Tomorrow night, Panthers, Falcons, at what appears to be a rainy and windswept Bank of America stadium, so it will be a friends and family only crowd, I'm sure. Travis Hancock from WFNZ in Charlotte. Oh God.
Oh God, help me, help me please. So over under the 33,000 in the building. Probably yeah, well now we got 25 to 30 mile per hour winds. It's going to rain all day.
I probably go under based off of circumstance. Do you know the guy I'm worried about the most is our old friend, Al Michaels in the booth. He's not doing well during these broadcasts. He's got the Texans last week.
He's got this one. He's got Jackson going a couple of weeks. This guy is this guy's been one of the greatest ever. If Al Michaels retires mid broadcast at some point in this game, I'm not, I'm not shocked by that.
I'm not shocked at all. Like he's been, he's been paying attention to the Thursday night schedule, right? Yeah, yeah. This is this. Nobody should be surprised that these games can be dogs because they have like everybody's got to be in it at once. So in it, they have Al gets the Panthers.
He gets an NFC South battle. Yes. Tropical depression. Beautiful. It is absolutely beautiful.
All right. I said that you would be modeling the Panthers black uniforms. It is the most positive thing we can talk about right now with regards to the Panthers. Am I, I'm not the only one who thinks these are great looking, right?
Oh, they're incredible. And it's one of the things that fans have been asking about for a long time. And now David Tepper is delivered on that stuff. You know, a lot of the stuff that fans have asked for, he's delivered on. The only problem is I said that this morning on our show here is the uniforms are great.
Black helmets are great. Unfortunately, the team playing in that might not give us a lot to root for in this context. And so a little frustrated because we saw some progress. They, they beat the bucks and they looked like they were turning the corner, a great, ridiculously entertaining game, at least against Atlanta, which, you know, entertain us. There was something so it was a ridiculous ending, but it was fun. And then we had the last week and maybe the worst app, uh, that we've ever seen from the Panthers.
And trust me, there's been some bad hats before. Yeah. We couldn't find one that was worse than what we saw on Sunday.
No, it was entirely one sided. And I don't even think Cincinnati is that good, but their offense showed up and that's all that needed to show up. Really? I, I'm, I want to talk about PJ Walker here in a second, but, uh, I don't really understand why this all fell on the feet of PJ Walker for people. There was people mad that they named Walker the quarterback as though the same exact thing couldn't have happened to Baker Mayfield.
Like we've watched Baker Mayfield for as many games as he played. Did he ever play as well as PJ Walker played for two games? And he played his best when the Bengals caught off the dogs in the second half. They weren't even, Joe Burrow had his baseball hat on in his a dude shoes off in the second half.
He wasn't doing anything. The defense was like, yeah, go ahead and complete some passes. So yeah, Baker was good when it was like a walk through basically. Yeah. Uh, and also, you know, if they believe that Baker, uh, Baker's not starting tomorrow, he's healthy and they're like, well, yeah, it may have to do with incentives in his contract based off the draft collateral, but you know, just quarterback wise, yeah, he's not starting tomorrow night. So, uh, what, uh, what, uh, what an, uh, unending hell this is starting to get to Travis Hancock W F N Z in Charlotte is joining us at T bone W F N Z.
All right. There are some good things I believe worth discussing with regards to the Panthers. And I think the most encouraging has been the continued development of IKEA Kuanu. If pro football focus is any judge at all, he has been a very highly rated offensive lineman over the last several weeks. So if we're looking at bright, you know, silver linings to this season, the fact that it Kuanu who was just awful, the first handful of weeks looks like he has becoming closer to the player that they drafted sixth overall.
Yeah. He had to take on miles Garrett week one, who might be the best in the game at what he does, what he's asked to do. So, you know, I said at the time, you know, let him go handle miles Garrett week one.
That's good. In the long run, not going to pay as many guys ever as good as that help grow from that. And he has the offensive line out of his dog from, uh, absolute disaster in recent years. On the other side is a stalwart Bradley Boseman at center, although it wasn't great the other day because they got behind, so they couldn't run the ball like they did the previous two games. But, you know, the offensive line has gone from that massive question icky solidified the left side, uh, Christensen on the right side, uh, West side next to him, Corbett and Moten on the other side. So what was a major question is now a major strength.
And it's really, it's amazing as football, as you know, how quickly your weakness can become your strength or your strength, your weakness for the Panthers. Now, as they try to figure out the quarterback spot and other receivers and other tight ends and other running backs and oh my God, there's a lot to figure out. The offensive line up front is where it's going to start with and it's doing a very good job right now. Yeah, that's, that's the first step. And what they need to do is continue to add to it over the course, but they don't have to necessarily rebuild it, which is really what they had been trying to do for the last couple of years, sort of on the fly. Uh, but it was good that they really did address it this time. And maybe again, they just have to kind of, you know, add here and there to it, supplement it over the next few years.
It looks like JC Horn is real. That's, that's good. He needs, they need help of the other corners aren't necessarily, they need Jeremy chin back.
Uh, but there are some positive things going forward. Let me ask you about the head coach. I like Steve Wilkes. I think that the Panthers should hire him, not as the interim, but hire him as the head coach.
I've been using Rod Brenda Moore as an example. Sometimes it just means more to, uh, to be a head coach in a certain spot than it does to be a head coach. I think it would mean more to Steve Wilkes.
Is there any push at all for Steve down there for Steve to be the guy? Certainly he's a Charlotte guy. So there's a lot of love for Steve Wilkes, whether he's the head coach, assistant coach, app state guy, Charlotte guy was here during the, you know, the, the really good years of the last decade that they had. So there's a lot of love for Steve Wilkes from the fans, from the media, I think from the players, Shaq Thompson played for him.
So you'll hear a lot of praise from him. That's what was so disheartening and really quite frankly, embarrassing about the effort. The other day was they had really rallied around him so far against Tampa against Atlanta. They were fighting for him. And the other day it was like we went backwards to a math rule type effort where they just, they just got punched in the mouth right away.
It never fought back. I do think he deserves a fair chance. Absolutely. They have to put in the effort for him that they did in the previous two games of efforts like that against Cincinnati happened again, where he, how often do you see a interim coach have to make changes on a staff after a game? Normally that's not a thing new granted. He's had a, there's a lot of time for him to do it. So it's not like a three week thing, but that effort was so bad. The DB coach is gone. Paul Pascelloni, who's like a hundred, uh, the former Syracuse coach, the line coach, he's now gone, but that just shows you though, that, you know, he doesn't have a lot of time to waste to try to prove himself in this particular opportunity. So I think he does, but they can't put efforts like that out there that are some of the worst ever, especially the first half. I think he would be good, but they really have to play a lot better for him to get what I think should be a fair shot. Yeah.
Yes. They, they need to be competent, but I don't anticipate like what happened against Cincinnati, who's got a very capable explosive offense. And I, my opinion is that the Panthers defense isn't nearly as good as we want it to be. Part of that is, you know, they have some players out with injury. Part of that is they're really, they don't really have difference makers in the middle of the defense. They have some good defensive lineman, but they're thin. They, you know, no, they don't have that star linebacker.
Now you can't find it quickly anywhere, but they don't, they don't have that. Jack Thompson is good. I don't think he's great. I think that Thompson's a good other linebacker with your great linebacker. They're missing that guy in the middle to really bridge all those secondary pieces that you talked about. Derek Brown has been a monster at front, but they don't, they don't have another edge. They need another edge rusher and they do that. They need a, a young dynamic linebacker. And I think that defense will take off a little more.
Yeah. That means like I said, this team's defense, first of all, Cincinnati has explosive talent and can do that to not maybe anybody, but a lot of teams. So I wasn't that surprised that Cincinnati got up early and then it just went downhill. Then it was this, it was the proverbial snowball rolling downhill real quick on our countdown to kickoff pregame show. I was honest for this week and this is probably why I'm only on the audit stuff and not the panther stuff.
They keep me away from it. I said on the pregame show about 30 minutes before I said, look, girl may get the Panthers and maybe Higgins and boy, I don't know. It's not going to be Joe Nixon. He's washed up 3.3 yards per carry. I said the playwrights, you're the lead is Joe Nixon.
When I was driving home, he had about two touchdowns already. So that was on me. That's my fault. That's on me. All right. How are the Hornets doing? Well, good to talk to you. Good to talk to you. Get out of it.
We'll be seeing you. The Hornets are three and eight and, uh, well, Melo ball has not played yet. I know quite, we don't know why because he's about seven or eight days outside the window that was projected for his return. We don't know what's going on there with him. He hasn't played yet. He's out against that. He gets Portland, uh, in some of the most shocking news, maybe that your airways in Raleigh, uh, Gordon Hayward is out right now. No way. He's got a shoulder.
He's day to day, but that shoulder that day to day status was a week ago and we have not seen him yet since then. So, uh, don't worry about us. Travis Hancock, you're the best. My man, uh, at T bone W F N Z in Charlotte.
Thank you very much. We'll talk again soon. My man. Hey, the Charlotte checkers are minor league hockey team. A big game. It gets Providence on Friday.
That's sort of the buzz in the air right now. Very nice. Are you going? Uh, no, but I may have to, depending what happens tomorrow night. All right. You've, uh, go, uh, go get a hot dog on us. You gotta appreciate it.
Thanks brother. All right. When we come at it, there's a lot there. When we come back opportunity with the weenie whistle right there. Yeah. You know what? It's been sitting in front of me. I should, there you go.
Whisper: small.en / 2022-11-09 18:05:32 / 2022-11-09 18:08:38 / 3
