Dan Morgan officially hired as new Carolina Panthers GM

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panthers.com. He joins us on the Adam Gold show as Dan Morgan is introduced as the new general manager, president football operations of the outfit. All right, so I know the skepticism out there.

I know the cynicism out there. Hiring from within after the Scott Fitter era did not exactly distinguish itself, but Dan Morgan's history goes further back and a lot deeper than just the association with the team the last two and a half years. So as you wrote at panthers.com a few times today, why Dan Morgan? Why is he the choice?

Well, I think it's a lot of things and I appreciate having me on. I mean, in terms of who's going to save this team, unless they hire me as assistant GM, there's a limit on how much I can do, but no, Dan's in, Dan's in a good spot. And I think the biggest thing to me of why Dan Morgan is this guy is he's more than just a former player. He's more than just a familiar face or a known commodity. I mean, this guy who, you know, was the linebacker, we all remember running around out there, number 55. I mean, I feel old sometimes reminding people of this, but he was Luke Kuechly before Luke Kuechly and you know, his recognition, his instincts, his awareness. He's the guy who called the signals for the super bowl defense.

And, you know, he's that guy. And he's also the guy who went to Seattle to be a scouting intern and pick up guys at the airport, if that's what John Schneider and gang needed and worked his way up, was with successful organizations there, you know, was part of a super bowl winner in Seattle, went to a perennial playoff team in Buffalo, you know, and helped them build and, and comes highly recommended. We'll have more for you about Dan Morgan on panthers.com as the days go by, but there's a lot going on, but I just think more than anything else, Dan is a good, solid football hire.

I don't know what people were necessarily expecting, you know, if you want it revolutionary, I guess you could be upset about it, but it's okay to be evolutionary every now and then. I mean, Dan is, Dan is, here's what we know about Dan. He was really good at football. He's a good evaluator and has been a good evaluator in multiple places and, you know, has the kind of personality that who's not afraid to say no to people. Darren Gantt pro foot on second time, second time in a row, in a row, second time.

I think second time in a row that I've done that, uh, Darren Gantt panthers.com. We can ask the old guy. We're asking the old guy here.

So keeping on Dan Morgan, uh, knowing what you know about him and, uh, and his methods and his interests, uh, what's his first job. First of all, is he going to be the guy who, uh, you know, digs down and hires the football coach or is this solely David Tepper's decision? Well, no, I mean, and as we just pointed out on panthers.com moments ago, the structure stays the same.

The GM and the coach are still both going to report directly to Dave in this process. And, and I think there's still more moves to come within that front office. I think there's still, you know, some, some areas that they want to firm up some areas they want to upgrade that kind of stuff.

So I think you'll see some stuff over the next couple of days, weeks, uh, et cetera. And, you know, they're, they're trying to build on the stuff that's good. I know there's skepticism about running it back off a two and 15 team.

And, you know, there's a certain segment of the population that just wants to burn it all down and fire everybody, including me. Um, and, and I get that everybody was disgusted with the way last season went, but there are things there that Dan has talked about and Dan has identified and other people have too, that are worth keeping around here. And, and really if you just kind of lock it in, yeah, nobody wants to hear about sports science when the team went to and 15, I get that totally totally understand. But even with the roster, I think if you drill down into this thing, this was still a defensive finish fourth in the league and yards, bringing back the rights to Brian Burns, Derek Brown, check Thompson, the entire secondary, which includes, you know, a couple of high-end guys in JC horn and Dante Jackson.

That's a pretty good place to start right there. I mean, the defensively, the personnel here is not a train wreck offensively. Things got sideways last year. And I think in large part, that's because they played, count them seven left guards and eight right guards. And there's not a personnel man in the NFL who is prepared to go eight deep on his preseason depth chart and find starting caliber answers.

They just don't exist. So I think stabilizing that front for Bryce, a lot of that's going to be getting Austin Corbett and Brady Christensen back on the field. Honestly, you get five games out of your two starting guards. This just in not great. Yeah.

None of those from Brady Christiansen, by the way, I got one out of Brady opener before he went down for the year. So I mean, it's tough and that's going to be a big part of it. And a lot of this is going to be dictated to by the coach who comes in here in the next week or so, whenever that happens to be, you know, style's going to dictate some of this. If they want to play a completely different kind of offense, you know, if it's all going to be wide zone, then they're probably going to have to go get alignment or two. But if you want to play with the kind of physical downhill style that we've seen some of those guys succeed with and rolling into the season with Icky Aquano, Brady Christiansen, Bozeman, Corbett, Taylor Moten, not the worst place to start. And you know, they found some guys who they like his depth pieces over the course of this year. Again, when you're playing seven and eight different guards, you find depth. But yeah, I think health is going to go a long way toward fixing that. Obviously, they need more help. They need more playmakers.

The DJ Tariq experiment didn't go so great, but it was a one year deal. So we'll see what's out, out there for him in free agency. But I think they're going to be pretty active.

I would imagine in that, in that area in the next couple months. Darrin Gantt, panthers.com is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show. I'm now one from my last one. There you go. It's all about improvement. Getting one percent better every day. Oh, wait, am I not supposed to say that anymore?

No, you can't. You can say that. OK. How do you get Bryce Young to where he needs to be if there aren't really drastic changes in the offensive personnel? I think you get him to a better place by putting a functional offense around him.

And I just I don't mean this as picking on any particular coach who has been here or sort of remains here. But that thing didn't work. And the whole notion of where we're going to bring together all these people from different backgrounds. It was a noble idea, but it turned into the Tower of Babel.

I mean, people just weren't speaking the same language and it never ever worked. Not when Frank called the plays, not when Thomas Brown did, not when Frank did again, and only sort of at times when Thomas did the tail end of the season. So I just think finding that cohesive, consistent message on offense is going to be a big part of it, honestly. And figuring out what you do well and doing more of that and the stuff you're not good at.

Don't try to do that all the time. It sounds simple and it sounds dumb, and I'm not a very smart person, but I just think that finding a system that suits the people you know you have, which is Bryce Young and some young wide receivers who you think can help you in the future, maybe. And you know, and then a decent offensive line, at least it was decent in 2022 when all the pieces were in place.

So I think you just got to be philosophically consistent with what you want to achieve and then things ought to get better. Because listen, there's nothing, the cheapest thing, and I know fans are upset and everybody says CJ Stroud all year long, but the easiest, dumbest thing to do is say, oh, Bryce Young is terrible. No, he's not. Bryce was in a terrible situation last year.

And if CJ Stroud had been here in this situation, I don't think he would have led the Carolina Panthers to the playoffs. No, I see. That's what. Hello, it is Ryan and I was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite social spin slot games on Chumba casino dot com. I looked over the person sitting next to me and you know what they were doing. They were also playing Chumba casino. Coincidence?

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So sign up now at Chumba casino.com to claim your free welcome bonus at Chumba casino dot com and live the Chumba life. We are such we are such prisoners of box scores and and like what we see. Right.

And right. And look, there are people who have already put CJ Stroud in the class of a top five NFL quarterback. And I must like he's played 19 NFL games.

Actually, I played 19 because he missed a couple. So we have to pump the brakes on all of this. And but that's no fun. You're never going to make it in modern media talking like that. Adam Gold.

Very good point there. And maybe I should I should rethink things. Look, I still think that there is a great future ahead for Bryce Young. I am probably less bullish on the players around him than you are, because I've already said today I would I would take every asset I had and offer it up and see what I could get to build out a deeper and a pool of NFL draft picks for this upcoming year, which includes Brian Burns.

I would also consider maybe Icky Aquana would be better suited to guard at Brady Christensen. I don't think so. I don't think so. And I've seen it. Listen, I remember I'm old enough to remember those 10 games in a row when Icky Aquana didn't give up the sack last year.

That's how old I am. Oh, wait, that was only a year ago. Icky Aquana was not the only left tackle in the NFL to struggle year two and bounce back.

I mean, the British all Ferguson's one of the first games that pop into my mind. I mean, this happens to guys when I say the offense was systemically broken. Offensive lineman never knew from one week to the next what depth Bryce was taking drops at. So, you know, Icky became a pinata for that. Icky did not have a great year.

But to say Icky Aquana was suddenly a terrible football player after appearing to be a pretty good one last year, I just don't buy that. So, you know, I think, you know, interesting because you brought up something that I said the other day. You know, in a way, it was I understand the mindset, behind getting a diverse coaching staff from different areas, different parts of the NFL, and bring in all these different minds. And you've got young, young minds like Thomas Brown, who comes from the Rams, and you've got old heads, like, what, what Jim Caldwell, right? Yeah, you all sorts of great ideas, Frank Reich from a different line of thinking, and you bring everybody together, and you think, man, it's going to be awesome. We're going to be awesome.

We're going to make this great chili. And you end up making something that is indistinguishably bad. And I ultimately, they had to move on from all of it. It's just, I wonder just what, what damage they did to Bryce for a year. And really to some of these, like a Thomas Brown, who is a bright young coach, like, why couldn't I have identified that as something?

You know what? This is a good guy. We should keep him around here. And I think there are a number of good people in different areas of the staff that you might want to keep.

I mean, if they go the young offensive coordinator route, that guy would likely be wise to enjoy the services of Vero and that entire defensive staff. I mean, those guys did good work. So I think a lot of it's going to come down to fit and what the next guy wants to do, obviously, is it does all, but again, the cheapest and easiest and dumbest thing to say is, Oh, it was all terrible. Everybody's got to go because there were, you know, there are a lot of individual parts. I'll never forget Marty Hurney told me a long time ago, and that's a cat who survived 2001 and 2010. He said, you have to be careful evaluating individual parts when the whole thing is busted. And he saw it busted twice. Good.

And they managed to bounce out of it pretty quickly, both times. So I'm not sitting here telling you the Carolina Panthers are going to figure this out instantly or that Dan Morgan's going to work some kind of miracle now that he's GM, we don't even know who the coach is. But, but what I would suggest is that no one in the NFL is five years away from competing for anything.

That's just not how the NFL works. Darren Gantt panthers.com final thing. We know Brian Callahan, Cincinnati Bengals offensive coordinator is about to be hired as the Tennessee Titans head coach. He was supposed to get a second interview, I guess today.

Do we know what the schedule is for interviews coming up this week? Well, I think if you pay attention to all the popular reports out there on the internet, you know, I mean, Dave can Allison's names out there when he bars his names out there. I think the big one everybody's kind of wondering about is, you know, the results of this weekend's games is going to say a lot about who goes where, because if Ben Johnson's available on Monday, there's a couple of people that are going to be wanting to talk to him.

I think the same is probably true of Mike McDonald in Baltimore, who has impressed a lot of people through processes across the league. So it's, there's a lot of balls in the air right now. I think we're in a little bit of a lull because you know, again, there's some names out there, Canales, Raheem Morris, who are on the schedule, perhaps later this week, you know, after Canales or after Callahan decides not to come and join us here.

I was going to buy him lunch. Yeah, maybe it's me. I don't know.

But no, I think it's going to shake out early next week because based on who's available to talk to people, if it's been Johnson and he remains the bell of the ball, as everybody expects him to, you would think a lot of people would be ready to move quickly. If he's their guy, what's on the menu at the thirsty beaver. I'm just, I'm curious, Miller highlight is on the menu at the thirsty beaver, practically every day, sir. And I, and I know you're no stranger to that.

No, absolutely. Uh, one of my favorite spots. You're one of my favorite people, Darren Gantt panthers.com at Darren Gantt with two teams for extra talent on Twitter, man. Thank you so much. I'll talk to you soon. Happy to do it. We'll talk to y'all later. You never know what might be coming up in Panthers land, but keep it locked on panthers.com for all the latest.

Thank you very much. So we will. Hello, it is Ryan and we could all use an extra bright spot in our day.

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