Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are digging
into one of the biggest most consequential trades in recent
NFL history. Oh absolutely, the one that sent superstar running
back Christian McCaffrey CMC from the Carolina Panthers over to
the San Francisco forty nine ers back in October twenty
twenty two.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
And you know, this wasn't just a standard trade. This
was a franchise hitting the reset button. I mean, you
have to remember the context here.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Carolina was a mess, a complete mess.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
They were one five, They just fired their coach, Matt Ruhle.
They hadn't had a winning season since twenty seventeen. So
the motive really was desperation. They needed a path forward, a.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Path that required sacrificing their best player to get the
draft picks they thought they needed for a franchise quarterback.
And that's our mission for you today. We've gone through
all the source material from the last two years and
we're going to unpack whether that massive sacrifice actually paid
off for the Panthers.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
It's a fascinating question.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
We have to look at their plan contrast it with
what happened with McCaffrey and San Francisco, which is, you know,
immediate success, and then really look at the execution, because
the sources suggest the idea might have been sound, but
the follow.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Through was a disaster. It's a perfect case study. Really,
a good idea executed poorly can look so much worse
than a bad idea executed perfectly.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Okay, so let's start there the context why CMC. I mean,
when a team is in a spiral, you don't usually
trade your best player, your former number eight overall pick.
Why him?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
It really just came down to value, pure simple available value.
The sources are so clear on this. The cupboard was
bare yab nothing. They have four picks for the twenty
twenty three draft, that's it. And they knew, they absolutely
knew they had to get the number one overall pick
to guarantee they got their guy at quarterback. And to
make a move like that, you need ammunition, You need
premium assets.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
And McCaffrey was that premium asset.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
He was even with his injury history in twenty twenty
and twenty one. He was the guy.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
So what about their other big asset, edge rusher Brian Burns.
The sources say they thought he was too valuable. To move,
which is kind of ironic, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
It's incredibly ironic.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
They turned down two first round picks for him a
year later, only to trade him for less than that.
After that, it feels like they were just paralyzed.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
They were completely stuck. I mean, look, an elite edge
rusher is a foundational piece. It's a harder position to
replace than running back, structurally speaking.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Even a running back like CMC, even him.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah, the organization's focus had shifted. It wasn't about winning
games in twenty twenty two. It was about stockpiling pits
for twenty twenty three and beyond. And the crucial part
is teams were calling them about McCaffrey. That created the urgency.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Which brings us to the price the GM at the time,
Scott Fitter he won a first round pick. Did he
get it?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
He did not know the market. It spoke pretty quickly.
The teams that were interested, the forty nine ers, the Rams,
the Bills. They either couldn't or wouldn't give up a
twenty twenty three first The forty nine ers didn't even
have one.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
So the final deal was it was.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Volume, good volume, but no headline pick. They got a
second a third and a fourth round pick in twenty
twenty three, and then a fifth rounder in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
And here's where we get a really crucial piece of insight.
One of the league sources who was involved in all
this said, quote, it was never, oh, the team has
to get rid of McCaffrey. It was more prompted by
teams were calling and the prospects of having multiple picks
for him was what was most enticing.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
The cupboard was bear And that quote says at all,
doesn't it. It wasn't some grand, premeditated strategy. It was
a desperate organization seeing an opportunity to cash in its
only blue chip stock. They didn't really win the trade
on value, but they got what they needed to make
the next move.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
They traded a sure thing in the present for a
lottery ticket in the future.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
A very very speculative future, which takes.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Us right into our next section, the immediate and I
mean immediate contrast, because while Carolina was starting over, San
Francisco got an instant Super Bowl contender.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
The difference is just it's staggering. McCaffrey arrives and he's
the final piece of the puzzle, The catalyst He goes
on to lead the NFL in rushing in twenty twenty three,
he wins Offensive Player of the Year.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
He gets them to the Super Bowl.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
He gets them to Super Bowl el of eighth and
even this season, our sources show he's leading the league
in scrimmage yards with over fourteen hundred. He delivered on
every single promise, star power, production, everything, and.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Back in Carolina things were a little more complicated. The
interim coach, Steve Wilkes, he actually rallied that team. They
finished the season sixty six under him.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Right, they ended up seven to ten overall, just one
game out of the playoffs in a terrible division.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
And here's the part that just doesn't compute. They're rushing attack.
The thing CMC was the heart of it actually got
better right after he left.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
That stat is unbelievable, but it's true. Before the trade,
they're averaging about ninety rushing yards a game. In the
four games right after he's gone, that number jumps to
almost one hundred and sixty yards per game.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
How how is that possible?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Danta Foreman, a journeyman running back who was already on
the roster. He just stepped in and went on a tear.
I think it was three hundred and eighty nine yards
and four touchdowns in that little stretch.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Okay, hold on, if the run game got better without him,
does that sort of challenge the whole idea that he
was this indispensable unicorn for them.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
It raises a really interesting question, doesn't it about how
assets are used? I mean, CMC is elite. No one's
debating that. But maybe Matt rules offense was too focused
on him, too predictable. Foreman's success proved that the offensive line,
the blocking scheme, it could work with a more conventional
power running approach.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
But management wasn't looking at that, not at all.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
They were already looking three years down the road. They
didn't care about the success Wilkes was having in the moment.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
And you could feel that in the locker room. The
culture took a hit tight end. Tommy Trumble said, it
was very tough to feel good about a lot of
things that were happening. You trade your leader, that sends
a message, a very loud one.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Wilkes himself said that if the goal was winning that year,
he never would have gotten rid of his best player.
But it wasn't his call. It was, as you said,
a two or three year decision.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
A decision they immediately undermined by firing Wilkes, the guy
who almost got them to the playoffs.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
That conflict in vision is the perfect bridge to talking
about the execution, because the entire point of trading CMC
was to get capital to draft a franchise QB. Right,
so they got the assets, how did they use them?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Well, they made their big move right away. They packaged
that second round pick from the forty nine ers, the
best asset from the trade, with some of their other picks,
to trade up with the Chicago Bears.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
For the number one overall pick.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Where they selected their guy, quarterback Bryce Young. This was it,
This was the moment the CMC sacrifice was supposed.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
To pay off, but the instability just continued. The owner,
David Tepper, he hires an offensive guy, Frank Reich, specifically
to develop Young. He fires Wilkes to do it, and then.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Fires Reich after what an eleven games start, a.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
One ten start, two head coaches, two completely different visions,
both gone within a year. You just can't do that.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
You can't ask a rookie quarterback to succeed in that environment.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
It's impossible and that's the first huge failure in execution.
The second, according to our sources, was just bad scouting
wasting the other picks.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
This quote from a source really nails it. Acquiring all
those assets for a quarterback made sense. The execution of
it wasn't executed properly with the players that were drafted
with the picks.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Let's break that down because it's where the trade really
falls apart. They took the forty nine ers twenty twenty
three third rounder, bundled it with their own third rounder
to move up for an edge rusher DJ Johnson, and
d J Johnson was released after four games this season.
He ended his Carolina career with half a sack in
thirty one games.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
That's just that's malpractice. Use the precious capital you got
for your superstar to move up for a guy who
gives you literally nothing.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
It's a catastrophic loss. When you're rebuilding, your mid round
picks have to become at the very least solid role players.
Wasting a third round asset like that is crippling.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
And the final pick from the trade, the twenty.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Twenty four to fifth rounder, became cornerback chow Smith Wade.
He started seven games in two seasons. So, I mean,
if you look at the Hall, they essentially traded Christian
McCaffrey for the right to draft Bryce Young and not
much else.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
So we have to talk about Bryce Young. The jury's
still out, but the early returns are not great.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
They're not He's got a twelve to twenty six career record.
He's ranked near the bottom of the league in QBR
and passing yards per game. But you know, the sources
suggest that the system has failed him more than he's
failed the system. Is there a hope, there's a glimmer.
He recently had that huge game, a franchise record four
hundred and forty eight passing yards and three scores. So
the talent they saw is in there, but he's been
(08:36):
swimming against the current of a terrible organization.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
And the final insult to the execution here is the
running back situation. They led Deonta Foreman walk the guy
who proved the system could work, and signed Miles Sanders
to a huge contract, a.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Four year, twenty five million dollar deal. It made no sense.
Sanders was a bust, and they ended up turning back
to Cewba Hubbard, CMC's old backup, who actually had.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
A great year, but now even he's been replaced by.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Rik o'daddle, a guy on a cheap one year deal.
It's just it's a constant schurn, three different replacement strategies
in two years, while the guy you traded is winning awards.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
The lack of a plan is just so obvious, which
brings us to hindsight looking back now two years later.
The real cost of this is just compounding, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
It's snowballing into something truly awful. Because to get Young,
they had to give the Bears their twenty twenty four
first round pick, which became the number one overall pick,
Caleb Williams. So the Panthers didn't just spend assets on Young,
they gave away the chance to draft another potential superstar
QB just one year later.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
And they missed that whole twenty twenty four QB class,
which was loaded Jayden Daniels, who won Offensive Rookie of
the Year Drake May all those guys.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
That's the ultimate penalty. They were forced to double down
on their twenty twenty three decision because they'd already given
away their twenty twenty four ticket. There was no escape patch,
and it.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Makes you wonder about the guys they already had. Baker
Mayfield was won five there, but he's gone twenty six
to once since he left. Sam Darnold has a winning
record since leaving Carolina.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
It suggests they were just rushing the whole process. They
failed to get the most out of the veterans they had,
which forced them into this desperate trade for a rookie
QB they weren't equipped to develop.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
So after all that, what does the final ledger look
like for Carolina two years post trade?
Speaker 2 (10:19):
It's ugly. The team has gone eighteen forty one. They
are still stuck in the same loop, chasing a winning
season they haven't seen since twenty seventeen. And the consensus
from our sources is just brutal and frankly unanimous.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
What's the final word.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
It didn't do any good. It's still a shame they
didn't get at least one first round pick for him.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
So the only real tangible positive for them was cap space.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
That's it. They saved about eleven point seven million dollars
in cap space over two years. But think about what
they gave up for that, The best running back in
football and a chance at a different, maybe better quarterback
in twenty twenty four, all for an eighteen forty one
record and a little financial flexibility.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
It's not win. It's a footnote on a disaster exactly.
This whole deep dive just highlights the enormous canyon between
a necessary strategic idea and you could argue trading CMS
was necessary, and the complete catastrophic failure to execute the
plan that followed.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
That's the core tension, right, McCaffrey was a phenomenal player
and leader. Trading him was a long term play, but
the organization had no patience firing Wilkes, hiring and firing Reich,
whiffing on those other draft picks. They sacrifice their present
and then through sheer incompetence, they botched their future too.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
The lesson here is just so clear, and it goes
way Beyon football. We always focus on the price of
a deal, you know, the picks, the players, the money.
But what this deep dive shows is that the assets
you get are almost secondary. The real measure of success
is whether you have the organizational competence, the stability, the
scouting to actually use them.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
That's everything.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
So here's something for you to think about. If sacrificing
your best player is the first painful step of a rebuild.
What are the No. One player assets like coaching stability
or scouting excellence that an organization absolutely must have locked
down to make sure that sacrifice isn't all for nothing.
Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are digging
into one of the biggest most consequential trades in recent
NFL history. Oh absolutely, the one that sent superstar running
back Christian McCaffrey CMC from the Carolina Panthers over to
the San Francisco forty nine ers back in October twenty
twenty two.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
And you know, this wasn't just a standard trade. This
was a franchise hitting the reset button. I mean, you
have to remember the context here.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Carolina was a mess, a complete mess.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
They were one five, They just fired their coach, Matt Ruhle.
They hadn't had a winning season since twenty seventeen. So
the motive really was desperation. They needed a path forward, a.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Path that required sacrificing their best player to get the
draft picks they thought they needed for a franchise quarterback.
And that's our mission for you today. We've gone through
all the source material from the last two years and
we're going to unpack whether that massive sacrifice actually paid
off for the Panthers.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
It's a fascinating question.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
We have to look at their plan contrast it with
what happened with McCaffrey and San Francisco, which is, you know,
immediate success, and then really look at the execution, because
the sources suggest the idea might have been sound, but
the follow.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Through was a disaster. It's a perfect case study. Really,
a good idea executed poorly can look so much worse
than a bad idea executed perfectly.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Okay, so let's start there the context why CMC. I mean,
when a team is in a spiral, you don't usually
trade your best player, your former number eight overall pick.
Why him?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
It really just came down to value, pure simple available value.
The sources are so clear on this. The cupboard was
bare yab nothing. They have four picks for the twenty
twenty three draft, that's it. And they knew, they absolutely
knew they had to get the number one overall pick
to guarantee they got their guy at quarterback. And to
make a move like that, you need ammunition, You need
premium assets.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
And McCaffrey was that premium asset.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
He was even with his injury history in twenty twenty
and twenty one. He was the guy.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
So what about their other big asset, edge rusher Brian Burns.
The sources say they thought he was too valuable. To move,
which is kind of ironic, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
It's incredibly ironic.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
They turned down two first round picks for him a
year later, only to trade him for less than that.
After that, it feels like they were just paralyzed.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
They were completely stuck. I mean, look, an elite edge
rusher is a foundational piece. It's a harder position to
replace than running back, structurally speaking.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Even a running back like CMC, even him.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah, the organization's focus had shifted. It wasn't about winning
games in twenty twenty two. It was about stockpiling pits
for twenty twenty three and beyond. And the crucial part
is teams were calling them about McCaffrey. That created the urgency.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Which brings us to the price the GM at the time,
Scott Fitter he won a first round pick. Did he
get it?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
He did not know the market. It spoke pretty quickly.
The teams that were interested, the forty nine ers, the Rams,
the Bills. They either couldn't or wouldn't give up a
twenty twenty three first The forty nine ers didn't even
have one.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
So the final deal was it was.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Volume, good volume, but no headline pick. They got a
second a third and a fourth round pick in twenty
twenty three, and then a fifth rounder in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
And here's where we get a really crucial piece of insight.
One of the league sources who was involved in all
this said, quote, it was never, oh, the team has
to get rid of McCaffrey. It was more prompted by
teams were calling and the prospects of having multiple picks
for him was what was most enticing.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
The cupboard was bear And that quote says at all,
doesn't it. It wasn't some grand, premeditated strategy. It was
a desperate organization seeing an opportunity to cash in its
only blue chip stock. They didn't really win the trade
on value, but they got what they needed to make
the next move.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
They traded a sure thing in the present for a
lottery ticket in the future.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
A very very speculative future, which takes.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Us right into our next section, the immediate and I
mean immediate contrast, because while Carolina was starting over, San
Francisco got an instant Super Bowl contender.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
The difference is just it's staggering. McCaffrey arrives and he's
the final piece of the puzzle, The catalyst He goes
on to lead the NFL in rushing in twenty twenty three,
he wins Offensive Player of the Year.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
He gets them to the Super Bowl.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
He gets them to Super Bowl el of eighth and
even this season, our sources show he's leading the league
in scrimmage yards with over fourteen hundred. He delivered on
every single promise, star power, production, everything, and.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Back in Carolina things were a little more complicated. The
interim coach, Steve Wilkes, he actually rallied that team. They
finished the season sixty six under him.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Right, they ended up seven to ten overall, just one
game out of the playoffs in a terrible division.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
And here's the part that just doesn't compute. They're rushing attack.
The thing CMC was the heart of it actually got
better right after he left.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
That stat is unbelievable, but it's true. Before the trade,
they're averaging about ninety rushing yards a game. In the
four games right after he's gone, that number jumps to
almost one hundred and sixty yards per game.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
How how is that possible?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Danta Foreman, a journeyman running back who was already on
the roster. He just stepped in and went on a tear.
I think it was three hundred and eighty nine yards
and four touchdowns in that little stretch.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Okay, hold on, if the run game got better without him,
does that sort of challenge the whole idea that he
was this indispensable unicorn for them.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
It raises a really interesting question, doesn't it about how
assets are used? I mean, CMC is elite. No one's
debating that. But maybe Matt rules offense was too focused
on him, too predictable. Foreman's success proved that the offensive line,
the blocking scheme, it could work with a more conventional
power running approach.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
But management wasn't looking at that, not at all.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
They were already looking three years down the road. They
didn't care about the success Wilkes was having in the moment.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
And you could feel that in the locker room. The
culture took a hit tight end. Tommy Trumble said, it
was very tough to feel good about a lot of
things that were happening. You trade your leader, that sends
a message, a very loud one.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Wilkes himself said that if the goal was winning that year,
he never would have gotten rid of his best player.
But it wasn't his call. It was, as you said,
a two or three year decision.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
A decision they immediately undermined by firing Wilkes, the guy
who almost got them to the playoffs.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
That conflict in vision is the perfect bridge to talking
about the execution, because the entire point of trading CMC
was to get capital to draft a franchise QB. Right,
so they got the assets, how did they use them?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Well, they made their big move right away. They packaged
that second round pick from the forty nine ers, the
best asset from the trade, with some of their other picks,
to trade up with the Chicago Bears.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
For the number one overall pick.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Where they selected their guy, quarterback Bryce Young. This was it,
This was the moment the CMC sacrifice was supposed.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
To pay off, but the instability just continued. The owner,
David Tepper, he hires an offensive guy, Frank Reich, specifically
to develop Young. He fires Wilkes to do it, and then.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Fires Reich after what an eleven games start, a.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
One ten start, two head coaches, two completely different visions,
both gone within a year. You just can't do that.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
You can't ask a rookie quarterback to succeed in that environment.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
It's impossible and that's the first huge failure in execution.
The second, according to our sources, was just bad scouting
wasting the other picks.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
This quote from a source really nails it. Acquiring all
those assets for a quarterback made sense. The execution of
it wasn't executed properly with the players that were drafted
with the picks.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Let's break that down because it's where the trade really
falls apart. They took the forty nine ers twenty twenty
three third rounder, bundled it with their own third rounder
to move up for an edge rusher DJ Johnson, and
d J Johnson was released after four games this season.
He ended his Carolina career with half a sack in
thirty one games.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
That's just that's malpractice. Use the precious capital you got
for your superstar to move up for a guy who
gives you literally nothing.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
It's a catastrophic loss. When you're rebuilding, your mid round
picks have to become at the very least solid role players.
Wasting a third round asset like that is crippling.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
And the final pick from the trade, the twenty.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Twenty four to fifth rounder, became cornerback chow Smith Wade.
He started seven games in two seasons. So, I mean,
if you look at the Hall, they essentially traded Christian
McCaffrey for the right to draft Bryce Young and not
much else.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
So we have to talk about Bryce Young. The jury's
still out, but the early returns are not great.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
They're not He's got a twelve to twenty six career record.
He's ranked near the bottom of the league in QBR
and passing yards per game. But you know, the sources
suggest that the system has failed him more than he's
failed the system. Is there a hope, there's a glimmer.
He recently had that huge game, a franchise record four
hundred and forty eight passing yards and three scores. So
the talent they saw is in there, but he's been
(08:36):
swimming against the current of a terrible organization.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
And the final insult to the execution here is the
running back situation. They led Deonta Foreman walk the guy
who proved the system could work, and signed Miles Sanders
to a huge contract, a.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Four year, twenty five million dollar deal. It made no sense.
Sanders was a bust, and they ended up turning back
to Cewba Hubbard, CMC's old backup, who actually had.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
A great year, but now even he's been replaced by.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Rik o'daddle, a guy on a cheap one year deal.
It's just it's a constant schurn, three different replacement strategies
in two years, while the guy you traded is winning awards.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
The lack of a plan is just so obvious, which
brings us to hindsight looking back now two years later.
The real cost of this is just compounding, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
It's snowballing into something truly awful. Because to get Young,
they had to give the Bears their twenty twenty four
first round pick, which became the number one overall pick,
Caleb Williams. So the Panthers didn't just spend assets on Young,
they gave away the chance to draft another potential superstar
QB just one year later.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
And they missed that whole twenty twenty four QB class,
which was loaded Jayden Daniels, who won Offensive Rookie of
the Year Drake May all those guys.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
That's the ultimate penalty. They were forced to double down
on their twenty twenty three decision because they'd already given
away their twenty twenty four ticket. There was no escape patch,
and it.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Makes you wonder about the guys they already had. Baker
Mayfield was won five there, but he's gone twenty six
to once since he left. Sam Darnold has a winning
record since leaving Carolina.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
It suggests they were just rushing the whole process. They
failed to get the most out of the veterans they had,
which forced them into this desperate trade for a rookie
QB they weren't equipped to develop.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
So after all that, what does the final ledger look
like for Carolina two years post trade?
Speaker 2 (10:19):
It's ugly. The team has gone eighteen forty one. They
are still stuck in the same loop, chasing a winning
season they haven't seen since twenty seventeen. And the consensus
from our sources is just brutal and frankly unanimous.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
What's the final word.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
It didn't do any good. It's still a shame they
didn't get at least one first round pick for him.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
So the only real tangible positive for them was cap space.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
That's it. They saved about eleven point seven million dollars
in cap space over two years. But think about what
they gave up for that, The best running back in
football and a chance at a different, maybe better quarterback
in twenty twenty four, all for an eighteen forty one
record and a little financial flexibility.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
It's not win. It's a footnote on a disaster exactly.
This whole deep dive just highlights the enormous canyon between
a necessary strategic idea and you could argue trading CMS
was necessary, and the complete catastrophic failure to execute the
plan that followed.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
That's the core tension, right, McCaffrey was a phenomenal player
and leader. Trading him was a long term play, but
the organization had no patience firing Wilkes, hiring and firing Reich,
whiffing on those other draft picks. They sacrifice their present
and then through sheer incompetence, they botched their future too.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
The lesson here is just so clear, and it goes
way Beyon football. We always focus on the price of
a deal, you know, the picks, the players, the money.
But what this deep dive shows is that the assets
you get are almost secondary. The real measure of success
is whether you have the organizational competence, the stability, the
scouting to actually use them.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
That's everything.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
So here's something for you to think about. If sacrificing
your best player is the first painful step of a rebuild.
What are the No. One player assets like coaching stability
or scouting excellence that an organization absolutely must have locked
down to make sure that sacrifice isn't all for nothing.
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