Carolina Panther,
or the man who holds the record for games played,
which he breaks every single week.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Jay J.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Janssen, how are you, sir?

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Thanks for having me. It's the off season, so I'm
a little upset that we're not sipping on bourbon while
doing the podcast. That'd really make for some fun.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
We actually are, as far as the listeners know.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
That's fair enough.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
So it's a great product and it's a you know,
I'm hoping we can have a little fun here with
this conversation because, as you mentioned, it is off season
and we get in these you know, kind of formatted roles. Okay,
we know on Wednesday this week during the regular season,
we're doing this this this during the regular season. I
like to kind of take it in different So naturally

(02:01):
you're here, you are. You are one of my favorite
people in this building to talk to in any format,
but especially now. I mean it's off season. You know,
we'll get to free agency and all that other stuff
at some point, but right now it's kind of that
one weird time of the year where football people are
sitting around not knowing what to do.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yes, so early on in my career, my wife would
always say something like, you know, two or three weeks
into the off season, she'd say, you know, you're starting
to act a little bit bored. You need to find
something to do. And I've learned now over the years
and gone by. Our season, you know, ends on a
Sunday afternoon, we come back, we do an extra interview

(02:42):
with with coaches in front office on Monday, and by
Tuesday morning at ten am, I was bored. Like I
just knew I was gonna be bored eventually. I needed
something to do. I'd need a routine to look forward to.
So I just basically said, you know, whatever that was,
you know, January third or whatever, you know, January seventh,
every the season, at whatever that date was, I just said,
I'm immediately now bored, and I need to find some

(03:04):
stuff to sink my teeth into. I'm not gonna wait
two or three, two or three weeks to then decide that,
you know, I'm you know, I'm actually bored. So this
is fun for me. Normally, on a you know, normally
on a Tuesday or I guess we're recording this on
a Wednesday. Normally, on a Wednesday, at noon, we're out
on the practice field, mm hmm. You know what, now
that it's wintertime, I don't mind being out here because

(03:24):
there was a few col practices down the stretch in
the regular season.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
No doubt, have you ever considered like woodworking or no
any kind of hand crafts that you might be able
to busy yourself with.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
No, so, so I do. I do think men need hobbies.
I do think men need some activities. So my off
season activities have been primarily constructed into two things. It's
been buying minor league hockey teams m with with some
partners that we've been working with now for coming up
on two years, and also taking a plethora of baseball

(03:57):
swings off of our We have this little uh it's
called like a personal pitcher or something along those lines,
shoots golf balls out of a standing machine on a
tripod at you know, forty five to fifty miles an
hour from twenty to twenty five feet and I work
on my swing. And I figured, if Andy Dalton can
go play tennis and feeling can go play golf, I'll

(04:17):
go hit a bunch of baseballs in my garage and
that'll keep my hand eye coordination up for the offseason.
At least while it's too cold to get outside and
play golf or something like that.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
It at least keeps you ready for the next home
run derby during time I'm ready.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
We do about a home run derby once every six years,
and I'm the two time defending champ. Of course, that
lasts over about a thirteen year span, so yeah, I'll
stay ready. And of course, as everyone knows, Olsen and
I coach baseball together, so part of the thing that
I'm always trying to do is trying to understand, in
all honesty, what they're feeling so I can coach it better.

(04:53):
And I think there's a value in coaches and teachers
doing the material while they're teaching it, because you start
running into the problems that your athletes are are dealing with.
You know, we often, you know, I've got a sixth
grader or fourth grader or second grader, kindergartener right they're
doing math homework. Well, that is so rudimentary to me.

(05:14):
I can't feel why that's challenging to them. So you know,
you end up looking at them like, why can't you
figure this out? So I figured as often as I can,
let me go humble myself take some swings off of
a machine, try to get go and take some ground balls,
you know, you know, throw to targets, and remind myself
that any athletic venture is pretty challenging, especially if you

(05:36):
don't do it often, especially if you haven't been, you know,
like me trained in long snapping for twenty years. You
realize kids are just picking it up or still young
and growing in their bodies. There's a lot of challenge
and skill, and so there's a humility and in taking
a live at bat versus a twelve year old and
maybe swinging missing a few times, you realize these games
are pretty challenging, even at my age.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
Yeah, your life really is a sitcom. I told you
this the other week. You said you were going away
for the weekend with your wife. I said, who's keeping
the kids. You're like, I may leave him with Luke
or Greg And it was like, your life is a sitcom.
You say these things just very casually, like it's a
thing everybody does, except the people you drop your kids
off with, or Luke Keigley and Gregil.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
That's right. There's probably nobody that I've played with in
my career that is would be better suited for you know,
daddy daycare than Luke. Of course, you know, you know,
he's still he's still single. So we're working on we're
working on all that. But between him and Greg, I mean,
we we do a lot of things together, right We've

(06:40):
got the you know, we've got the baseball team. They're
doing the football thing. We we do a lot of
our life kind of in the same orbits, and so
our kids have sort of learned over the years that
they're just kind of part of the family in various ways.
And Greg brings kids home from sporting events and you know,
Luke Luke might show up and cook pizzas on the

(07:02):
nie as it's happened a few times. So everyone's kind
of got their own little skills and orbits. And you know,
to my kids, that's coach Greg and we call him
Big Luke because my oldest son's named Luke. We call
Luke Keigley Big Luke. And my daughter, who's in second
grag calls him the man in the Jacket because the
first time she really met him, he showed up at

(07:23):
our house. It was a really rainy day and he
had he had a big old jacket on, and my
daughter called him the man in the jacket, and until
this day he is still known as the man in
the jacket in our house. So doubt they're just part
of the family.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
Yeah, totally normal. I've said I kind of hate Luke
Keighley in some ways because A he's so polite and
so gracious, and so he's well mannered, well mannered. He
was raised well. His family should be proud they raised
a good boy. But he does all this and he
just kind of rolls out of the bed and he's
perfect at whatever he does. When he started doing radio,

(07:55):
he was like, I don't really know if I'm man
good it is, and people who heard the first couple
of games were like, oh, you're actually great at it,
which kind of figures, which leads me to this question.
You and Greg coach baseball together. Does Luke Keikley have
a decent baseball swing?

Speaker 2 (08:10):
I don't know. I've never seen I've never seen Luke
swing a bat. Yeah, but I have to I have
to laugh though, because he's just an unbelievable person. There
have been many games where he just showed up. He
texted one of us during the week say Hey, are
you playing baseball? Like, oh, yeah, we're at you know,
ten and two, and he had just look up online
where we're playing and show up at the field and

(08:31):
just sit in the bleachers with the moms and the
dads and cheer the kids on and get a pretzel
and leave, leave after a couple hours. And he just
part just in the group with everybody else. So I've
never seen Luke swing a bat. I can only imagine
he'd be fantastic at it, because to your point, I
think he's just he's one of these incredibly gifted athletes.

(08:52):
But I know he played a lot of lacrosse. I
don't know if he played a lot of baseball growing up.
So I'll have to I'll have to dig deep on that.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
Yeah, I've got friends who swim. And when Luke decided
he was bored the other off season wanted to run
a triathlon, all my friends over at the MAC were like, Yeah,
he just comes in and he's hanging out in the
locker room, Like, hey, guys, I'm Luke. Yeah, we know
who you are, Luke, but he just does that. You
have talked. One of your theories is that dudes need quest.
One of my quests in life is to find something

(09:19):
that Luke Keigley stinks at.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
Yeah, I think that that might be a long quest. Right,
we have these, you know, my wife and I say,
you got your quests, You've got your side quests that
might go along with it, and every once in a
while a mini quest which might you know, take maybe
take ten minutes or fifteen minutes. But in my opinion,
men really really appreciate quests. That one might be one
of the long ones, because I don't know that Luke's

(09:44):
bad at a whole lot of other stuff. A word
I heard not too long ago, let's call it six
months ago that I really enjoyed was the word earnest.
And Luke is an earnest person. He is kind, he
is intentional. Anything that he does he set his mind
too to be the very best at, and even if
it's not super important to him, he takes it seriously

(10:06):
because it's important to the people he's doing it with.
You know, I would venture to guess the first time
he ever walked into to do a radio game for
the Panthers, he might not have known do I love it,
But he knew that the people working with him and
around him took it very seriously, so he wasn't going
to be casual about it, and and you know so
that I think that obviously suits him really well. It
was fantastic for football. But it's again, there are people

(10:30):
that believe how you do one thing is how you
do everything, and I think he would certainly be a
fitting example of that when it comes to taking things seriously.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
Yeah, one of your other roles, in addition to hockey owner,
baseball coach, long snapper, America's long snapper, is you are
part of Greg Olsen's support staff. You like to help
Greg with statistical preparation, his analytics stuff for his broadcasting career.
And this is what I noticed the other weekend. Greg's
not calling games during the playoffs, says you may. I've

(11:00):
heard some guy named Tom Brady instead. I don't know
if that's your thing suit yourself. I think Greg's a
lot better at it. But you've always helped Greg with this.
You guys were just bored the other weekend and through it,
weren't you.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Well, this has been sort of evolving for years and
years and years, and I've joked with many people the
stuff that rolls off of Greg's tongue now on a
broadcast or on a national show he and I would
argue about six seven, eight years ago when we played together.
He's he and I have always talked strategy and situations,

(11:35):
and you know, I've learned a ton from him about
offense and defense and all that stuff. So we're always
kind of going back and forth. And this has kind
of gone on for again, going all the way back
to when we were both playing here in seventeen and
eighteen nineteen. Why do we do this? He'd come up
to me, Why do we do that? Why did the specialty?
We have always exchanged information. And I don't know if
you've heard, but Greg was a long snapper for so yeah,

(11:55):
he knows just enough to be dangerous. I know nothing
to be dangerous, but I played often of line in
high school, so I have a little bit of understanding.
So we kind of started from there and we just
kind of keep growing and and so one of the
things that that I've done is his broadcast career has
continue to grow, is just kind of help continue to
kind of grow with him in terms of preparation, research,

(12:17):
thinking of new ways to explain concepts that you know,
every year in the NFL there's tons of new concepts,
ideas that might be strategy, it might be analytics, it
might be a use of timeouts. There's it's constantly evolving.
There's more and more information. And one of the things
that I think is really kind of special is that

(12:38):
he's willing to just keep growing and growing and growing.
His parents were both teachers. I have a heart of
a teacher. I really believe in his heart. And he's
a coach and a teacher. So he goes on a
national broadcast and he wants to teach football, and I
love teaching football and I love learning football. So there's
been a natural connection for the two of us, and
that obviously there's still great games going on right now,

(12:59):
and there's a lot of people. I think the people
that really love Gregan on broadcasts are the ones that say,
I'm going to tune in and I'm going to get
a great broadcast, but I'm gonna walk away learning two
or three things about football. And it might be a situation,
it might be an arc release, you know, from the
tight end. It might be did why did this play work?
Versus man's own? And I just learn a little bit more?

(13:20):
And I watched his broadcasts and did I learn a
little bit more? And so yeah, certainly playoff games everyone's watching,
and there were some great situations and and uh, and
he went to work on trying to begin to at
least explain one or two. So the fan walks away
a little bit more knowledgeable.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
Yeah, you guys, I could tell one of the things
that kind of got under your crawl over the weekend
was chasing two point conversions. And again I commit this
from a anecdotal historical perspective, because I was sitting in
a press box at Super Bowl thirty eight when John Fox,
who wasn't necessarily an analytical type, started chasing them early

(13:56):
and got stuck in that pattern with how did how
did you guys get to the point or let me
ask you like this, when did you realize that that
was the wrong way to go about this immediately?

Speaker 2 (14:11):
But it's situational, so so in this particular case, I
believe the score was it was fourteen six, and I think, yep,
I'm trying to remember. It can't take a couple. It
came a couple of times. And this is the Washington game, right,
because something similar came up in the in the Chiefs bills.
But so it was fourteen six, but it was in
the second quarter. And you know, Greg is known very

(14:34):
much as being the super aggressive analytics guy. And I
think where he gets a lot of pushback from other
analysts is or work. Maybe not pushback, but where he
differentiates from a lot of analystss A lot of analysts
are still trained in sort of this old quote unquote
old school football mentality, and so he's viewed as aggressive.
And where he and I have always tried to discuss

(14:55):
these things is optimal does not mean aggressive. It's trying
to make the right decision at the right time. And
one of the things that coaches tend to do is
they don't like certain numbers. They don't like being down
too that feels after a touchdown, So the score goes
from fourteen six to fourteen twelve, in their mind, they
think to themselves, oh, I go for two here, because

(15:19):
that's what we always do. What made that situation different
was we were in the second quarter. And the way
we describe early game situations is you're in a point
accumulation phase of the game. The goal is how many
points can I score? And what's the best way to
score points? Is it a field goal, is it a touchdown,
is it a two is it a one. I actually

(15:41):
like going for two and going for two more often
than most people. I think it's actually tends to be
the right decision. But in that particular case, I believe
and Greg made the same point. Dan Quinn only went
for two because he was down two to make it
a tie game, not because he thought this is the
best time for me to go for two. That begins

(16:01):
to pivot as you get later in the game where
you're running out of possessions and you're hoping to turn
that kicking a pat in the fourth quarter to go
down one. Well, now you're still losing, and if the
game ends and nobody, nobody else scores, you lost, whether
you're down to or one. That's why teams go so
and the I think I retweeted it was like an
old account is called the analytics straw Man, and I tweeted,

(16:24):
always go for two. You know, you know the quote
is from analytics, always go for two. And the answer
is no, it isn't. It's not always the right answer.

Speaker 3 (16:33):
If it was fifteen twelve, you wouldn't necessarily feel that
same compulsion too.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
No, you wouldn't.

Speaker 3 (16:38):
Knowing you can't tie it, You probably just you know,
if you're in that quote unquote traditional football mindset, you're
probably just kicking taking the point.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
So like one of the things you saw this year
with the new touchback, or with the new kickoff, or
with the dynamic kickoff, is there was no real benefit
to taking a kickoff a fifteen yard personal foul after
a touchdown on the kickoff. Historically, that's what everybody did, right,
I'll kick my I'll kick my pat and then I'll
kick off from the fifty and try to pin you
down inside the you know, inside the twenty and try

(17:08):
to get some field position. With the way the rules
set up, there wasn't really a big advantage. So everybody
put the ball at the one this year and everybody
went for two. But I think what you would have
seen it, let's say the score had been fifteen twelve,
is let's put the ball on the one and go
for two. Whether they got it or not, that was
the right decision in the point accumulation phase. But if

(17:29):
the game is in the fourth quarter and it's fifteen twelve,
the question is whether I get this game to two
or one, I still need a field goal to win,
and I don't get any benefits so which thing, which
option is most likely to get me under three, and
which case the pat would be most likely to get
me under three, because I think this year the number

(17:50):
was like ninety six percent. So as my wife often says,
you've said too many numbers. You need to move on.
But the idea is there is different phases of the
game that require different things analytically, and the answer in
analytics is not always go for it, and it's not
always go for too, and it's not always throw. But
teams tend to have historically aired on the quote conservative

(18:13):
side when that hasn't maybe been optimal and the or
in the case of Dan Quinn in Washington, maybe we
saw the flip, which was it was aggressive but not
necessarily optimal.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
Right. I can imagine your wife sending you to the
grocery store to buy milk and you coming home with
a two gallon jug of milk, not because you need
two gallons of milk, but because it was the optimal
price of That's right, Yes, I only needed a pint.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
That's right. There are there are well, I'll I have
to say, there are some things that I'm very anetically
analytically minded, and there are sometimes like it doesn't. It
doesn't really matter football, baseball, sports. I'm trying to solve
puzzles because there's a It's a little bit like I
stopped playing Monopoly once I figuregured out how you're like,
how the game's designed for you to really sort of win.

(19:03):
The beauty of analytics is it's a little bit of
market inefficiencies. So it's always changing, you know. I fell
in love like a lot, like a lot of math
nerds in college, I fell in love with the book Moneyball.
Everyone goes, I've seen the movie now. I was like,
you got to read the book, as people often say,

(19:24):
and I fell in love with that. But if you
remember from Moneyball, the goal was you're trying to find
people to walk, right. That was the market inefficiency. It
wasn't that walking was some sort of uniquely special thing.
It was nobody paid for someone to walk, but that
was causing winning at a higher rate than the market
sort of anticipated. So we see this now all the time.

(19:46):
In football. You got to pay the quarterbacks. The running
backs shouldn't get paid any money, like you see all this,
But eventually there's going to be a market inefficiency. And
when that market inefficiency hits, you got to go to
the other side of the equation. Right. We've seen this
a little bit with running backs as that position has
been devalued over the years relative to other positions. Well, now,

(20:08):
market inefficiencies allow really good teams to sign Saquon Barkley
for twelve million dollars a year, pair them with an
excellent offensive line, and now all of a sudden, they've
got a really good advantage on the rest of the
because nobody's going to overpay. So if you're Saquon Barkley,
go I'm gonna go to the best offensive line football Like

(20:29):
there are these markets, sometimes market inefficiencies actually help the
better teams that already exist, because if you're Saquon, I
could make twelve million from the Eagles, I could make
twelve million from Baltimore. I could make twelve million dollars
in nil money. If I go back to Texas, I'm
gonna go pick the exact location where I can thrive.
And so Philly this year has kind of been able

(20:52):
to capitalize on the fact that no one was really
going to pay Saquon more than twelve million, so he
gets to kind of pick where he wants to go.
And that's a huge advantage for team that was well
suited for a running back.

Speaker 3 (21:02):
And as it pertains to the Carolina Panthers, those market
inefficiencies are named Damian Lewis, Rob Hunt, che Behubbard.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
Absolutely. Look, let's look back at last year's draft, right,
Jonathan Jonathan Brooks, the number one rated running back on
the board, went forty eighth. All of a sudden, that
doesn't seem quite so inefficient. When the number one running
back in the in a draft class is drafted in
the third pick. That's a very different equation. Right Like
if you told me nobody was allowed to draft a

(21:31):
d end until the fifth round, you'd see the fifth
round with thirty eight d ns. Because that's the that's
we know that position is valuable and at some point
it gets so devalued that eventually it's a very good value.
It's it's like a stock, it's like a business. Eventually
things get pushed too far. So the beauty of analytics

(21:52):
is at some point they flip, and are you willing
to flip? You know, it's the old zig when the
other zag, and that happens all the time during football.
We saw it last week on the playoff. On the
playoff games, the Tush Push only went six for twelve
this week, right like that? Would you know? A year
ago it felt virtually undefeated. But as more people are
doing it, some people aren't quite as good at it right,

(22:15):
and everyone's getting a lot more practice because I may
only play Jalen Hurts one time, but if I play
seven other teams that do it, I begin to learn
how to stop it. And even Jalen HURTSI was stopped
twice this week.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
Might have something to do with not having Jason Kelsey
in the middle of it anymore, who was really good
at that particular thing.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
You know. But you know, even Philly I think at
one point, I think Greg had a game and we
looked it up. I think they were still operating at
like ninety five percent for the year. So Kelsey was
uniquely good at it. Jalen Hurts is the perfect build, right.
He's five foot, he's a little bit. He's certainly on
the shorter side. Everyone's seen the squatting videos. He's incredibly strong,
and they practice it and they are organized when they

(22:55):
do it. I don't know that every team necessarily, you know,
the difference between him and Allen doing it is six
inches and weight. And you know, the Bills weren't pushing
him in the same way that I mean, Philly's like,
you know, four hands on the button. Let I mean
we are pushing with everything we got. It's a little
bit different. So but again, every team gets to practice
it because every team's now gotten the playbook, and it

(23:18):
makes it a little less valuable.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
Yeah. I also, I keep going into the wayback machine.
Can you imagine if somebody had decided to start doing
that with Ryan Khalil and Cam Newton?

Speaker 2 (23:28):
Oh, you know, Greg was on Greg was on Colin
Cowhard yesterday and I was watching it and and he
brought this up because the comparison is, you know, Cam
and Josh are very similar athletes. And that's Greg brought
up the story he had actually told Luke and I
this last week when we were watching the games. Was
on on our offense back when Cam was really rolling.

(23:49):
In those types of situations, they would often call a
play where they got under center, and it was something
that was designed for the outside fourth and one. It
may be it may be a toss, it might be
a power, it might be counter but he Cam was
under center, but It was more of a B gap,
C gap, D gap run and if they left those

(24:10):
gaps open, they would actually yell out. I think one year,
I think the code word was Jackie after old you
know Jackie Miles are old equipment manager, and Cam would
get up to the line of scrimage yelled Jackie, Jackie, Jackie,
and that was I'm gonna sneak it. Now there wasn't
a push, but it was sort of a two play thing.
If if they take away the inside, we're gonna run

(24:31):
our play. And if they don't take away the inside,
I'm just gonna do it on my own. Now we're
seeing with the toush push, that's like the call to play.
And so how many variations I'm sure my guess is
in the Super Bowl Philly will have some sort of
alternate off of it. We've seen them do it a
couple times. Obviously, kan't see doesn't do it at all

(24:52):
because the one time Patrick Mahomes snuck, I think his
kneecap popped out. Yeah, so not everyone does it, but
and would certainly be good. But you know the evanager
having six foot five Cam Newton was you could run
Q power, you could you could audible to a sneak.
You can do a lot of different things.

Speaker 3 (25:10):
Uh, it's a lot easier when your quarterback six five,
two sixty.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Yeah, And I think back then, I mean I think
he was him and Ben Roethlisberger, other than Tom Brady,
those were the three best quarterback sneakers for like it
was like five years. They had. Tom had kind of
a skill to it, but and then Ben and Cam
were just bigger than everybody.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
Mm hmm. To circle back a little bit, you were
talking a second ago about undervalued commodity. So I'll put
you on the spot here, among current teammates or teammates
from last season, who was the guy who was better
at the thing than most people realize?

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Oh man, that's a great question. Well, certainly for the money,
one of the most valuable players on our team was
Mike Jack making a million dollars, traded a seventh round
pick a player Michael Barrett. We traded for him, and
you get a I think he was a seventeen game starter.

(26:05):
He might have missed one in there, Uh, seventeen game
starter and played really well opposite you know, JC. And
that was very valuable because you think about what is
a starting corner in the NFL worth It's probably worth ten, twelve,
fifteen million, depending on your quality, you know, a variety
of factors. So to be able to have someone that

(26:25):
played to that level of you know, I'm probably not
helping our front office in any sort of contract negotiations,
but like to have someone to play at that level
of a high quality starting corner for a million dollars
was really really valuable to the team. I think lesser value.

(26:46):
There's a value to that sixth offensive line. Now, a
bunch of different guys played it this year, is mostly
you know, Brady and Chandler, but there is value. And
if you look around the league, power run teams, and
I don't know, I don't know if we'd call her
Sells a power run team or not, but certainly Tuba's
running style seems more conducive to more of a power style.

(27:08):
Having that sixth offensive lineman, maybe he's the tight end,
maybe he's the full back, looks a lot like Baltimore
and the Chargers, you know, the hardballs, Like they've got
that three hundred pound defensive tackle who puts his hand
on the ground and plays full back. Right guys three
twenty he's wearing like forty four. Like it always looks
kind of funny to me. I think those positions are
valuable because that's probably worth three four five million dollars.

(27:32):
And those guys are on rookie contracts and they tend
to get overlooked, but that matters in the run game.
It feels always a little strange same because he's he's
fantastic and has been for a long time. But I
always think Adam is Adam Thielen is kind of every
year sort of over overlooked and undervalued for what he does.

(27:53):
I mean the ability for him, both for Andy and
Bryce this year, just throw a ball up to Adam,
He's gonna go get that, Like there's a huge there's
a huge blessing for a quarterback when you can throw
the ball away from a defender and protect the team
from a turnover and then your wide receiver goes and
just catches that ball. That's a huge, valuable, very valuable thing.

(28:16):
So those are just a couple of them. I know
I'm missing out on guys.

Speaker 3 (28:19):
Well, I mean the guy I think about it in
these terms is is Shaw Smith Waite. Because you can
take a fifth round pick, sure and that guy becomes
your nickel, and he was kind of growing into that
role over the course of the year. If over the
next three years he is your starting nickel for the
cost of a fifth round pick, that's tremendous value.

Speaker 2 (28:36):
Well, and that is why the draft is such an
interesting phenomenon every year. You you know, So what I
was when I when I first got in the league
was two thousand and eight. So in two thousand, after
the twenty ten season, there was this whole lockout, And
what happened with the lockout was money was going to

(28:58):
be reshuffled around. And the number one story it was
sort of pitched to the players coming out of lock
at us, we can't have JaMarcus Russell making gobs of
money and flame out. That's hurting the veterans in the league.
And of course at that point, once you're in the league,
everyone's a veteran. So it's basically forget the rookies who
don't exist yet.

Speaker 3 (29:19):
They're not members of a unions and they're not right.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
So it's like, how do we get more money in
the hands of veterans. So one of the number one
thing that came out of all of that was the
Ricky wage scale, and of course the juxtaposition of in
two thousand and ten, Sam Braffers the number one overall
pick for the Saint Louis Rams, he had a six year,
seventy two million dollar contract, sixty million dollars guaranteed. That

(29:42):
next year Cammed drafted by US number one five year
deal it might have been it was four years, twenty
two million. Then you had the fifth year option that
so you had all this, So the difference in guarantee
was sixty to twenty two. It was the only time
in the NFL history where the money went down right
and obviously went down from a guarantee standpoint by like
by like sixty five seventy percent. The institution of the

(30:06):
rookie wage scale is the number one reason why the
draft matters, because you are going to find starters in
the NFL draft, and when you do, you have three
to four maybe five years of low paying highly competens
are highly talented players. So let's say the nickel is

(30:28):
worth six million dollars a starting nickel in the NFL
on the open market, everyone's a free agents worth six
million dollars. You're playing Shaw Smith, Wade seven hundred and
fifty grand, and you do that for the next three years,
you're getting eighteen million dollars worth of playing value and
paying them two million bucks. And that's huge for the team.
And that's why the draft matters so much. Obviously, being

(30:50):
being really good at finding those players matter, but it's
also why you see stuff like right now, I don't
know that I heard anybody back in October, November, December saying, Oh,
there's just a ton of quarterbacks in this draft. I
guarantee you there's going to be two or three likely
draft in the first ten picks, because if you're right,

(31:12):
you're getting a fifty million dollar value for five, six, seven,
eight million dollars and that's a huge advantage. And that
same value lasts all the way through the draft. Obviously,
it gets harder as you go down finding those guys,
and that's where you need a great scouting department to
You call them diamonds in the rough. But they're overlooked
for some reason, right, But what is that reason? And

(31:34):
in Shaw's particular case, the big reports kind of coming
out of Mobile was maybe he's under size, but man,
he's a dog, he's tough, he's competitive, and I think
that plays in the NFL, if you can, if you
can fight through some of those physical limitations, this is
a really competitive league and you need really competitive people
to be successful.

Speaker 3 (31:55):
Yeah, and I look at the guy he replaced, Troy Hill,
and Troy Hill was that old head vat who who
had done this particular job for a decade and was
pretty good at it. But then when you see I mean,
and I think it made sense in the spot this
team was in last season. If you think this guy
over here can transition into somebody who can be a
three year player for you down the line, you do

(32:17):
that at that.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
Point absolutely, And guys play in two roles. It's really
hard in the NFL to give young players positions over
veterans because there's no you can't fool a locker room.
You just can't do it. So guys have to earn
their spots. But once guys do that, it makes a lot.

(32:38):
The locker room goes Okay, I get it, they are
at about the same level, or maybe the veterans been overtaken,
and now this is this is how I got in
the league. This is how someone else is going to
get in the league. So there's always a little bit
of that, but you have every front office has to
be mindful of if you just start giving away positions

(32:59):
well drafted. You know Sean the fifth round, he's the starter.
The rest of the locker room goes, are you are
you trying to win or are you just trying to
play the rookies? And so young guys have to earn it.
The good part is once they earn it, they have
the respect of the locker room, which is really what
matters is did you earn this spot? Are you helping
us win? That's all the locker room really cares about,

(33:20):
is are you helping cause winning for this team? And
Sean did a really good job this year, and he
was one of a lot of draft picks that contributed
a lot throughout the whole season, no doubt.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
And it's going to be interesting look at it. And again,
Cassidy's down at mobile. Stay tuned at Panthers dot com
for all the latest from down there. Draft is going
to be a big topic of conversation. Panthers sitting here
with nine total picks, eight in the first five rounds,
so again, their position to acquire those kind of value guys,
I mean, Dan and Brandt have shown in their one draft,

(33:50):
they're willing to move that board around. So while they're
sitting there at eighth overall and you know, nine total picks,
eight in the first five rounds, I don't necessarily anticipate
that's going to be what they finish with, just because
that's what they've shown us in their one set of
data points.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
Every front office has their own style, right, and if
you if you named a team, I could probably tell
you this is generally their style. Doesn't mean you won't deviate.
But I don't know that Cincinnati has traded many picks
in like thirty years, like they just don't do it.
Their styles. We're going to stay in our spot and
we're going to draft New Orleans. They are never going

(34:28):
to trade back. They are always going to trade up.
Howie Roseman kind of works the board, but on draft night,
Howie Roseman's going to trade up because he's going to
go find his guy. He might be right, he's gonna
he's going to identify. So everyone's got their style, right.
I think one draft is too soon to just say
this is the Panther style. But what I what I

(34:49):
would imagine is going on is you've got highly competent
scouting skill. You know, Dan obviously scout for probably about
a decade, obviously played a really really long time, which
you know Olsen says all the time, like, don't discredit
playing career as like on the job training. It may
not be like he's you play seven years in the NFL.

(35:09):
You're watching a lot of tape and you're evaluating other players.
So you're going so, so Dan may have been a
scout for ten, twelve years, whatever is, you might as
well just go ahead and call it twenty, right, So
there's a lot of scouting experience. You also have lots
of people in the front office that are comfortable working
other sides of being in the front office, considering trades, negotiations,

(35:31):
and the more of those people that you trust in
the building, you can do and be more dynamic during
the draft. If your GM is picking the players and
trading up and trading down and negotiation and he's the
only one doing it, it becomes too much. If you
have lots of people that have jobs and roles and

(35:51):
you're working well together and you've planned stuff out, you
can be a little bit more fluid in the draft.
And I think that was a value I think the
biggest going back to last year. Obviously who you draft matters,
but beyond who we drafted, the ability to sit at
thirty nine, collect a future second round pick, and move

(36:11):
back and then use some of that to go back
was one of the bigger moments of the draft for
the Panthers because you're sort of creating something out of nothing,
which now we get to reap the benefits of. I
think that's always the tough part. When you're a fan.
You're like, oh, thirty or thirty nine, like we're gonna
got a good player here, and then oh, the Panthers
traded somebody you know, you know, they traded the pick,

(36:32):
and it's like, oh, I wanted a player there. But
all of a sudden, now we're sitting here, you know,
two months before the draft, going huh, I'm glad we
got that extra second round er. So there is a
little value in being patient, and that's where you have
to trust does the front office. You know, you might
be sitting there at thirty nine and they don't have
any players they like for that value, but they got

(36:53):
a trade and that's a benefit to the team.

Speaker 3 (36:55):
So one of the things I think's helpful is having
people with different perspectives. Because Dan morgan looking for dogs,
he was a players. He knows what tough and smart's like.
When John Fox walked in and said, I'm going to
keep the guys who were tough and smart. The ones
who aren't I'm getting rid of, Dan was one of
the guys who stayed and was part of a Super
Bowl team. Brent Tillis comes at it from a completely

(37:18):
different perspective, and he's more analytical. He looks at a
lot of things like a math problem. But one of
the interesting things to me watching them go through that
draft process last year was the chemistry between the two
of them because they think differently what they're aligned and
that sounds easy to pull off, but it's really not.
And things as simple as knowing each other's inside jokes

(37:42):
and being able to finish the sentences for different guys.
I mean, for a couple of dudes who met each
other on a zoom call in January last year, they
worked together pretty well, to the extent that Brant knew
it would be funny and Dan wouldn't notice if he
turned around and was wearing a fifty five jersey in
the draft room.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
As someone who works very closely on a daily basis
with a dog in Olsen. I identify very much with Brant,
and I'm sure Dan and Greg probably would be very similar.

Speaker 3 (38:13):
And this seems fair.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
I think what everything you just described is dead on,
and where you get value is when you have people
that are interested in learning and collaborating. I've learned so
much from Greg. Greg has learned a lot from me
to the point now where we sort of talk alike

(38:36):
when it comes to like football and how we see things.
I think having a front office where you've there's a
respect for each other's style, there's a respect for each
other's expertise, but there's a melding together. It's not you
or me, it's not dogs or analytics, it's how do
we put this together for the betterment of the team.

(38:57):
And I've one of the cool things that I've that
I have seen is I've never really heard anyone describe
them separate. It's always Dan and Brandt, Dan and Brant.
So while probably on an ORG chart, one is over
the other, I'd imagine I don't know what our ORG
chart is. I imagine as general manager and president football Operations,

(39:17):
Dan's in charge, but I've never seen Dan go out
of his way to make Brandt sound like he's beneath him, right,
And I've never and I've never heard Brandt sort of say, well,
this is what I did and not and what coach
Canalis has said about those guys, what Dave Temper has
said about those guys. It helps when everyone feels like, hey,
I'm value whether the one, whether you're one and I'm

(39:39):
two or I'm one and year two. If we're working
together and people feel valued, that stuff really matters. And
one of the one of the things that I got
asked a ton right after the season was stability, right
that was a common theme kind of especially in the
locker room right after the game or yeah, after the game,
on exit interviews after Atlanta, and and the number one

(40:02):
thing that I think benefits the Panthers in the long
haul is going into twenty twenty five, we have a coach,
a quarterback, a GM all on the same timeline. There's success.
No one's in a rush or not wanting success right away,
and that probably hasn't existed all if we're really being honest,

(40:26):
all the way back to about twenty sixteen, because we
had Cam injuries we had ownership change, we had coaches.
You know, Cam got hurt again, we had a coach fired,
a GM fire. There was a lot of stuff going on.
Quarterbacks didn't work out. There was a lot of stuff
going on where there was different people on different timelines
and quarterback needs to win this year, but the team

(40:48):
isn't ready to win yet, so then the quarterback. We
could go any one of these and the timeline is off.
There is such tremendous value in everybody being on the
same page, the same timeline and growing together. So my
guess is, instead of me fighting you, it's how do
we take the next step together? How do we take
the next step together, versus Hey, I got to win

(41:11):
this year and the guy you're working with is like,
let's build for the future. Like that's I mean, that's
really tough. And that's where I think you see a
lot of issues around the league and no one's immune
from it. We look at Kansas City and Philly and go, oh,
they've got it all put together. Well, seven years ago
Philly looked in disarray. Yeah, you know, Kansas City ten

(41:31):
years ago looked We're seeing the result of some of
these sort of intentional steps and that's what everyone's trying
to recreate in their own building with their own style.

Speaker 3 (41:40):
Speaking of intentional steps, we long ago across the thirty
minute mark of the Happy Half Hour, So I would
like to again thank our friends at Southern Star, an
official bourbon partner of the Carolina Panthers, celebrate the spirit
of the Carolinas and the second half hour of the
Happy Half Hour this week, which I knew was gonna
happen when I invited you into this studio, JJ Jansen,

(42:01):
So wanted to ask you a couple of quick things
before we get out of here, because we do each
have other things to do today, believe it or not,
And I just a little peak behind the curtain. JJ
and I do this weekly around the coffee machine. Yes,
this is a normal type of thing. And the conversation
starts when when he came into our dojo, I was like,

(42:23):
I've got one question I want to ask JJ, and
then we're going to see where it goes. So we
did that and this is the place we ended up.
But wanted to ask you a couple of things, not
necessarily rapid fire, but just wanted to get your thoughts
on him. You mentioned earlier in the show, you are
a part owner of a couple of hockey teams, now
two hockey teams.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
Three hockey teams hockey and a baseball team.

Speaker 3 (42:46):
Okay three, which are the three hockey teams Charlotte Checkers.

Speaker 2 (42:49):
Charlotte Checkers is our AHL team. And then we own
two EHL teams, the Savannah Ghost Pirates. They are the
EHL team also for the Florida Anthers. So double A
Hockey ECHL, Savannah Ghost Pirates, AHL, Triple A Hockey Charlotte
Checkers both feed into the Florida Panthers. We won the

(43:10):
Stanley Cup last year. And now the third team is
an expansion franchise which only recently existed. I almost wore
my sweatshirt today and I wish I had now the
Greensboro Gargoyles, And so that will be an EHL team.
We will be affiliated. We don't yet know who that
affiliation will be. With affiliation in hockey matters for a

(43:31):
variety of reasons, but obviously players coaches. It's minor league hockey,
much like baseball. We're a little bit different in the
football world. Our minor league guy, so to speak, are
practice squad. They're here with US. But in the hockey world,
much like the baseball world, so much of that sport
is geared around playing that those guys are moving up

(43:52):
and down to stay ready for the big club.

Speaker 3 (43:54):
Okay, So, as a hockey owner, who is JJ Jansen's
favorite hockey player of all time?

Speaker 2 (44:00):
Growing up? I was a Phoenix Coyotes fan, so I
loved Keith Kachuk and Jeremy ronick I, you know, obviously everyone.
You be hard pressed not to, uh, say, Wayne Gretzky
and one of the other ones. Because my dad was
from Philadelphia, so I always really liked Eric Lindross. But

(44:22):
as you can tell, there's not a ton of current players.
So I'm kind of getting caught at the speed on
NHL hockey.

Speaker 3 (44:27):
Right, See those are yeah, because I mean I kind
of half expected you to fake that and say, oh,
Wayne Gretzky of course growing up, Yeah, but I didn't.
That's an actual hockey answer. You're a person who has
watched hockey before.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
Yeah, I like hockey a lot. It's probably I've always
thought this, it's probably the best in persons sport to
go watch the speed. Uh it's got a good flow, right,
you get five six minutes of just NonStop action followed
by about two minutes just sort of you know, obviously

(45:03):
in the NHL, I don't really think that there's TV timeouts,
but there's about a two minus where can kind of
catch your breath, go to the bathroom before the next
face off. Our kids are falling in love with Checkers games.
We often the kids always ask can we go sit
on the glass? So I try to pull some I
pull some strings. You know a guy, I know, I

(45:23):
know a guy. But everyone's very kind there. There's really
I'd encourage anyone that's listening. Certainly I'll put in my
plug for the Checkers to go to a game, go
to a bunch of games, because there's not a bad
seat in the house for any for anyone that's been there,
been there recently. My kids have a blast. It's really
a great environment. And I just think hockey in person

(45:43):
is probably the best thing to watch it. It feels
fast paced, but there, I mean, the game's out over
quickly like it's it's fast pace, and you get you
get twenty minutes to catch your breath, and the players
need a break, and so do the fans because you're
you have to be locked in otherwise you might miss them.

Speaker 3 (45:59):
You got young kids, uh, feel free to steal this move.
Once upon a time at a checker's game, I took
my kids and they're two years apart, so I think
they were probably like in the six eight, nine, seven
range at this point. But my son got bored and
he was ready to split sure, and I said, you know,
his sister wanted to hang around. She was digging it
and she was like, well, he just shut up, and

(46:19):
I finally told him, I said, listen, at the end
of the third quarter, we can go okay, And that
satisfied him because he was getting out early.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
And that's right.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
His sister got to see the entire game. So feel
free to use that move.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
I will, unfortunately, already coached them up on the ad.
We did a fifteen minute intermission lesson on icing and
the variety of rules around fighting, which I'm still learning.
Ryan Bellrose and Thomas Barbo both hockey guys, both from
the from the Northeast Canada. They came to a game

(46:53):
and I picked their brain for a while, like all right,
help me understand Like what Sometimes they will drill drill
a guy in the back with a cross stick and
no one calls anything, and sometimes it's like a minor
and sometimes it's a major, and sometimes it leads to
a brawl and it's like, I don't know what is happening.
And one of the guys said, think of it like football,

(47:16):
Like sometimes they miss calls, like that thing that you
saw someone didn't see. It's like, okay, well that makes
a little bit more sense, but you're still there's still
a lot of of the smaller details that I'm learning
along the way. But it's a great game.

Speaker 3 (47:29):
Yep. All right.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
Your baseball team the gaston Ghost Peppers. Pe people know
it historically as the Honey Hunters. This past season, we
when we bought the team, wanted to go through a
full rebrand, so for the full season we did a
we were just the Gastonia Baseball Club and we had

(47:50):
a bunch of these what if nights. So there was
a bunch of random I say random that they're all
were nods to Gastonian, the surrounding areas, the Arni acts.
My daughter loved the Galactic dynos. There were fun names,
logos we did. We sold a bunch of merchandise. I
liked the Ghost Peppers. I thought the colors were cool

(48:10):
as a it's a bright red, it's this like neon
green black. I thought this will really look sharp, and
but ultimately we left it up to a fan vote,
so the people of Gastonia, the fans. All these names
were submitted, people bought gear the whole bit, and the
Ghost Peppers was the one that was selected, and I was,
certainly I was. It's like whenever you're when your candidate

(48:33):
wins and you're you're particularly excited in part because like
who I voted for.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
When you met that makes me smarter.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
Yeah, it almost feel like you're voting like you're it's
like you guessed how many jelly beans were in the jar,
even though you're just casting a vote. But Atlantic League Baseball,
like I for anyone that hasn't seen it, I would
equate it to like double a triple A ball. A
lot of these guys are fantastic ballplayers, but maybe they're
twenty seven years old and a team doesn't want to
pay them to be in a affilly. There's much like

(49:02):
any other baseball football, there's rules on minimum payments. Right,
So if you've been in the big leagues for a
little bit in and you're back in Double A, you
still have a minimum salary that may be well in
excess of what their standard Double A budget might be.
So some of those guys end up in independent ball,
which is what the Atlantic League is. I believe we
have ten teams, and when you're in independent ball, there's

(49:27):
still scouts. I mean, we had a Dodger scout as scouts.
Many of the games I went to. Our general manager
was at the same scouting events that all those teams
send guys to. And we had two or three guys
this year that were signed off of our roster to
an affiliated team and ultimately made the big leagues. So
this is really good baseball. It's just they're in they're

(49:49):
not maybe an eighteen year old, or their minimum salaries
have gone so high that teams are less likely to
take a shot until you prove, like, oh, that guy
is throwing ninety seven and he is getting everyone out,
all right, We're willing to pay him because we've now
we've seen it with our own two eyes, So it's
good ball, okay.

Speaker 3 (50:04):
Two Gastonia Ghost Peppers related questions Number one, uh J J.
Jansen's favorite spotting Gastonia.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
Is the ballpark I haven't gone on to a whole
other a lot of places over there yet.

Speaker 3 (50:15):
Okay, the correct answer is Tony's ice Cream in Gastonia.
Tony's ice Creamny's ice Cream Gastonia. It's an old grill,
hot dogs, Hamburgers, but they make all their own ice
cream right in a factory right behind the place. Oh,
I'm it's super close to Sim's Legion Park over in Gastonia.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
I'm in. I have we talked about this?

Speaker 3 (50:34):
We have not talked about that.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
Okay. Ice cream.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
Tony's ice Cream is my number one recommendation, and along
with Gastonia Ghost Peppers. Second half of the season, some
people started calling Bryce Young the Carolina Reaper. Yeah, is
that a good nickname or bad nickname for Bryce Young?

Speaker 2 (50:51):
And if so, why fantastic? So I started so when
we did car Talk with him, right before we posted it,
I think I took a picture of a like I
got like a Google search Carolina Reaper, and I just
posted it. And the best part was the people is
like one of those if you know, you know, a

(51:11):
bunch of people are like, oh my gosh, I know
who's going to be on car Talk. And one of
the beat writers, Mike Kay in the locker room the
next day said that was an ugly looking ghost. Pepper,
I said, you've missed it like that. That is the
Carolina Reaper. I think it's a great nickname. Look, we've
where we have where we have been as an organization.

(51:33):
You were two and fifteen last year, right, so when
as we were going through the season and we beat teams,
coaches got fired. I mean that was going on, that
was a real thing. But what makes what makes the nickname,
in my opinion, awesome. Obviously you've it's it's spicy. I mean,
it's it'll kill you, right, which is fantastic. But Bryce
has this personality, this this smirk when he's really feeling himself.

(51:56):
In the second half the season, you could see the
confidence right right after I've taken a little bit of
credit for this, after kart Talk, all of a sudden,
the visor from college came back. So we're helping, we're
helping build some good vibes around here. And there's something
really good about something so small and unsuspecting killing you.
I think it is a perfect nickname for Bryce, and

(52:20):
he obviously played great in the second half of the season,
but there's just this Bryce shouldn't come as a surprise.
He's a Heisman Trophy winners, number one overall pick. But
because we struggled last year and he took a lot
of he took a lot of the criticism for it,
and we didn't get off to a great start either.
And now all of a sudden, we went four or
five games there we played well and one defensive coordinators

(52:42):
were getting fire, quarterbacks were getting benched, like and that
that's a fun spot to be in. It's all part
of the process to getting you to winning the division
and getting the playoffs. And and look, if you're if
you're winning a bunch of games down the stretch to
the point where teams are firing their coach like in
some kind of weird, ominous way, that's a good thing. Like,
that's that's kind of what you're gunning for. You're trying

(53:04):
to get rid of people.

Speaker 3 (53:04):
All right, you're in the locker room, you're in the meetings,
you're on the plane, in all the places. Have you
ever heard Bryce Young tell a joke or say a
funny thing?

Speaker 2 (53:12):
Yes, cart Talk was one of the funniest things that
I've heard him say. He's got a really dry sense
of humor. He likes to build jokes over time. He's
not like this, I'm gonna stand and hold court and
be loud. Cam did that, Greg did that. Khalil would
be that way. Like he's a little bit again, he's quiet,

(53:33):
it's a little more cunning, it's a little smug, there's
a there's just some layers. It's a slow burn. But
he sets you up and then all of a sudden
you got hit and you're like, whoa where did that
come from? And it's I mean to me, it's really
really funny. And again I saw this with Cam Cam's
first year with the team, like he wasn't he wasn't himself.

(53:56):
He would but you didn't know. You're just like he
feels uncomfortable. It takes a couple of years for your
personality to really come out. Because again, all of a sudden,
you hand bryce the keys to the car. He's twenty
one years old. We don't play well early, and then
you're expecting. I'm sure in his mind it's like, what
am I supposed to say to the thirty seven year
old long snapper? What am I supposed to say to

(54:17):
the thirty two year old wide receiver? Whatever you were
back then, which was you know, fourteen months ago whatever.
It was, like, how am I supposed to lead then?
And you need a little success and you need to
be able to build relationships, and that happened. That takes time.
Like no people can say, oh, OTA's you know that's
gonna help us. The nine weeks are good, not so

(54:38):
much for the football, but just like beginning to get
to know people, what makes people tick, and you gotta
build relationships and usually you got to go through hard
times in order for those relationships to really kind of
dig deep. So we've done a little bit of that.
We've come back out the other side.

Speaker 1 (54:53):
Now.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
I don't want to go and crown us any anything,
but but you feel like the trajectory is one that
something we can kind of just keep on building into
twenty twenty five.

Speaker 3 (55:04):
Things are good. Things are good. This did not disappoint.
I walked in here with zero expectations in one question
and here we are almost one hour later. Thanks very
much to America's long snapper, the host of Kart Talk
and all the content here at Panthers dot com, JJ Janssen.
We appreciate it. We'll see y'all next week on the
happy half hour and I don't know how we're gonna

(55:26):
top this.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
Se y'all, thank you,