September 1, 2025 • 16 mins
Today on the Happy Half Hour, Darin highlights the return of Hunter Renfrow to the Panthers, provides an update on Ikem Ekwonu's status for week 1, shares a story from the 2015 season, and so much more!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
For Happy half Hour.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello friends, and welcome to a very special happy half hour.
As you can tell, Cassidy hills own special assignment today.
So it's just me what could possibly go wrong? I
am joined, of course by team captain's Derek Brown, Bryce Young,
JJ Jansen say Heoa to folks.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Everybody here, everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I'm JJ, what's with all this mayonnaise?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Darren Well, I'll tell you, JJ.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
This mayonnaise is in honor of Appalachian State, as I
predicted beating the tar out of the UNCCS. I believe
what was it, thirty four to eleven?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Friends? It was a lot to way fewer. I know that.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
So add another scalp for the Mighty Mountaineers. Add another
jar of mayonnaise to my fine collection here. I think
we go back to what twenty ooh, twenty twenty one,
this Ecua issue mayonnaise. Another Appalachian State win. By the way, Uh,
probably not going to be enjoying that one. I think
that one safely entered category. But uh yeah, big weekend
(01:03):
here at Bank of America Stadium for the Mighty Mountaineers.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Party time on that one.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
And now there's plenty of Panthers football to talk about,
and I'm gonna sit here by myself for the next
half hour however long I feel like talking. Frankly, this
is my Ted talk and welcome to it. It's uh,
there's a lot going on, as you can see all
around me. All of these things will come into play
during this show, believe it or not. Number One, the
(01:28):
biggest piece of news is the return of Hunter Renfro,
whose head I do not have on a stick and
JJ wants me to definitely get on that as soon
as possible. But Hunter's back, Baby, Hunter Renfro. It's like
he never left. He was gone for a good I
don't know, three days before he was back on the roster,
and it wasn't in a way anybody would have predicted.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
But here we are.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
I mean, it was so interesting today watching this thing,
or over the last couple of days watching this unfold,
because last Tuesday they do Cutch to an initial fifty
three and there's not room for Hunter Renfro. Then the
next morning they trade Adam Thiel in Minnesota and Dan
Morgan Dave Canali's say we're keeping up lines of communication.
(02:11):
Thursday afternoon they go out to practice and Jalen Cocher
gets hurt, pulls a quad that's gonna keep him out
long enough that he needed to go on injured reserves.
So guess who's back, baby, Hunter Renfro. It's like he
never left the story, and I encourage you to check
out the story on Panthers dot com and also watch
(02:31):
the extended video. We've got the full clip of his
locker room session today. Hunter talking about the way he
got back to this point was amazing at a lot
of levels. Number one, because were there other people interested
in signing Hunter Renfro to be on their football team?
Speaker 1 (02:46):
There were? Was he interested in going to them? He
was not. It was basically, the.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Panthers are nowhere, and he spent a couple of days
thinking about whether he wanted it to be the Panthers
or nowhere, because they had a standing offer to put
him on the squad.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
And he considered that.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
But he talked about a number of things, including his
physical condition. In fact, his wife's about to have another baby.
I've got another little girl on the way here soon,
and he had to consider whether doing this was something
he wanted to do. But from the Carolina Panthers standpoint,
he went from a want to to a need in
about forty eight hours because in the absence about him
(03:24):
feeling in the absence of Jalen Coker, they're looking around like, Okay,
we got a bunch of receivers we like, but none
of them are that natural slot the way Hunter Renfro is.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
So Hunter is back in the building and he's feeling good.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
I mean, it's it's crazy to think that a guy
who was released, not a part of your fifty three
is all of a sudden, very very central to your plans.
And we'll get into the Jacksonville matchup and exactly what
some of these things look like later on in the
week when there's actually somebody sitting in this chair instead
of all of my fine items. But we'll get into
(03:59):
that later in the week. But just the story of
it all I love. I tell people all the time.
I like football. I love good stories, and Hunter Renfro
has become one. I mean, to overcome what he overcame.
I mean, dealing with ulcer colitis. His body was literally
at war with him on a daily basis. What he
could eat impacted the way he felt for days at
(04:22):
a time, and it took him a long time to
figure that out, so a becoming healthy, b getting back
into football shape and then c oh by the way,
making a team was a journey for Hunter Renfro And
it's super cool to see him back in this locker room.
And you know, he admits this is special. There were
other people who wanted to sign him during those couple
(04:44):
of days when he wasn't on a fifty three man roster,
but he told his agent, yeah, I'm good, I'm good.
Let's just see how things work out here in Carolina.
And now he's back, and so everybody was glad to
see him out there on the practice field Monday morning.
And it is Monday, even though it's Labor Day. Many
people consider this a holiday. But here at the Happy
half Hour, there are.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
No days off.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Well, I guess except for the five days when we
don't have a Happy half Hour. But you know that's
a JJ Janssen style technicality. But we'll, uh, we'll get
to all that as we go through the course of
the week. As it pertains to Jalen Cocher, again, this
is a serious injury and it's a tough break for
him because Jalen struggled with some soft tissue stuff last
(05:26):
year and they told him, you know, hey, here's what
we think you need to do to get yourself in position.
And he came back and out a great training camp,
not a good one, a great one. By the end
of camp, he was running around looking like that Jalen
Cocher of the second half of last year who was
making a bunch of plays for Bryce Young. So Jalen's
out there running around doing good things, making all kinds
(05:48):
of plays in training camp. And even after you trade
Adam Thielen, you think, well, okay, that's not so bad.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
We got Cocher. He's shown he can make some plays.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
He goes out and it's such a tough blow for him,
now just at a physical level, but at a psychological level.
I mean, here's a kid who puts so much into
getting himself ready for an opportunity kind of like this one,
and then when the opportunity was there, to have it
taken away. So suddenly it was tough break for the kid.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
But Jalen was.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Out there on the practice field today walking around looking
to be in pretty good spirits, as good of a
spirits as you can be when you're gonna miss at
least the next month of football, which is tough, but again,
they're hoping the return of Hunter Renfro helped soften some
of that blow a little bit. They're hoping that they
can push through for the next little bit. They've still
(06:38):
got a very deep group. I mean, if you think
about Taro McMillan, Xavier League that on the outside, Hunter
Renfro in the middle, we haven't even gotten to the
dependable David Moore, the Bryson Tremaine who had a really
good camp, who I think you're probably gonna see on
Sunday one way or another simply because he's going to
play such a big role on special teams. And then
(07:00):
like Jimmy Horn and we'll see how this thing develops.
They've they've got a lot of guys there. But as
we talked about last week, even without the context of
the Coker injury, Bryce Young was going to have to
step up anyway. I mean, in the absence of an
atom theeling that security blanket receiver's gone. Now having a
Hunter Renfro who knows how to get open across the
(07:22):
middle and has shown recently the ability to do so, uh,
it's still going to be on Bryce to step his
game up a little bit. But everybody's got confidence that
he's going to do that, hence him being voted team
captain this morning. Well the vote was actually last week.
The results were announced this morning on Panthers dot com.
But you saw that already, so you've been around there
(07:44):
the whole time. Again, so much stuff going on. Ikiakwanu
talk today all by the way. You know you're starting
left tackles coming off an emergency appendc to me as
we discussed last week. You know, it's it's a little
touch and go and and Dave can and Alice got
to say day to day for the first time all season.
It will not be the last time he says day
(08:05):
to day during the season, but he was finally able
to use that excuse. Yeah, we'll get into that when
the injury report comes out on Wednesday, So again, stay
tuned to Panthers dot Com for that on Wednesday, when
I'm sure it will say he is either limited or
did not participate and Dave can declare him.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Day to day one more time.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Ikey did talk though, in the locker room after practice
at which he was there. He was not participating, but
he was there and said he felt pretty good. But
he admitted it. It was a little bit of a struggle.
Talked about feeling poorly for several days prior to hadn't
felt well going into Rob Hunt's birthday dinner, and then
(08:43):
went out with all the other offensive linemen and really
wasn't eating a whole lot. Austin Korbatt kind of laughed
and said, yeah, we could tell Ikey was off. He
wasn't eating like normal. I think when offensive linemen get together,
there's a lot, there's a lot happening there, and so
when you're not on your a game, people can tell
pretty quickly. But Ikey wasn't revealing anything about his condition
(09:05):
as it pertains to Saturday's game. With appendix surgeries, this
isn't like a sprained ankle, when you know, okay, this
one's mild, so it's a week or two, this one's MCL,
that's four to six weeks. We don't know, because every
appendix is different, as they like to say in medicine.
Do they say that in medicine, man, I don't know.
(09:25):
Somebody probably says every appendix is different. But it doesn't
matter because Ikey doesn't have his appendix anymore.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
I wonder if he kept that.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Can you keep things after elect after surgeries, like I
would like my appendix in a jar. I think if
I ever need to get my appendix removed, I will
probably ask for it in a jar. I'll probably ask
a lot of other questions because when I first asked
somebody about Ikey's appendix who had far more medical knowledge
than me, which is basically every resident of Earth, I said, yeah,
(09:56):
you're appendix up here, and they just kind of looked
at me, and it's like, darn, that's not where your
appendix is.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
But anyway, you can keep it in the mayonnai'se jar.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah. I mean, I don't know that I want to
empty any of these out, but maybe we could find
another jar and we could.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Display them here.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
I think this is going to become part of the
furniture around this place. We got lots of mayonnaise, We've
got lots of heads. We got to figure out a
way to display all these things at any rate. Where
were we appendices? I think that is the plural of appendix,
and Ikyakwanu only had one to begin with. He did
point out that it was a vestigial organ, so you
(10:33):
didn't really need it. I like when football players use
medical words, but he's feeling pretty good. Whether he plays
Sunday against the Jaguars, we'll find out as the week unfolds.
Stay tuned to Panthers dot Com for all the latest
on that.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
There's all kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Going on, believe it or not. I mean, it's just
it's football game week, it's Labor Day weekend. People are
coming off, you know, vacation plans for the last time
in a long time. You know, Austin Orbit talked the
other day about taking his kids to Chuck E Cheese
this weekend, and the Corbett kids are all born around
the same time, so they have a weekend birthday celebration.
(11:08):
Other people just kind of went to the mountains and
chilled out and relaxed for the last little bit, because
once you get back in here on Wednesday and get
into that first full week of the football rotation, you
know it's on. And so this was kind of the
last week of the off season and everything that goes
with that. A little rest, a little relaxation.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
A little time to look back.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
In addition to my other many fine items I've decorated
the studio with today, you may notice there are a
couple of reptiles up here on the desk with me.
I've got one very small former reptile, as provided by
video assistant Chase House. Shout out to Chase in the
video room for loaning me his prized alligator. I'll be
returning that later this afternoon. As far as you know,
(11:53):
we also have this much larger alligator courtesy of Rob Paul,
who works up here with us in video. And you
might be asking yourself, Darren, why is there an alligator,
much less two alligators on the on your desk in
this studio. Well, I'll tell you why. And this all
has to do with Charles Tillman and Don Shula. If
(12:14):
you haven't read your Panthers dot Com this weekend, and
if you haven't, what's wrong with you? We did a story.
I talked to a lot of the guys from the
twenty fifteen team about how much fun they had and
the way that locker room kind of used the chemistry,
the good times, the pranks, the jokes, all the things
that went along with being good to kind of feed
(12:35):
the being good. And Charles Tillman told me one of
my favorite stories of all time. As it turns out,
over the course of that twenty fifteen season, Ron Rivera
would invite certain assistant coaches to come talk to the
team every now and then at their Saturday night meeting.
And when it was Mike Shula's turn, the offensive coordinator
of that fifteen team, of course, the son of legendary
(12:56):
Dolphins coach Don Shula, Mike told these guys are phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Story about Shula.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Telling the Dolphins hey, even though we're on this winning
streak in nineteen seventy two, hadn't lost a game, you
can't get tight.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
You've got to stay loose.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
So a bunch of their players, led by Larry Zonka,
the Hall of Fame fullback, went and got an actual
alligator and put in Don Shula's shower. Pe Nut Tillman,
being the veteran he is, remembered this story a couple
weeks later when the twenty fifteen Panthers actually lost their
one regular season game to the Falcons. And I'll let
(13:31):
you read peanuts description of the way everybody was going around,
but suffice it to say it got a little squeaky
around here from in it. So Peanut leaped into action,
ordered a four hundred dollars fake alligator. Much more realistic
than this one and much larger than this one and
hit it in Ron Rivera's shower. And if you're a
(13:53):
head football coach of a team that's like what at
that point thirteen and one something like that, and just
lost a game. When you come in and you are
getting ready to get in the shower, meaning you're in
a particular state of dress, and you see this large alligator,
what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Well?
Speaker 2 (14:09):
I think Ron probably screamed, but as he said, I
mean you're getting ready to get in the shower. I
didn't have anything to throw out a bar of soap,
and so anyway, Ron threw his soap at the alligator.
Peanut was hiding in the back laughing. When Ron came
to yell at him. A little bit later on, Peanut
thought he was going to get cut. For a second,
(14:30):
Peanut was a little bit paranoid about getting cut. He
had a couple of stories about that along the way.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
But that was just an.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Example to me of how great that team was at
staying loose, and you had all those personalities together, where
a Peanut Tillman, who was a great player in his
own right, could come here and be a bit player
as Peanut told me. He said, I wasn't exactly washed up,
but I was here for comedic relief, not starting caliber
cornerback play. But Peanut was a pro. I encourage you
(14:59):
to check out. We've got all kind of good stuff
about the twenty fifteen team on the YouTube channel. We
finished up our video look back series with a look
at the NFC Championship game and what this building was
like that night spoiler alert magical. They won by a
bunch of points and everybody got in a team picture
except for JJ Janssen. JJ actually admitted to me and
(15:22):
part of the reason I brought him into the studio
here today. He admitted to me that that kind of
hurt his feelings for a little bit, because you know,
Cam's getting everybody together for the team pictures.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Who's not in any of them?
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Jj? It's because they're usually touchdown celebrations and somebody has
to snap the ball to the kicker. So JJ never
got invited to that party, and he admitted that was
kind of tough, but there were so many other ways.
Check out that story on Panthers dot com for the latest.
JJ's also got a bunch of content on the team's
YouTube channel, he's got a cart talk with Greg Olsen
(15:54):
that landed recently. He's got another one with Mike Tolbert.
That's always a good time when those two guys get together.
So all kinds of stuff celebrate in the twenty fifteen team.
When we return on Thursday for our regularly scheduled rotation
of a Happy half Hour, Hopefully there'll be somebody here
other than Derek and Rice. Nothing personal fellas. Hopefully Cass
(16:16):
will be back from special assignment. Hopefully I don't have
to talk for twenty straight minutes, although I could, I'm
not proud or tired. We'll invite you all to our
next TED Talk coming up soon, but until then, keep
it locked on Panthers dot com for the latest, check
out the YouTube channel for all the video content that
we've got coming your way, and we'll see you later
(16:39):
this week on the Happy Half Hour
For Happy half Hour.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello friends, and welcome to a very special happy half hour.
As you can tell, Cassidy hills own special assignment today.
So it's just me what could possibly go wrong? I
am joined, of course by team captain's Derek Brown, Bryce Young,
JJ Jansen say Heoa to folks.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Everybody here, everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I'm JJ, what's with all this mayonnaise?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Darren Well, I'll tell you, JJ.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
This mayonnaise is in honor of Appalachian State, as I
predicted beating the tar out of the UNCCS. I believe
what was it, thirty four to eleven?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Friends? It was a lot to way fewer. I know that.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
So add another scalp for the Mighty Mountaineers. Add another
jar of mayonnaise to my fine collection here. I think
we go back to what twenty ooh, twenty twenty one,
this Ecua issue mayonnaise. Another Appalachian State win. By the way, Uh,
probably not going to be enjoying that one. I think
that one safely entered category. But uh yeah, big weekend
(01:03):
here at Bank of America Stadium for the Mighty Mountaineers.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Party time on that one.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
And now there's plenty of Panthers football to talk about,
and I'm gonna sit here by myself for the next
half hour however long I feel like talking. Frankly, this
is my Ted talk and welcome to it. It's uh,
there's a lot going on, as you can see all
around me. All of these things will come into play
during this show, believe it or not. Number One, the
(01:28):
biggest piece of news is the return of Hunter Renfro,
whose head I do not have on a stick and
JJ wants me to definitely get on that as soon
as possible. But Hunter's back, Baby, Hunter Renfro. It's like
he never left. He was gone for a good I
don't know, three days before he was back on the roster,
and it wasn't in a way anybody would have predicted.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
But here we are.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
I mean, it was so interesting today watching this thing,
or over the last couple of days watching this unfold,
because last Tuesday they do Cutch to an initial fifty
three and there's not room for Hunter Renfro. Then the
next morning they trade Adam Thiel in Minnesota and Dan
Morgan Dave Canali's say we're keeping up lines of communication.
(02:11):
Thursday afternoon they go out to practice and Jalen Cocher
gets hurt, pulls a quad that's gonna keep him out
long enough that he needed to go on injured reserves.
So guess who's back, baby, Hunter Renfro. It's like he
never left the story, and I encourage you to check
out the story on Panthers dot com and also watch
(02:31):
the extended video. We've got the full clip of his
locker room session today. Hunter talking about the way he
got back to this point was amazing at a lot
of levels. Number one, because were there other people interested
in signing Hunter Renfro to be on their football team?
Speaker 1 (02:46):
There were? Was he interested in going to them? He
was not. It was basically, the.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Panthers are nowhere, and he spent a couple of days
thinking about whether he wanted it to be the Panthers
or nowhere, because they had a standing offer to put
him on the squad.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
And he considered that.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
But he talked about a number of things, including his
physical condition. In fact, his wife's about to have another baby.
I've got another little girl on the way here soon,
and he had to consider whether doing this was something
he wanted to do. But from the Carolina Panthers standpoint,
he went from a want to to a need in
about forty eight hours because in the absence about him
(03:24):
feeling in the absence of Jalen Coker, they're looking around like, Okay,
we got a bunch of receivers we like, but none
of them are that natural slot the way Hunter Renfro is.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
So Hunter is back in the building and he's feeling good.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
I mean, it's it's crazy to think that a guy
who was released, not a part of your fifty three
is all of a sudden, very very central to your plans.
And we'll get into the Jacksonville matchup and exactly what
some of these things look like later on in the
week when there's actually somebody sitting in this chair instead
of all of my fine items. But we'll get into
(03:59):
that later in the week. But just the story of
it all I love. I tell people all the time.
I like football. I love good stories, and Hunter Renfro
has become one. I mean, to overcome what he overcame.
I mean, dealing with ulcer colitis. His body was literally
at war with him on a daily basis. What he
could eat impacted the way he felt for days at
(04:22):
a time, and it took him a long time to
figure that out, so a becoming healthy, b getting back
into football shape and then c oh by the way,
making a team was a journey for Hunter Renfro And
it's super cool to see him back in this locker room.
And you know, he admits this is special. There were
other people who wanted to sign him during those couple
(04:44):
of days when he wasn't on a fifty three man roster,
but he told his agent, yeah, I'm good, I'm good.
Let's just see how things work out here in Carolina.
And now he's back, and so everybody was glad to
see him out there on the practice field Monday morning.
And it is Monday, even though it's Labor Day. Many
people consider this a holiday. But here at the Happy
half Hour, there are.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
No days off.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Well, I guess except for the five days when we
don't have a Happy half Hour. But you know that's
a JJ Janssen style technicality. But we'll, uh, we'll get
to all that as we go through the course of
the week. As it pertains to Jalen Cocher, again, this
is a serious injury and it's a tough break for
him because Jalen struggled with some soft tissue stuff last
(05:26):
year and they told him, you know, hey, here's what
we think you need to do to get yourself in position.
And he came back and out a great training camp,
not a good one, a great one. By the end
of camp, he was running around looking like that Jalen
Cocher of the second half of last year who was
making a bunch of plays for Bryce Young. So Jalen's
out there running around doing good things, making all kinds
(05:48):
of plays in training camp. And even after you trade
Adam Thielen, you think, well, okay, that's not so bad.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
We got Cocher. He's shown he can make some plays.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
He goes out and it's such a tough blow for him,
now just at a physical level, but at a psychological level.
I mean, here's a kid who puts so much into
getting himself ready for an opportunity kind of like this one,
and then when the opportunity was there, to have it
taken away. So suddenly it was tough break for the kid.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
But Jalen was.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Out there on the practice field today walking around looking
to be in pretty good spirits, as good of a
spirits as you can be when you're gonna miss at
least the next month of football, which is tough, but again,
they're hoping the return of Hunter Renfro helped soften some
of that blow a little bit. They're hoping that they
can push through for the next little bit. They've still
(06:38):
got a very deep group. I mean, if you think
about Taro McMillan, Xavier League that on the outside, Hunter
Renfro in the middle, we haven't even gotten to the
dependable David Moore, the Bryson Tremaine who had a really
good camp, who I think you're probably gonna see on
Sunday one way or another simply because he's going to
play such a big role on special teams. And then
(07:00):
like Jimmy Horn and we'll see how this thing develops.
They've they've got a lot of guys there. But as
we talked about last week, even without the context of
the Coker injury, Bryce Young was going to have to
step up anyway. I mean, in the absence of an
atom theeling that security blanket receiver's gone. Now having a
Hunter Renfro who knows how to get open across the
(07:22):
middle and has shown recently the ability to do so, uh,
it's still going to be on Bryce to step his
game up a little bit. But everybody's got confidence that
he's going to do that, hence him being voted team
captain this morning. Well the vote was actually last week.
The results were announced this morning on Panthers dot com.
But you saw that already, so you've been around there
(07:44):
the whole time. Again, so much stuff going on. Ikiakwanu
talk today all by the way. You know you're starting
left tackles coming off an emergency appendc to me as
we discussed last week. You know, it's it's a little
touch and go and and Dave can and Alice got
to say day to day for the first time all season.
It will not be the last time he says day
(08:05):
to day during the season, but he was finally able
to use that excuse. Yeah, we'll get into that when
the injury report comes out on Wednesday, So again, stay
tuned to Panthers dot Com for that on Wednesday, when
I'm sure it will say he is either limited or
did not participate and Dave can declare him.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Day to day one more time.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Ikey did talk though, in the locker room after practice
at which he was there. He was not participating, but
he was there and said he felt pretty good. But
he admitted it. It was a little bit of a struggle.
Talked about feeling poorly for several days prior to hadn't
felt well going into Rob Hunt's birthday dinner, and then
(08:43):
went out with all the other offensive linemen and really
wasn't eating a whole lot. Austin Korbatt kind of laughed
and said, yeah, we could tell Ikey was off. He
wasn't eating like normal. I think when offensive linemen get together,
there's a lot, there's a lot happening there, and so
when you're not on your a game, people can tell
pretty quickly. But Ikey wasn't revealing anything about his condition
(09:05):
as it pertains to Saturday's game. With appendix surgeries, this
isn't like a sprained ankle, when you know, okay, this
one's mild, so it's a week or two, this one's MCL,
that's four to six weeks. We don't know, because every
appendix is different, as they like to say in medicine.
Do they say that in medicine, man, I don't know.
(09:25):
Somebody probably says every appendix is different. But it doesn't
matter because Ikey doesn't have his appendix anymore.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
I wonder if he kept that.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Can you keep things after elect after surgeries, like I
would like my appendix in a jar. I think if
I ever need to get my appendix removed, I will
probably ask for it in a jar. I'll probably ask
a lot of other questions because when I first asked
somebody about Ikey's appendix who had far more medical knowledge
than me, which is basically every resident of Earth, I said, yeah,
(09:56):
you're appendix up here, and they just kind of looked
at me, and it's like, darn, that's not where your
appendix is.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
But anyway, you can keep it in the mayonnai'se jar.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah. I mean, I don't know that I want to
empty any of these out, but maybe we could find
another jar and we could.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Display them here.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
I think this is going to become part of the
furniture around this place. We got lots of mayonnaise, We've
got lots of heads. We got to figure out a
way to display all these things at any rate. Where
were we appendices? I think that is the plural of appendix,
and Ikyakwanu only had one to begin with. He did
point out that it was a vestigial organ, so you
(10:33):
didn't really need it. I like when football players use
medical words, but he's feeling pretty good. Whether he plays
Sunday against the Jaguars, we'll find out as the week unfolds.
Stay tuned to Panthers dot Com for all the latest
on that.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
There's all kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Going on, believe it or not. I mean, it's just
it's football game week, it's Labor Day weekend. People are
coming off, you know, vacation plans for the last time
in a long time. You know, Austin Orbit talked the
other day about taking his kids to Chuck E Cheese
this weekend, and the Corbett kids are all born around
the same time, so they have a weekend birthday celebration.
(11:08):
Other people just kind of went to the mountains and
chilled out and relaxed for the last little bit, because
once you get back in here on Wednesday and get
into that first full week of the football rotation, you
know it's on. And so this was kind of the
last week of the off season and everything that goes
with that. A little rest, a little relaxation.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
A little time to look back.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
In addition to my other many fine items I've decorated
the studio with today, you may notice there are a
couple of reptiles up here on the desk with me.
I've got one very small former reptile, as provided by
video assistant Chase House. Shout out to Chase in the
video room for loaning me his prized alligator. I'll be
returning that later this afternoon. As far as you know,
(11:53):
we also have this much larger alligator courtesy of Rob Paul,
who works up here with us in video. And you
might be asking yourself, Darren, why is there an alligator,
much less two alligators on the on your desk in
this studio. Well, I'll tell you why. And this all
has to do with Charles Tillman and Don Shula. If
(12:14):
you haven't read your Panthers dot Com this weekend, and
if you haven't, what's wrong with you? We did a story.
I talked to a lot of the guys from the
twenty fifteen team about how much fun they had and
the way that locker room kind of used the chemistry,
the good times, the pranks, the jokes, all the things
that went along with being good to kind of feed
(12:35):
the being good. And Charles Tillman told me one of
my favorite stories of all time. As it turns out,
over the course of that twenty fifteen season, Ron Rivera
would invite certain assistant coaches to come talk to the
team every now and then at their Saturday night meeting.
And when it was Mike Shula's turn, the offensive coordinator
of that fifteen team, of course, the son of legendary
(12:56):
Dolphins coach Don Shula, Mike told these guys are phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Story about Shula.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Telling the Dolphins hey, even though we're on this winning
streak in nineteen seventy two, hadn't lost a game, you
can't get tight.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
You've got to stay loose.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
So a bunch of their players, led by Larry Zonka,
the Hall of Fame fullback, went and got an actual
alligator and put in Don Shula's shower. Pe Nut Tillman,
being the veteran he is, remembered this story a couple
weeks later when the twenty fifteen Panthers actually lost their
one regular season game to the Falcons. And I'll let
(13:31):
you read peanuts description of the way everybody was going around,
but suffice it to say it got a little squeaky
around here from in it. So Peanut leaped into action,
ordered a four hundred dollars fake alligator. Much more realistic
than this one and much larger than this one and
hit it in Ron Rivera's shower. And if you're a
(13:53):
head football coach of a team that's like what at
that point thirteen and one something like that, and just
lost a game. When you come in and you are
getting ready to get in the shower, meaning you're in
a particular state of dress, and you see this large alligator,
what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Well?
Speaker 2 (14:09):
I think Ron probably screamed, but as he said, I
mean you're getting ready to get in the shower. I
didn't have anything to throw out a bar of soap,
and so anyway, Ron threw his soap at the alligator.
Peanut was hiding in the back laughing. When Ron came
to yell at him. A little bit later on, Peanut
thought he was going to get cut. For a second,
(14:30):
Peanut was a little bit paranoid about getting cut. He
had a couple of stories about that along the way.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
But that was just an.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Example to me of how great that team was at
staying loose, and you had all those personalities together, where
a Peanut Tillman, who was a great player in his
own right, could come here and be a bit player
as Peanut told me. He said, I wasn't exactly washed up,
but I was here for comedic relief, not starting caliber
cornerback play. But Peanut was a pro. I encourage you
(14:59):
to check out. We've got all kind of good stuff
about the twenty fifteen team on the YouTube channel. We
finished up our video look back series with a look
at the NFC Championship game and what this building was
like that night spoiler alert magical. They won by a
bunch of points and everybody got in a team picture
except for JJ Janssen. JJ actually admitted to me and
(15:22):
part of the reason I brought him into the studio
here today. He admitted to me that that kind of
hurt his feelings for a little bit, because you know,
Cam's getting everybody together for the team pictures.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Who's not in any of them?
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Jj? It's because they're usually touchdown celebrations and somebody has
to snap the ball to the kicker. So JJ never
got invited to that party, and he admitted that was
kind of tough, but there were so many other ways.
Check out that story on Panthers dot com for the latest.
JJ's also got a bunch of content on the team's
YouTube channel, he's got a cart talk with Greg Olsen
(15:54):
that landed recently. He's got another one with Mike Tolbert.
That's always a good time when those two guys get together.
So all kinds of stuff celebrate in the twenty fifteen team.
When we return on Thursday for our regularly scheduled rotation
of a Happy half Hour, Hopefully there'll be somebody here
other than Derek and Rice. Nothing personal fellas. Hopefully Cass
(16:16):
will be back from special assignment. Hopefully I don't have
to talk for twenty straight minutes, although I could, I'm
not proud or tired. We'll invite you all to our
next TED Talk coming up soon, but until then, keep
it locked on Panthers dot com for the latest, check
out the YouTube channel for all the video content that
we've got coming your way, and we'll see you later
(16:39):
this week on the Happy Half Hour
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