Hancock: Panthers Will Draft A QB In NFL Draft

Travis, thank you for the time man. Hey man, thanks for having me.

Glad to try to give you some insight on whatever the heck is going on here so far. Only week two and yet here we are with a quarterback drama already unfolding. When you heard the news yesterday, obviously new head coach Dave Kanellis was asked multiple times, hey is this the guy? And he's like yes, this is our guy moving forward.

He says he watched the tape, the film and today he changed his mind. What were your impressions when he said he was the starter yesterday and what were your thoughts today after he changed his mind? As this quarterback whisperer, this guru that did magical things, albeit with veterans and Geno Smith and Baker Mayfield, we thought even if Bryce is struggling to a really bad level that he is right now, at least you have to give Dave Kanellis more time with Bryce to try to figure it out. Apparently that Bryce Young is so mentally off track from that disastrous rookie year and he's just flat out not been good. So everything went against Bryce a year ago, now it appears like they've fixed a lot of things around him and it's still a problem. But we all thought around here, hey, we know it's not trending in the right direction, JR, but at least Bryce is going to have a little more time with Kanellis to try to figure it out.

Travis Hancock here with us from WFNZ in Charlotte. Do you think we'll see him sooner than later? Like Andy Dalton, there's no point in starting him the rest of the season. Andy Dalton will probably falter and then we'll see Bryce sooner than later, right? Yeah, well, the thing is, even if Bryce plays, you know, and he's bad, you know, you're going to get your pick of the winner as they normally do here at the top of the draft, whether it's Chidor Sanders, Carson Beck, yours, whatever quarterback fits what they want to do, they would at least have that option. But now, you know, Andy Dalton is going to be better and already changed the Vegas line against the Raiders and dropped a couple points in the Panthers favor because Andy Dalton is now starting, so he's probably going to win them, you know, three games, four, I don't know, they're pretty bad in a lot of areas.

Is that worth it? I never thought, all right, Andy Dalton comes in, he wins three or four games, and away you go. I would have just wrote Bryce out as long as you could and then tried from there unless the thought was that they had to do it now because they were really starting to lose the locker room. That's the only thing that makes sense is that Canales can't lose the locker room only two weeks in. But other than that, I don't really see the upside of starting 37-year-old Andy Dalton for the rest of the season. Oh, Travis, you mentioned that the draft of next year, we know about Beck and Chidoor and Quinn Ewers possibly all going number one overall at quarterback. If this season continues to just be a wash and Bryce is proven to not be the guy, are they going to pull the plug on him already like that?

Yeah, no, it's shocking. It's coming off of bad hires and a bad GM hire and quarterback trades and signings. This was supposed to be the guy. We talked to dozens and dozens of people leading up to the draft, as you can imagine, from some of the biggest names in football that know quarterbacks to a lot of the draft gurus. I think that for the most part, by the time we got to the draft, everyone kind of bought in. There's this crowd discussion, of course, but by the time we got to the actual draft night, there wasn't much negativity here that surrounded it.

We all thought, all right, they got the guy. It's a little unconventional because of the size, but the way the game is played now, he can overcome that, but he's not Kyler Murray. He's not the freakish athlete that Kyler Murray is, and he's really, really, really... We got tired of all the size comments, but how do you not look at it now? Mita Kimes today admitted on one of the ESPN shows that she was not thinking all about that at the draft time, but now the way he plays, it's hard not to look at his height and really his temptedness, I guess I would say, in the pocket. His inability to step up and make throws.

It's a lot that went against him last year with the organization, but right now, you look at it and say, he's just flat out not good as a pro. And Travis Hancock joining us, WFNZ co-host of Mac and Bone, a morning show. You mentioned the general manager, Dan Morgan, now running the show, gave up a haul. We see Kyler Williams as a part of that deal.

Multiple first rounders, multiple second rounders. I know Dan Morgan was good at hitting people. Is he going to get a lot of leash here and run in this team? Yeah, first of all, he's a former Panther player, so David Tepper, the owner, is naturally going to think, have more of a respect for a guy that's been there, done that on the field as opposed to the previous GM, Scott Fitterer. Dan Morgan was here for the Bryce Young trade, JR, but it's a little complex trying to figure out. He was the assistant GM. And yes, obviously, he had a big say in what was going on. We don't know fully what his thoughts were on Bryce Young. He had to kind of play the part and say, yeah, I'm all in. But we don't know if he reigned strength.

I don't know. It's hard to tell, so he's going to get a little bit of a longer leash because the previous GM, Scott Fitterer, messed it up so badly that the depth is a problem. Now, that was Derek Brown, the best overall player, defensive player up front for the season. So, we said last year at 2 and 15, how could it get any worse, man? This can't get any worse.

Well, turns out it did. So, when you say how can it get worse, think of the Carolina Panthers because right now, somehow, some way, after a disastrous season, they're in one of the worst. We looked it up today. They're in one of the worst stretches in the history of the sport. Only six times ever have teams had the worst record back-to-back years, and they might be the next one. And it would have been three if they didn't fire Matt Ruhle when they did and Steve Wilkes came in and actually righted the ship for a while.

They would have had the worst record three years in a row, most likely, and that's never happened in the history of professional football. Well, Travis, you think about the fan sentiment. I was up in Carolina the last time, maybe less than a year ago, as they were getting ready to make the selection of Bryce Young.

Here we are, fast forward a year and a couple of months. How are the fans feeling? Is general consensus that we're sick of Bryce Young? Are they saying, hey, we need to see a little bit more before we kick them to the curb? How do the fans feel? It was really split based off last year because of the way it went down. So entering the offseason, you'd have a lot of Bryce Young detractors and you'd have a lot of Bryce Young supporters.

Even though it's only been two weeks, he has regressed from being bad last year to the point where it's now gone about, you know, it's only a couple of weeks. It's only a small sample size. But based off our show, it's been about 90 percent that have said, all right, this isn't working. Wow.

It's not good. Yeah. And as far as the fan base goes, I mean, I've been doing this for 20 years here and I've seen the highs and the lows. They sent me on a tailgate tour yesterday.

A sponsored tailgate tour to try to go find the happiest fans in the city. And that might be the hardest task I've ever had in my life. I was I was in a Jeep with a I was in a Jeep with a megaphone. Yeah. And it was I was talking to some people that had that look in their eye. J.R. like they see some stuff, right? Like they see some stuff and they don't want to talk about it anymore.

And I had to sit there with my megaphone. And, you know, I felt bad, but it is a dejected fan base and they change the coaches. They change the quarterback. They change the GM. They change the tackles. They change.

They change uniform combinations. They've done about everything. But the one thing that remains a constant the last seven years is David Tepper on the football side of this thing. He does run the soccer team to put the football side of this.

There's very much a Washington feel. Cleveland Cleveland Brown when they were bad. It's feeling like those organizations that keep going through coaches, keep going through quarterbacks. They change GM. Washington did the all time example of that, where they tried for 20 ever since Mark Griffin was there. They've been trying quarterbacks and GMs and coaches and they hit on it a little bit.

But there's very much that feel of, oh, no. If Tepper's here, is it going to be the next quarterback that doesn't work out? The next coach? It's a constant cycle like we feel like we're on Groundhog Day and we're never getting out of this thing.

Well, Travis, that was going to be my next question. David Tepper, there was a lot of optimism when he took over. I guess part of it is the previous owner, Jerry Richardson, how he exited the building. But just over the past year, two years, we've seen David Tepper got a little bit of that nasty Wall Street side to him, whether it's going into restaurants and being upset with signs or throwing a drink at a fan, home fan, opposing fan, doesn't matter. That has kind of waned already. I guess there is no more optimism with him as owner.

No, no, no. There's also some business dealings with a practice facility here that didn't work out. So there's other stuff here that's going on like the internal city paying for stadium stuff. That's also a problem there. Look, I think that there are times where the fans go off on him where it's kind of like, all right, well, you know, that particular thing might not be necessary.

Then there's other things where you go, how in the world is it possible, J.R.? Yeah, there's the drink thrown last year. There's the taking the hat off the fan, although he is a ball buster. So that one, I didn't think it was as big of a deal as it appeared. I think he was just busting drops.

But the drink was certainly a problem. How about the thing last year that came out, the report, that he was submitting plays to Frank Reich last year before he got fired? He submitted a play that he saw the Cleveland Browns run at some point. We don't know when the Browns ran that play, if it was Jim Brown or, you know, Bernie Koso. We have no idea what play he saw, but he submitted a play last year that he wanted Frank Reich to run. So, I mean, yeah, the drinks are one thing and the hat, but, you know, if he stayed away from the football stuff, it'd be like, all right, well, we got a little bit of a cavalier owner, but he doesn't win.

So it's seen as a negative for sure. But when you're submitting plays that you saw somewhere in time from the Cleveland Browns, I mean, that's one of the big reasons why we're in this spot, JR. Please help us get out of here. I wish I could.

I know you wish you could. Final question for you. All things considered, it is September of 2025. What is the most likely scenario for the Panthers? Are we looking at a different quarterback? Yeah, I think it's going to be a different quarterback.

It's hard to gauge which one, you know, it's so early, like we're not even like thinking about like who fits the Dave Canales mold or who's the, I mean, it's obviously yours and Carson Beck and Chidor Sanders, and we'll see who else was up. It's so early last year, you know, we've had to put on a lot of draft people early in season. The last year we reached out to Ryan Wilson of CBS Sports dot com and, you know, there's a ton of draft work. And he said that he's never gotten a text before for a draft interview in early October. But we we did it last year. And now I'm thinking, do I have to text Ryan Wilson and Rick Spielman and any of the draft experts and try to get them on in September?

This is not this is not a fun life to live, man. So I think it's going to be one of those quarterbacks. But I honestly thought that Bryce is going to play out the year we get to end in November, December, January. We start thinking about what quarterback fits. But apparently now we're going to start talking college quarterbacks, which we like to do. But it's only mid-September and we are already looking at reading all the mock drafts yet again.

Yes, this might be a full on draft evaluation for the panelists here. Prepare yourself. Oh, yeah.

Well, thank you, Travis. Where can people follow you? Your work? Listen to The Morning Show. Fill us in. I am at T-Bone, WFNZ on all social media platforms, X or Twitter, whatever we're calling it today. I'm usually pretty upbeat and pretty happy to lucky until about 1 p.m. on Sundays. And that thing is just I don't know what it is.

I don't know what happened. But about 1 p.m. on Sundays, we start doing raffle with it, do a dark place and then we come out of it and we get back in that dark place every week. So, yeah, at T-Bone, WFNZ, Mac and Bone show, wherever you find your your podcast. Check us out.

Hopefully we bring you back with some some positivity over the next couple of weeks. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Anytime.