Should the Panthers be keeping an eye on Bill Belichick as their next coach?

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No purchase necessary. I am Adam Gold, and it occurs to me that Chris Canty is unaware. Chris Canty of Unsportsmelike on ESPN Radio in the mornings. He is unaware that the football people in the building are responsible for the roster on the field. So, maybe we get different football people in the building.

Maybe that's just me. Anyway, I hope everybody's having a good day. I'm Adam Gold.

Graham is here for Victoria who is out for the balance of the week. Sure. Yeah, whatever. Whatever you said. Whatever you said.

Doesn't matter. Graham, we need you to do Gold's show. Alright. Perfect. Yeah, Scott Fitterer is the guy who is the football person in the building. How's that working out? Not great.

Yeah, he's the guy responsible for the roster. Here's a question I want to know the answer to. There's a lot of questions that I really want to know the answer to. We had a press conference yesterday, and of course, no questions were actually answered at the press conference. It was a Q and A without the A.

It was just a lot of Q and no A. My question is, whose decision was it to trade from 9 to 1? Whose decision was it to trade from the fourth round into the third round to give up a third round pick next year to take Matt Corral, who's not on anybody's roster? And who, by the way, albeit a very small one, is actually part of the Panthers' dead cap charge for next year. It sort of surprised me with the Carolina Panthers organization that just wrote out all those scenarios like you just said, and then took darts, and upstairs were just like, alright, let's just throw here and see what we land on and try to make it work. Right, but my question is, who was responsible for that decision? Was that Scott Fitterer's decision to trade up to get Matt Corral, who you don't have anymore, after one injured year?

Whose decision was it to trade from 9 to 1? Was that the organization as a whole thinking, man, if we could just get our hands on Bryce Young, who, I will insist until proven otherwise, is still going to be an outstanding quarterback. I actually think he could still end up being better than CJ Stroud. All I'm saying is, we are judging Bryce completely unfairly.

It's as though you took a boxer, took his strong arm, duct taped it behind his back, and now you're wondering, why does he keep getting punched in the face? We might have drafted the wrong boxer. Yeah, Bryce Young has had zero chance to succeed. He will make mistakes, even if he has a great chance to succeed, because that's what happens to first year NFL quarterbacks.

But now, the same mistakes he would normally make are exacerbated by the fact that he has zero chance to be successful. None. Anything that they get, anything positive they see from Bryce Young is gravy. But, anyway, I got a lot of things to say. Are you ready to go? Let's do it. And it's going to seem like a lot of these things we've talked about before, but we have, and we have to keep talking about them, because nothing is getting fixed. But we did have a bombshell of sorts in today's Boston Globe. Ben Volin, national NFL writer, who I believe used to cover the Florida Gators, maybe even the Miami Dolphins, but is a national NFL writer and will join us later on in the program.

Floated the idea that if you are a Panthers fan wondering who your next coach might be, keep an eye on Bill Belichick. Excuse me. I need a moment.

First, Ben owes me a new white v-neck t-shirt. That's ruined. Coffee all over it now. Come on. I don't know if you just ripped it up in frustration or something. The anger came over you.

No, no, no. I'm not angry about it. And nobody should be angry about it. I don't understand why people are slamming this as a terrible idea.

Because it can be spun where this is, are you serious? Let's do this. Now, I wouldn't give up an asset to do it. And if I were Bill Belichick and I knew about what the Panthers potential draft hall might look like, I wouldn't take a job that caused me to give up anything in this or the next or even the third draft. To get me to be the head coach. But to dismiss this out of hand as you're crazy, we're talking about the best coach in the history of the National Football League. So get off your high horse. I'm not saying that there aren't other good options.

I don't know any. But if Bill Belichick is available and you don't have to do anything silly, like all of the other silly things you have done with draft picks or future assets. I do it.

I do it. Best coaching ever. Worst case scenario, if you bring in Bill Belichick, you continue to suck, but you do so with credibility. Okay, that's the that's the seal.

That's the that's the basement right there. You're going to still be bad, but you'll do so without being a clown about it. You'll certainly never trade up in the draft again. Because that's not what Bill Belichick ever does. He never trades up. He always trades back. He gets more assets.

So that'll be good. And it occurred to me that maybe this is David Tepper's way of saying, you think I do bad press conferences? Wait till you see this guy. Oh, well, what do you see the next guy? See, there's a comedy part of this, too.

All right. We will talk with Ben Boland coming up at 215 today. The drawback and the only drawback to Belichick potentially being the head coach is that I cannot imagine that he would come to Charlotte and be the head coach of the Panthers. Unless he is given full control of player personnel. And therein lies the bigger problem with Bill Belichick is that at least over the last several years, that has not been an area of strength. Also, hiring defensive coaches as offensive coordinators also may be not his best decisions, but he is a brilliant coach.

Brilliant. And with the right staff, I have no problem with him hiring whoever he wants. I really think the biggest sticking point is simply letting somebody else get the players. This is not member of the Bill Parcells thing.

They want you to they want you to cook the meal, but they don't want you to buy the groceries. Like it ain't your strength. It wasn't Parcells strength either. That doesn't mean the head coach doesn't have input.

All head coaches will have some input, but it's somebody else's job to do that if they can convince Bill Belichick to work in that way. That this is a no brainer. A no brainer. But we'll get more on that later on. Here's a question for Panthers fans. How far away are the Panthers from being good?

I mentioned this yesterday. This is not about winning the division. The division will likely be one with an eight and nine record this year. You might win it outright at eight, nine, like no tiebreaker needed. I wouldn't be completely stunned if seven and ten got it done.

That's pathetic. So it isn't about winning this division. It's about can you advance in the playoffs? So how far are the Panthers from being that team? Let's just say they nail this draft. Remember, they don't have a first round pick currently. Let's say they get three starters and guys who contribute either to depth or special teams out of this draft hall.

You can certainly do that. Teams find starters in the fourth round often. You should find somebody who can start for you in the second round. And then, I mean, get lucky. Their third round pick is going to be early.

Let me just confirm. Do we know who they are with their draft hall? Yeah, I mean, relatively early. They're the 34th overall pick right now. Gosh, is somebody worse than them? I guess Arizona.

Actually, I don't know. The 66th pick. So that's a bad, that's like the first pick or second, whatever it is, second pick in the third round. First pick.

Who cares? Early. And then pick number 102. So you're picking early in every round. There's no reason you can't get three starters if you do your job well. And you get lucky. You have to get lucky at a couple of depth pieces. They have six draft picks.

A two, a three, a four, a five, a five, a six. No seventh round pick. So they can get lucky. They can do it right.

I mean, I don't have any faith that Scott Fitterer will do that, but somebody else could do that. So you nail this and then you have to nail the next one, too. You have to. And then you probably need to maybe get one more good draft in.

Here's the problem. They do have almost 40 million dollars worth of cap space. Oh, over. How did the cap space work for him this year? Let's not talk about that. So they have about 40 million dollars in cap space. Are they signing Brian Burns? Because if they sign Brian Burns, there's a good chunk of that cap space eaten up. At least half of it.

Maybe you can make that number a little bit lower by doing something silly with the contract. But honestly, they need so much more than signing Brian Burns to a long term contract. I hate to be the wet blanket, but man, if I were the Panthers, I would sell everything. Fire. So everything. All of my assets are going. All of them.

This is a long term project. I think it's a complete teardown. Every asset I had, I would consider moving. That means Derek Brown. That means J.C. Horn. That means Bryce Young. All of it.

All of it. It's not about whether or not Bryce is good or the other guys are good. I would have traded Brian Burns last year.

I said it. If you're going to trade Christian McCaffrey and not consider trading Brian Burns, you're that that is organizational malpractice. Anyway, I think they're minimum three years away from being good. That isn't even like Super Bowl good.

That means playoffs and advance. I think it's three years at a minimum by the time you're good. Now you're going to have to pay your quarterback if your quarterback is still Bryce Young. I'm all about Bryce Young. Everybody who has listened to this show knows I am 100 percent behind Bryce Young.

But they have just completely messed this roster up to the point where they might have to get rid of a lot. Just to honestly, just to build it the right way. All right. Well, Scott Fowler from the Charlotte Observer and I noted author of many Panthers books.

Plus, he has a new one coming out, not on the Panthers, just in general. He's going to join us because David Tepper wouldn't let him ask a question yesterday. He's going to join us in just a just a few minutes. All right. I didn't hit this yesterday, but there is a rumor that former Panthers star Greg Olsen would jump at the chance to be Carolina's head coach.

I didn't I didn't we didn't really talk about mentioned it, but I didn't get into it. Jeff Saturday from ESPN is on board. Greg Olsen being interested. I think it's fantastic. I'd like I'd like all players to get back in. I think the biggest thing is being able to go in, get your own staff, set your own culture. Right.

Like all of those things. So the way that you would go about it, him, him looking at that at after the end of the season, I think makes a ton of sense. And if it's something that he's passionate about and wants to go get, you know, the work is there, man. And, you know, the easy part for players is the connection in the locker room. You're going to connect. You understand what it took to get you to be, you know, a potential Hall of Famer for Greg Olsen or, you know, however, you look at his playing career, all of those things.

It's the it's the being able to build a staff is going to be the most important for him. But yeah, man, look, I'm for all play. I'm for AP. I'm for all all the former players doing it. Of course, he would be. Jeff said Jeff Saturday at least won his debut last year, right? And they beat the Raiders, I believe, in his coaching debut. Completely embarrassing. Josh McDaniel's, which I'm all for that.

But now it didn't go well. Jeff Saturday is back at ESPN. And part of me thinks that Greg Olsen is using this a little bit as a play with Fox. Because theoretically, Tom Brady's about to take his seat.

And which would be a huge mistake for Fox. I have no idea if Brady is going to be good or not. But here's what I don't think Brady will be not nearly as good as Greg Olsen. Olsen is great as an analyst. Great. He's fun. He's insightful.

He's honest. He's natural. Has a great sense of fashion. I think it's sharp. His suits look great. He doesn't want to, you know, tie the tie, but I wouldn't either.

If I could get away with it. He doesn't comb his hair. I don't think.

Again, not something I know about. All right, college football playoff. Straight Chalk.

Last night, Straight Chalk. Georgia, Michigan, Washington, Florida State. One, two, three, four, in that order.

NC State's Director of Athletics, Boo Corrigan, is the committee chairman. How did you ever arrive at those four? You know, as we have all my three years on the committee and, you know, seven years before that, much debate, much evaluation, looking at statistical piece of it, looking at the games, looking at everything that we can to come up with what we believe are the right rankings. And we feel good about number one, number two, number three, number four. Undefeated, undefeated, undefeated, undefeated. It ain't hard. Yeah, speaks for itself.

Just not hard. Oregon is fifth, Ohio State sixth, Texas seventh, Alabama eighth. Those are the one loss teams.

That is it. Those are the only other teams that have a chance. But the reality of Conference Championship Weekend, which starts Friday, is that it rarely goes completely according to plan. Somebody is going to spit the bit.

Boo Corrigan. I'm excited about it, you know, because, you know, college football always delivers. Right? Games are decided on the field. They're not decided on, you know, phone calls and those things. It's going to be decided on the field and I'm excited for all 13 of us to be together to be able to watch the games, to be able to talk about each game as they're ending and make sure that we're getting everyone's opinion on where we are at that point in time. And then ultimately, you know, at noon on Sunday, be able to make some decisions.

Yeah. Look, if those four teams all win, those four teams will be the playoff. There's just no way on earth that if you just simply went Conference Champion, Conference Champion, Conference Champion, Conference Champion, there's no way somebody is getting ahead of any of those teams. Could Alabama beat Georgia?

Yep, they could. Oh, what if Alabama beats Georgia? Then Alabama and Georgia will both go, right? No, not if the other teams all win.

There's just no way that's going to happen. But I do understand people getting nervous about it. So if you are a Florida State fan, yeah, I think you should be more nervous about losing. That game against Louisville is loseable. And I would say the same thing to Georgia about Alabama and Washington to Oregon for real. You know, Oregon's nearly a 10 point favorite.

Whoa. I do not believe Michigan is going to lose to Iowa. Unless Michigan can't find the stadium. Because honestly, Michigan might be able to show up.

Rather not show up and still outscore the Hawkeyes. Well, it's like you said, I was allergic to scoring. They are terrified of it. Absolutely terrified of it. 18 plus terms and conditions apply. See website for details.