Carolina Panthers training camp Day 2

This is the best of the Adam Gold Show Podcast brought to you by Coach Pete at Capital Financial Advisory Group.

Visit us at capitalfinancialusa.com. This is the Adam Gold Show. Yeah, I'm pretty stupid for wearing a long sleeve and pants, but I'm stubborn so I have to learn for myself. For me, it's just getting better one day at a time. I have to get better. And if I'm playing my best ball, things will take care of itself and just helping each other out. And then the main goal for this team, which is, I think it's pretty well understood, is we're trying to win. No matter who's in there, we want to win football games, and that's the main message. This is the Adam Gold Show. Love me some serious Baker Mayfield.

Yes. Oh, so serious, but coachable. Very coachable. You know, the thing I heard in there, Adam, was learning from mistakes.

That's exactly right. Improving day to day. That's what you want in a quarterback who evaluates themselves.

Whether it's through film, independent study, whatever it may be, to get better. We've seen that one day in with Baker Mayfield. One day we're going to see an improvement. Massive improvements from Baker Mayfield. Man, he's going to look better.

You shouldn't wear pants and long sleeves in Spartanburg. All right, we're going to talk about that later. Gosh, it's so funny. It's the Adam Gold Show. I am him.

That is Dennis Cox. We are here until they kick us out. But they will kick us out because they kick us out at the same time every day. Just before 3 o'clock.

So we've got a lot of time to take care of a lot of things. We're on TV. If you are local to the Raleigh WRAL TV 5 viewing area, over the air, over the antenna, 34.1. Spectrum cable, 1257.

Roku, Fire, Android, Apple TV, WRAL Sports Plus. You can find us. Man, there are so many good things, including candles today. Ooh. Yeah.

16 of them. That was a good movie. That was a good sort of a coming of age movie.

Those movies all came out like rapid fire. Breakfast Club, which I watched Saturday night. Are you familiar with that movie? Oh yeah. Very good.

St. Elmo's Fire. I actually spoke to somebody who was in that movie, legitimately in that movie, yesterday. Really? Yes. Okay.

Yes. My friend Matthew Lawrence, who used to do Duke Radio for basketball. Matthew had a very long acting career in Hollywood. His character, Rod D'Alessandro, was one of the neighbors of the Brat Pack, of one of the kids in the Brat Pack in St. Elmo's Fire.

Actually, I talked to Matthew for about a half hour last night. I don't know why I brought that up, but I did. St. Elmo's Fire, Breakfast Club, 16 candles. I'm trying to remember the movie with Rob Lowe and Andrew McCarthy, where McCarthy has an affair with Rob Lowe's mother. They're both in boarding school. Class? Class. Oh my.

Did you just do a Google search? Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy movie. Very nice.

You're fast. That was a great movie. A super movie class. By the way, Jacqueline Bissette, great actress. Just leave it there.

Just great actress. Just leave it right there. But anyways, how did I get into the Breakfast Club?

How did that happen already? Well, you mentioned candles. We were going to talk about candles, and I said 16 of them. Candles.

Look at you. I sent you down that rabbit hole. I appreciate you left enough bread crumbs to get us back.

I thank you very much. Anyway, we are going to talk about candles and Christian McCaffrey. All right, let's just start before I blow it. It is Baker Mayfield Day. Yesterday was the Sam Darnold Show. Today, Baker's time to shine. For me, it's just getting better one day at a time. You know, I have to get better. And if I'm playing my best ball, things will take care of itself.

And just helping each other out. I mean, the main goal for this team, which is, I mean, it's pretty well understood, is we're trying to win. No matter who's in there, we want to win football games, and that's the main message. He says so many good football-y things.

Yes. So many good football-y things. Getting better. Oh, yeah.

Improving day to day. We're just trying to win games. Competing. Doesn't matter who's in there.

Look, just. It's a team. He's so polished. Look, I've always said this about Baker, and I think we'll find out this to be true over time this year. I think the biggest advantage that Mayfield has over Darnold is presence. I don't think his physical skills are significantly better than Sam's, if they are at all. But Mayfield carries himself like a star.

Really better than the quarterback that he is, but he carries himself like a number one, like a leader, all of those things, and that matters. And I think that's probably Mayfield's biggest advantage over Darnold is his presence. So I still, even though Hayes Permar, when he was filling in two times ago, or whatever it was, has a wager, a pending wager, Sam Darnold plus 200 to be week one starter. I mean, I sort of hope he's right, but I don't think he's going to be unless there's an injury involved.

I think Baker ultimately will win this job. Day two is his time to work with the ones. Yesterday, he worked with the twos. On the flip side of that is you're also working against the ones, and we know how good the Panthers defense can be, although two players did not practice today. Shaq Thompson again, J.C. Horn again, and those are two starters in the Panthers top 11 on defense.

Carryover Pizzo, I guess. Yeah, look, they're both on the pup list. Horn is on the active pup list. I don't know why there's a list called active pup, although pups by nature are active. So maybe that's why.

Anyway, we heard it at the beginning, but I want to hear it again. Baker Mayfield is coachable and learning from his mistakes. Yeah, I'm pretty stupid for wearing a long sleeve and pants, but I'm stubborn, so I had to learn for myself. Spartanburg hits different. The heat of Spartanburg hits a little bit different. Have you ever been to Panthers training camp? I've never been to training camp, no, but I've been by Wofford, yes.

Okay. Well, we went a couple of years in a row. It seems the air is just a tad heavier in Spartanburg. They're in the upstate. Yeah, but they're not high up in the, really not up in the mountains. Well, it's like the area of the state. It's called the upstate.

Oh, right. Yeah. So it's, I don't know, man. It's almost like a valley, isn't it Spartanburg? Kind of is. It's just, the air just sits on top of you. It's just dense.

It pushes you to the ground, so- It's like a weighted blanket. Like, man, if we're having training camp, I realize there's, they're at Wofford for a reason, obviously, Jerry Richardson, but man, if there was a way to have training camp in a place that was cooler, like the Panthers should have training camp in Asheville. Yeah.

Just go to Asheville. I was talking to somebody who's like part of their tourism and visitors bureau over the week, like last week, and we were, he was saying, you know, it's only 74 degrees right now. I'm like, you know what, let's go. Yeah.

Let's go there now. Well, I know the Saints do their training camp in West Virginia. Oh, I'm sure it's gorgeous in West- Yeah. No, I mean- In the Blue Ridge. Oh, they do it in the mountains.

And they do it in the mountains in West Virginia. Oh, okay. That's much better. I want to say they do it in Beckley or somewhere around Beckley, I think. Oh.

But that's traditionally- Near where the river's- Exactly. Oh. So that's a big thing. Like the Saints, when they get a day off, a lot of them like go fishing and things like that. So the Saints do that.

Rastic. Yeah. Dallas? Don't they, or maybe it's Kansas City does theirs in Wisconsin. Well, Dallas goes to- They go to Napa. The Cowboys go to Napa?

I think they went to Napa. I think that's where they do it. Okay. That's tremendous. Yeah, because why not?

You should- I think Kansas City goes up to Wisconsin, I think. Really? Yeah. I'd go to the Yukon.

Yeah, I would say. I would go to Nova Scotia to do training camp. Have you ever got whitewater rafting, Dennis? Whitewater rafting, no. I recommend whitewater rafting to everyone I know. It is so much fun to do.

Get on a good river, challenge yourself, get a guide in the boat. Have a blast. It is a great, absolute great time. It's Oxnard, California.

Okay. Yeah, that's where the Cowboys go. Oxnard.

I don't know where Oxnard is, but it sounds hot to me. Adam Gold here. From my man, Coach Pete DeRuta with the Capital Financial Advisory Group. We are talking retirement.

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Right. And so the game here is we know the rules. A lot of people want to ignore the rules or act like they aren't familiar with them, but the IRS knows the rules. And so when we get to retirement, they're going to reach in and start taking some of their money out of your accounts. So the secret here is to put a force field around as much as possible by strategically moving some of our money to Roth IRA or some of the other vehicles that aren't taxed, like special life insurance policies.

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800-661-7383, all you got is call, or you can text Adam to 21000 for Coach Pete DeRuta. All right, one more thing, I mentioned candles. If there was a star, try to remember where I read the story, but Christian McCaffrey, she was on ESPN.com, Christian McCaffrey has, he admits the bougiest dorm room on the roster. Very nice. So he went out to and just decorated the whole room. He's got a rug, he's got a bunch of pillows, a lot of blankets, candles. He's got all sorts of candles in his room.

It's great. And if you're Christian McCaffrey and you've got a bunch of candles in your room, nobody is making fun of you. Nobody is going, gosh, what's up with the dude with the candle?

Because it's Christian McCaffrey. And if he wants to put a poster of Gloria Gaynor on the wall, look it up, look it up, I will survive. If he wants to put a Gloria Gaynor poster on the wall, it suddenly is cool to have a Gloria Gaynor poster on the wall. Look at it.

Look up. You can bump with Gloria Gaynor later on. And Eric MacLana will go, what the hell is he bumping with Gloria Gaynor for? I mean, hearing all that in his room. Oh, perfect.

It's tremendous. I'm telling you, we got to talk about candles later. Okay, let's, I mean, I'll just keep going. I don't care. Ben Roethlisberger walks back the comments.

Look, you can play George Michael all day for me, I don't care. Two days ago, Ben Roethlisberger went public with his dismay at what he called a lot of me first players these days. You know, the kids these days, they don't care about the team. They only care about themselves.

This is the classic old man yells at cloud. But one of the very best players in the entire league, like Ben, and only stealer, Cam Hayward, he was not amused. And they rubbed me the wrong way. Ben is a Hall of Fame quarterback. And he has played 18 years in our league, all with the Pittsburgh Steelers. I was a little bit upset about it, because I was always raised to protect the locker room, protect the guys. And the way it seems is, and this is my point of view, this is what I see. It looks as though we're looked at as selfish players. And I think that's not the point. I think we have a lot of young players that come from different backgrounds. I think we have guys that have experienced different things than what I or somebody else might experience.

And that doesn't make them selfish, or it doesn't make them more of a me type attitude. By the way, Cam would be the best defensive tackle in football if Aaron Donald would just retire. Yeah. He would be.

That's the thing. A lot of people don't realize how good Cam Hayward is, because that bar is so darn high. Cam Hayward is amazing.

You and I talk about this. The Steelers have three of the best defensive players in the entire league on the same team, with TJ Watt, Cam Hayward, and Minka Fitzpatrick, right? They have the makings, the guts of an incredible defense. They don't need a ton out of their offense to be good. I just don't know what they're going to get out of Mitch Trubisky at an offensive line that is still developing, right?

We just don't know. But man, their defense could be absolutely awesome. I hope they all stay healthy.

But can I just explain to Ben that if there was ever a sport to have a me first attitude, it would be football. The average careers are basically three years. You're lucky.

I mean, really lucky, unless you are a star. You are really lucky to make a good living, something that kind of sets you up for the rest of your life, because the majority of these guys are out of the league quickly. Most don't see through their rookie contracts. I mean, I don't even want to call it a rookie contract.

You've heard me say this. They should not even call it a rookie contract. They should call it a first contract, because it's so... I believe the percentage is about 50% of first round picks that get the second contract. It's one of those things that if the NFL Players Association were stronger, then the first contract wouldn't be five years for first round picks and four years for everybody else. It would be three years for first round picks and two years for everybody else. Because they basically take the best of your career at your lowest earning potential, unless you're a quarterback or unless you are lucky enough as a player to avoid injury and be really good by the time you get to that second contract. I mean, you look at what some of the NBA players make, right?

Just the middle of your roster NBA players. I honestly don't know, but gosh, what does PJ Tucker make? PJ Tucker's a starter and a valuable piece, but he's more of an intangible piece, right? And PJ Tucker has probably made, conservatively, $200 million in his career, I bet.

Right? So you just made $7 million this past year. $7 million is a star. Not a quarterback star, right? Not a quarterback star, not like the offensive tackle. But if you make $7 million in the NFL, you are probably no worse than 10th on your team out of 50-something in salary.

In his upcoming contract, he just signed a three-year, $33 million deal with the Sixers. PJ Tucker's gonna make $11 million a year. So I mean, the NFL guys, they don't make that much money.

I've been arguing this for a while. I think the NFL salary cap is at least $100 million too low. They should, the salary cap should be over $300 million per team.

It just should be. The players should make more money. We have no middle class in the NFL, we have no middle class. I think one of the reasons why the rookie contracts go to four years is because to reach unrestricted free agency, you have to have played it more than three years.

So if you only have three years of term in the NFL, let's say you're an undrafted rookie and you play three years with a team as an undrafted rookie, you're a restricted free agent. Right. So that's one of the reasons why the rookie's contracts that are drafted, yeah. All of that is part of CBN negotiation.

Every element of that is negotiated on title. Yeah, but here's the thing, we all know the union's so weak in the NFL. And again, another thing that has been talked about for decades. Too many of the guys in the league who don't make a lot of money can't afford to miss the year. Exactly. And if enough of the players were willing to miss the year, all of this would change.

But they're not. And I understand. June 19th, 2006, but it all started May 6th, 1997 with the announcement that the Hartford Whalers were coming to North Carolina. It's a story of transition, of heartbreak, of figuring it out on the fly. The Canes Corner look at the 25th anniversary of the move presented by the Aluminum Company of North Carolina. Listen now, find Canes' 25th anniversary wherever you get your podcasts. I understand why.

Let's see how many more things we can get through because we gotta get to the most important thing from last night. The American announced their pre-season predictions. Ah, yes.

I think this came out earlier today. Houston, Cincinnati, Central Florida, one, two, three. Do you know... Interesting. Do you know what is similar about all three of those schools?

Houston, Cincinnati, and Central Florida. They're all about to leave. Exactly. Very good.

Can't put anything past you, Dennis. Nope. SMU, Memphis, East Carolina, 4-5-6, ECU was right in the middle, right? Six out of 11. Tulane, Tulsa, South Florida, Navy, and Temple bringing up the rear. Pre-season ACC honors yesterday.

We talked about this briefly when it came out between two and three. Five NC State players voted to the first team. We had Drake Thomas, Peyton Wilson at linebacker, Tanner Engle, safety, Grant Gibson, the center, Devin Leary on offense, and Leary also got pre-season ACC Player of the Year honors.

Gonna play that song all day. You mentioned Devin Leary. Right.

I understand. Josh Downs, twice honored, wide receiver and specialist, A.T. Perry, wide receiver for Wake Forest also on the team. There were so many players that got Player of the Year votes. Yeah.

Like 11 or 12? There were six that got double-digit votes. I have to go back and look, but I can't imagine that we've ever had a year where there were six players that got double-digit support for that. I have seen a fair amount of people wondering, how did Sam Hartman not get put up? Devin Leary was named the Player of the Year, pre-season Player of the Year, which is just a guess. It's all it is.

It's a guess. He got 24.4% of the vote. Three times as many people voted for somebody not named Devin Leary as voted for Devin Leary. So... Looking back last year, Sam Hall had 114 votes.

D.R. King was second with 11, just to kind of give you the contrast between last year and this year. I mean, we had so many candidates for that role, for that honor. So there's just no point. If people did one, two, and three, Leary could have gotten a ton of third-place votes for all we know. We have no idea how that whole thing would have played out. But anyway, I just don't think it's worth really being surprised at.

All right. Let me throw this at you, because we saw something last night that is electric, and it's just one of the best things in sports. And it's not Starling Marte's walk-off single that had the Mets sweep the Yankees with a 3-2 win last night. Four times last night, four times, Max Scherzer faced Aaron Judge, and four times, Max won the duel. He got him swinging in the third with a couple of runners on, again in the fifth with the bases empty, then in the seventh, Mets with a 2-0 lead, two on, two outs, here's this. Max Scherzer was incredible last night, but it was sort of, I'm not saying he was lucky, he was incredible when he had to be incredible, because the Yankees actually hit a bunch of balls hard, came close to scoring some runs, but when Max Scherzer needed it out, he got it. And the pitches that he threw to Aaron Judge last night were nasty.

I mean nasty sliders. And on that confrontation in the seventh inning, and I contend there is nothing better in sports than elite pitcher versus elite hitter in a tough spot, in a dramatic situation. Seventh inning, go ahead run at the plate in the form of Aaron Judge, the major league leader in home runs, who homeward the night before against the Mets, and you've got one of the best pitchers still in the game in Max Scherzer. It was just awesome, a great confrontation, and you know, Judge is going to win his share of those, be flat out going to win his share of those, but it didn't happen last night, and I swear that Scherzer was pitching around DJ LeMayhew to get to Judge. Like he liked the matchup better against Judge than he did against LeMayhew. But just, I think another good night of baseball in New York, I mean a dramatic two teams that are really good, maybe two of the best four teams in the sport, and maybe they'll meet again in the play, well they're definitely going to meet again this year, there's another two game series in August, but maybe they'll meet in the playoffs in the World Series, that would be awesome for Mets and Yankees fans, but I think it was just absolutely incredible. Here's Scherzer, Scherzer's line from, because he was on the injured list for like seven weeks, he's made five starts since coming back from the injured list, 32 in the third innings, that's a lot, yep, five earned runs, that's not a lot, 1.390 RA, that's very low, 45 strikeouts, four walks, 23 hits, goodness, I mean you gotta be kidding me, you gotta be kidding me, that's just stupid, right, he's gone at least six innings in all five starts since coming off the IL, so he's been just tremendous. Yankees made a trade after the game last night, they got Andrew Penantendi from the Royals for three prospects, the only problem with that for the Yankees is that if Penantendi doesn't meet Mr. Moderna, then future games against the Blue Jays in Toronto are compromised because he can't go, he was one of the Royals players who couldn't go to Toronto a couple weeks ago, yeah they had like 13 players who couldn't go, I just don't understand, I don't, I'm sorry, I don't, because it is possible the Yankees and Blue Jays could meet in the playoffs, those would be difficult games to miss, I mean I guess maybe you can just move on without Andrew Penantendi, but then why'd you trade for him, that's just a question. This is the Adam Gold Show. Off of the crossbar, and the Hurricanes have won the Stanley Cup. June 19th, 2006, but it all started May 6th, 1997 with the announcement that the Hartford Whalers were coming to North Carolina, it's a story of transition, of heartbreak, of figuring it out on the fly, the Canes Corner look at the 25th anniversary of the move, presented by the Aluminum Company of North Carolina, listen now, find Canes 25th Anniversary wherever you get your podcasts.