Should the Carolina Panthers trade Christian McCaffrey?

This is the Adam Gold Show. That chicken looks like it's worth more than $60 to me. That looked like at least $100 chicken. There's a gray one, beautiful, beautiful gray chicken. Uh, all right, let's go to my friend Travis Hancock, T-Bone from WFNZ in Charlotte, Mac Attack in the mornings at T-Bone, WFNZ on Twitter. I mean, I'm not kidding.

It looked like $100 chicken to me. Oh man, speaking of laying eggs, let's talk Panthers, why don't you say? Oh my gosh, let's do, all right. And before we get out of here, I do want to ask you about the, about the Hornets, cause I know it starts tonight. So let's just, let's start sort of in the middle of this and we're going to get back to Steve Wilks, but it was floated over the weekend that the Panthers are making Christian McCaffrey available if somebody wants to blow them away with an offer, which I hope that happens for Christian McCaffrey's sake.

How is that playing down there? I think it's, I think they owe it to him to find a new place for him. I agree. They owe it to him for what he's been through mentally and physically really the last couple of years. I think it's the right time because you have to act while Christian McCaffrey is healthy.

He's positive equity right now. And the longer you hold onto McCaffrey, you know, who knows? Now, if you try to trade them into the next, next, next season, is he as healthy now? We would, it's not guaranteed to be healthy for that long.

So I think now is the right time. They're not going to get two number ones. I think that their goal should be talk to the teams at the back end of the first round, Buffalo. Their, their running game is really their only weakness. Kansas City with Andy Reed, do they need to add something else to sort of get themselves over Buffalo again?

Baltimore, their leading rusher is Lamar Jackson by almost 350 yards. They need a, a more of a balance there. So there are some teams that make sense and I think it makes sense right now. You don't want to, you can get value now for McCaffrey, but down the line, that's not a guarantee.

So you've got to strike while it's hot, I believe. Travis Hancock from WFNZ in Charlotte is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show. If, if I'm, first of all, if I'm Christian McCaffrey, he's saying all the right things. He doesn't want to move, doesn't want to move. If I'm Christian McCaffrey, I'm like, yeah, get me out of here because he's, he's too good a player.

And think about this. I'm going to think about this from a bigger picture NFL standpoint. I have, in my opinion, I know we've got a lot of great players in the league. In my opinion, he is the best running back in the sport because of the way he can do everything. He can run inside, he can run outside, catches the ball. I know he's been hurt the last two years. I see him as a durable player. And I don't see these last two injuries in injury seasons as related.

Maybe I'm wrong. But he deserves to be showcased for the league's purposes on a team that is a contender. Buffalo, I think the running game is okay because they don't have a great player at that position, but they have a good running game and Singletary's a good running back. And I think that they've got a couple of other guys behind him. San Francisco, Jeff Wilson's their guy. What would he do to their offense in terms of taking it to another level? I wouldn't wish Denver on him because I think Denver is a sinking ship right now.

And I know that's home for him. But I'd just like to, from a perspective, a league perspective, they need to have Christian McCaffrey in a more visible spot because the Panthers are absolutely dreadful. I mean, they're not gonna get a first round pick for him though. So they have to be more creative in a deal. No, but I mean, if Buffalo is picking last or second to last or in that territory, that's where they're gonna pick.

Would they be willing to give up their first round pick? I mean, I don't know. Maybe that's pie in the sky.

Maybe they won't. But the scenarios that you mentioned, you're right. If you just take away the, I live in Charlotte in the Panther fandom and Christian McCaffrey is my neighbor.

Well, I mean, he lives like five miles away, but I call him my neighbor in the same area. That's not tech. Don't Google it. It's not accurate.

I'm lying, but it's somewhere in the area. All of the scenarios that you paint, imagine McCaffrey in the Kyle Shanahan run game with Deebo Samuel. Imagine him with Josh Allen.

Imagine him with Lamar Jackson. So you're right. For a league right now, for the NFL product, it hasn't really been great.

Didn't hear a thing. But it's been bad. Putting him in one of those spots to make the post-season. And he's also gonna be 27 next year. So running back age goes quickly. So once you start to get towards 30, there's no guarantees.

It can just all of a sudden stop out of nowhere. So for his sake, he's gotta be looking at, hey, I love Charlotte. It'll probably always be home to him in some way, but there's too many teams that it just makes a lot of sense for if the Panthers can get the right compensation. All right, let's talk about Robbie with a Y. We knew that was gonna end. Yeah, I mean, Robbie with a Y. You'd be Robbie with an I-E if you were good.

You changed your name to an I and an E because you thought you were gonna be good. And now we know better. And frankly, those of us who are recovering Jets fans knew better all along. And I appreciated the way Steve Wilks handled that.

And I have an appreciation for Wilks immediately because of it. I didn't think they would find a spot for him so quickly, but they also didn't get anything for him. Yeah, they've been trying to move him for a while. We don't know why they gave him that contract extension before last season. That's another one of those Panther moves that you questioned at the time and you questioned even more as you go forward. But yeah, we had heard that they had some deals that were about to happen or in talks over the summer. And it's not a coincidence, by the way, that they were able to move Robbie as quick as they did. So that tells you right there that behavior or not on Sunday, stuff was happening, whether it be Arizona or not, they were not, he was not gonna last long without Matt Ruhl and some of the other coaches that he knew from his college days.

You just knew that. I felt really bad for Steve Wilks. He's a Charlotte guy, an App State guy. He's got really one crack at this Panther head coaching job and it's gonna have to be to win a ton of games. And he, in his first chance, Robbie Anderson kind of embarrasses him and the staff in the first half of the first game. This wasn't, not that it matters still, but this wasn't like game 11 when Robbie was shut out, catches for three games and he's a wide receiver and he freaked out. This is Steve Wilks' first game as the head coach here and Robbie acts up right away. I felt bad for Steve Wilks and I'm glad they were able to move on from him because as you mentioned, outside of one half year here in 2020, he's done nothing. He's done nothing here.

And you mentioned the Jets and I'm a Jets fan. At least when Robbie was a Jet, he would make, and some of this is quarterback play here, but he would make contested catches down the field. He would fight out there. He would scrap out there.

He would get everything he had. I haven't really seen much of that guy out there since he got the contract. It's sort of a guy out there running routes and I haven't seen the same fire from Robbie over the last couple of years.

So this was always going to end in a bad way. Yeah, he looks like a guy who thinks he's better than he is, which is not uncommon, not just in the NFL, but in sports in general. Real quick about Steve Wilks, about this being, he's got, this is his crack at this job. And again, I like Steve.

I have no idea if he's ever going to be a candidate regardless of what happens. But if you were going to look at it like this is your crack at this job, why did he oversee an offense that didn't seem interested in putting points on the board? Like they had six drives in a row and on third down, they never even threatened to pick up the first down six times in a row. And that bothered me because what are you protecting? Even punting the ball from plus territory on the, I guess it was the second drive after kicking a field goal.

Like, what are you protecting at this point? I mean, roll dice, chuck it deep, who cares? I thought, I think you're a hundred percent right. I was thinking the same thing watching the game. Look, we know that in sports, you see it all the time. Look at the Phillies right now. Sometimes you, when you fire that coach, your team gets a boost. You have a little bit of a leap up for, not every time, but a lot of times you leap up for a couple of weeks. You play above your heads and sometimes you can carry that thing further than you ever thought.

Like Rob Thompson and Philadelphia Phillies right now. So I, but yet there's a certain mindset to what you're talking about that, that you kind of, I think to have that leap up on talking about, you gotta be a little aggressive in approach. You gotta take some chances. You gotta throw the ball down the field. You got really not a lot to lose those coaches that take over and are willing to gamble a little bit, take some risks, do things differently.

You know, they may give themselves a better chance down the line, but that game plan the other day, that, that kept them in it for a little bit. And that's, look at crazy, crazy NFL, that might even win you a game. I don't know, that could even win you a game of God, but that's not going to get you sustained success in this league. You can have your starting quarterback throw for 60 yards when the other opposing quarterback threw for 250 yards.

You can maintain it a little bit, but you gotta, you gotta take some chances. You got DJ Moore. You've got some other guy, well, you've got DJ Moore McCaffrey, Robbie. Robbie was halfway to the Southwest.

You gotta take some chances and that type of conservative approach, that's not going to ultimately get you a chance at this job, in my opinion. Robbie was, Robbie with a Y was checking in on group C in Southwest Airlines. All right, final thing for Travis Hancock at WFNZ in Charlotte, and you got, you have work to do tonight because the Hornets are at the Spurs. And I know I'm looking at this from way afar and somebody who doesn't really follow the team, you know, closely. But I remember a time a few years ago where a lot of people thought, especially with LaMelo, that this is an up and coming team.

What happened? Oh man, so much happened in the off season. They fired James Borrego going from 23 to 33 to 43 wins. He went up 10 wins a year, had them going in the right direction. They go through this two month coaching search that kind of got embarrassing along the way in terms of what was happening. They lay it back on their former coach, Steve Clifford. So he comes in, Miles Bridges is now going to have to go through a trial for just inexplicable behavior.

And he's got his day in court. I don't want to get too far into what he's involved in, but he's got that coming up and he's no longer with the team for now and who knows what's going to happen there, but his production's gone. LaMelo got hurt in the pre-season, so he's out for not too long. But then, you know, James Booknight got arrested the other day, their second year guard from UC.

It has been just storyline after storyline after storyline. And as I discussed this morning, you can name about six or seven things negative that happened in the off-season and they didn't add much positive to it. They drafted Mark Williams, our guy from Duke, right? They tried Dennis Smith Jr. to be like a third guard, but they didn't bring anybody else in. They didn't do, they didn't balance out because Miles Bridges sort of held this team hostage for moves, they have all these negative things.

And now we're looking at it as, oh, so we have Steve Clifford here now. We have the same team without Bridges. We're depending on Gordon Hayward to play a big role and who knows at this point. And they added Mark Williams, who may not even play a lot his first year, and Dennis Smith Jr. So the negative energy that's happened, there's not a lot to offset it right now.

And that's part of the problem. We don't have some brand new superstar, not that they'd get a superstar, but there's not an influx of new guys to get excited about to watch. We like LaMelo and what he does, but it's just, it's a tough sell right now based off an extremely long off season that just was one story after another. So hopefully tonight they can get a win and get some good vibes back. But it's gonna be interesting and possibly a very long season for the Hornets.

Yeah, at the Spurs is not a terrible place to start because San Antonio I don't think is all that great either. At T-Bone, WFNZ and Charlotte Travis Hancock, my friend, man, thank you so much for doing this. I'll talk to you soon.

Hey, anytime, appreciate it. Tell our fake Matt Rule I said hello to. Oh, no, no, we gotta do this. We gotta do fake Matt Rule and fake Mac Rule. Fake Matt Rule, I made up a guy. Him too.

And fake John Fox. We gotta have that conversation soon. All right, next time I come on, I'll talk to fake Matt Rule, how about that?

Hey, Johnny, I gotta call you Johnny. Anytime you wanna come on here, we can chat. Hey, are we still good to go? Hey, are we good to go for that breakfast on Saturday?

You missed last week. As long as we find George Stieford at some point, then we can have some fun. We'll be in touch, all right, appreciate it, I'll talk to you guys soon.

Later, Johnny. You know, it'd be cool if we could find a fake George Stieford as well. Look, I knew a guy who used to imitate Spurrier and Bowden, Steve Spurrier and Bobby Bowden, and was awesome at it. Absolutely awesome at it.

All right. Are you watching music videos? Is that what, it seems like we're very MTV-ish today. No.

I'm not knocking it, I'm just wondering. It feels like Martha Quinn should be. You know who Martha Quinn is, don't you?

No. People my age will remember Martha Quinn as one of the original MTV VJs. Oh, okay, see, for someone of my age, we're like, oh, it's Carson Daly and TRL. That's my age. Yeah. Yeah, you don't have to call me old, it's fine. I was the one that brought it up.

Anyway, so, it's just the music kinda got to me. All right, so we're gonna talk college football at Chip Patterson's Top of the Hour, so we're not that far away from our Wednesday meeting. But on Mondays, we spend almost the entire show talking about, bitching about, can I say that? The Panthers. It's questionable, isn't it?

No, whatever. But that's what we do. And we also complain about, or talk about, Duke, Carolina State, Wake, whatever.

Wake was off this week. We don't do a lot of talking about the national picture in college football, except, you know, later in the week. We'll finally get to it. We're gonna get to it more when the college football playoff selection committee, Boo Corrigan, starts spitting out their rankings in a few weeks. I think, is it the first Tuesday in November? Sounds right. Is our first look, our first glance at the fake rankings?

Always remember, I will provide this public service announcement when we get there, but I'll just give you a sneak peek at it. The rankings that they produce the first Tuesday, don't matter. Don't matter. Don't matter. Don't bitch about them.

I did it again. Don't complain, because they don't count. They simply don't count. Don't read anything into it.

Well, this team is there. They're gonna tear it up and start over the following week. Trust me on this. It just doesn't matter. All right, I'm not gonna get worked up.

About that. But we always make assumptions, and I do this too, about college football. My assumption for weeks has been Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, those three to varying degrees are separate from the rest. And that somebody is fighting for number four.

And that number four isn't going to beat any of the other three, but somebody is going to be number four. Well, Tennessee beat one of them. That was a fun football game to watch. Tennessee has an elite offense. They don't have much of a defense, but they have an elite offense, and I've been saying this all year and in years past, there is no defense good enough to stop an elite offense. You can slow it down, you can mitigate the problems, but elite offenses are gonna score. So I don't care how good your defense is, if you are facing a really good quarterback and great offensive players that are well-coached, they are gonna put a lot of points on the board.

Maybe not 52, but in the 30s. It's very possible that Alabama doesn't have an elite defense. In which case, that's a problem when you're playing a team like Tennessee, which is what we saw. It was 49-49, Alabama was lining up for field goal to put them ahead. Didn't work, Tennessee had 15 seconds, actually ran three plays. Hendon Hooker made a Heisman Trophy statement. Yeah, two plays, they only ran two plays. Made a Heisman Trophy statement, boom. That's what it was, right?

Anyway, it brings this possibility up. Clemson could be 13-0 and not make the playoff, yeah? I mean, I'm not saying it will happen, but it could happen, because at some point, you have to prove that you can beat really good teams, and I believe they did beat a really good team in Wake. I'm not sure what NC State is. In that game, State was at a great defense, not much of a defense, but they were at a great defense. Not much of an offense, which they haven't had all year. Florida State's good, but I wouldn't put them in the upper category. Notre Dame's trash. Clemson's best remaining game is against Notre Dame. So it's very possible that the SEC could have three teams ranked ahead of Clemson, and all three of them could have one loss.

Again, I'm not saying it will happen, I'm just saying it could happen. This is the Adam Gold Show. Sure, we have 30 seconds to tell you the drivers who switched to progressive could save big, but then what? Well, there is a nice piece of stock music playing behind me that a talented composer works really hard on, so let's enjoy it. Wow, almost overshadows the saving big when you switch to progressive part.