Super Bowl LVlll and the Carolina Panthers

Chris Lee, WRAL TV 5 anchor reporter, documentary maker, is joining us now on the Adam Gold show. We'll talk a little bit about the Super Bowl as well, but I want to tell people if you're living and listening locally that there's a screening tonight, what, five o'clock in Chapel Hill?

Ghosts in the stadium? And you're going to be doing a, you're on a panel? You're like a major dude. Thank you very much for giving us some time, man. No, no problem. Thank you for the invite. Always a pleasure to talk with you. You're one of my favorite people that I've met since I've been here, so I appreciate the time to be here. I'm serious.

Well, because it's all about, it's all about fun. Let me, real quick, because I didn't even mention the many podcasts you do, including Co-Conspirator, Panthers Playbook Podcast, along with Dennis Cox, and occasionally when you're not available, Tim Donnelly fills in. So your thoughts on where we are, you know, Dave Canales, Dan Morgan, you know, still trying to figure everything out. Is Jiro Evero is going to stick around? That's, you know, a week into the Dave Canales era or whatever it is.

Your thoughts on this? I think that, you know, that was huge for Evero to stick around. That was really big for Canales because basically that side of the ball, as long as contracts are taken care of, you know, pretty much should be mostly the same. And even though the defense was the best part of the Panthers team last year, they were a really injured group last year. So you're hoping that in 2024, that maybe there's less injuries, which means hopefully more depth. You have some guys like Sam Franklin, if he sticks around, he was able to get a lot of really good reps last year, starting safety. So if somebody does go down, you know that, you know, things are in hand. But I think whether Bill is right or with Canales, the Panthers should take another step up anyway this year.

I mean, it was a, it was a bad roster. You have another off season and try to get some things right to try to shore up some things. And another year of Bryce young developing, I'm sure he learned a lot about himself about the NFL and how to handle certain situations.

I felt like along with some of maybe the mistakes he was making later in the season, he also learned how to throw the ball away later in the season in ways that he wasn't doing it earlier in the season. So I think naturally there's going to be a step up, but how much of a step up? I don't know. Cause if the Panthers triple their win total, it's still only six wins. We'll see kind of like how much they actually take a step up from this year. It'd be interesting if they triple their win total and get to six, they might name a street for, for Dave Canales.

Maybe they can rename Stonewall Jackson. It's just me editorializing. Let me ask you about the doc and the panel give us an idea of, of, of what it's about tonight and what you plan, what the message is you plan on getting across.

Absolutely. So, you know, back in October, myself and WRL, we released a documentary called ghosts in the stadium with the timing of the release in October. A lot of people thought it was about haunted stadiums.

That's why it is. But it's so basically what so basically the student and ABJ chapter at UNC, the Carolina association of black journalists, they asked me to come do a screening you know, as a part of their black history month celebrations. And so we're going to show the documentary. It's only 26 minutes and have a discussion in the panel afterwards, myself and Kristen Segrace, who is the documentary reporter for WRL and talk about, you know, some of the things that we learned in the making of this talk about, you know, kind of how the history of the stadiums and the racial history that they're still kind of impacts us today in different ways.

So that's pretty much probably a lot of things we're going to get across. I'm expecting, I've been told that a lot of students have signed up. So I'm excited to have some students there. Hopefully a lot of members of the community, if they have time, down in Chapel Hill will stop by.

It's in the Hussman school in the Carroll building. So if you're there, starts at five o'clock, we'd love to have you and your engagement and talking about things and also ways that we can move forward as members of this community together. Chris Lee, at Chris Lee TV on Twitter here, WRAL TV 5 anchor, podcast host, documentary maker. We need both sides of the business card. And that's cool.

We try to make ourselves as valuable as humanly possible. All right, let me ask you about the Super Bowl. Your thoughts on who and why? Like I texted you earlier, I get it wrong every single year. I don't know why. I probably was the worst person to ask about the Super Bowl because times where I was like, nah, Brady's not winning it, he won. I was like, nah, Brady's gonna win this. That's when he didn't win.

Right. You know, same thing with the Panthers. You know, I was going from the Panthers, they didn't win and, you know, in 2015 season.

And then, you know, last year, I guess I overthought it. It was like, you know, the Chiefs, of course. And I'm sorry, the Eagles are going to beat the Chiefs this time. And then of course, the Chiefs won. So this year I'm thinking, Chiefs, of course, are going to win.

But the tough part is on paper. I think if you just put it in this position by position, especially on offense, the 49ers have the better team, but they've pretty much for the last five years come up short, even with as good of a roster as they have and as good of a coach as they have. And the last time they made it to the Super Bowl, they lost to the Chiefs. So I still think that something is telling me at the end of the day, Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid are just going to figure it out and have a way to pull it out and continue this dynasty. But I've been wrong every single year before. So we'll see what happens. Here's the thing, because we talked about this before. Now, Patrick Mahomes is obviously the best player in the game. And we don't even have to explain that to people. Yeah. The next two, and I'm talking about offense here, and the Chiefs have a great defense and the 49ers have, they had a great defense.

I don't think it's great anymore, but I don't think it's bad. I don't think they're going to lose this game because their defense was bad. But on the offensive side of the ledger here for both teams, Mahomes is the best player. And then it's probably either McCaffrey or Kelsey as the next best player. I'm not sure the 49ers don't have the next four best players in Deebo Samuel, George Kittle, Brandon Aiyuk, Brock Purdy.

So the, and then Williams, you know, add him to Brandon Aiyuk. Honestly, that he might be the second best player, Trent Williams. Yeah.

Yeah. So I was just thinking about skill position, but you're right. That's how good Trent Williams is. He is maybe still the best offensive lineman in the entire sport.

And he wants to win a Super Bowl badly. So they, but they are, cause you pointed out, they, they have one of the best offenses ever, not just this year. It's the number one ranked offense this year, but DVOA says it's like, it's historically a top 10 offense since they've been keeping data. That's how good they are.

They, at least they can be. And we're all rooting for McCaffrey, right? Yeah. I think there's, I think there's this old lover type of thing where you just knew you weren't good enough to keep her. And she's moved on to another guy who's so much better and you can't hate the guy because you've admired him from afar, from afar before. And even though you hate that you lost her, it's kind of like, I still want you to win. So there's definitely some of that. And of course you add in Steve Wilkes and a little bit of Sam Darnold in that mix.

And it's like, man, like the heartstrings pull. And I think that's personally why I was like, nah, the Chiefs are going to win. Cause every time I pick with my heart, the other thing happens because my heart is telling me San Francisco because of CMC, because of Sam Darnold, because of Steve Wolf. But it's, it's almost hard to deny what Patrick Mahomes has been able to do. And you could argue, and then people have already argued this, that this is probably the worst team that he's been surrounded with on offense that he's had since he's become a starting quarterback in the NFL. And he's still going out there and making magic. And he's made this team that looked like, man, are they going to make the playoffs some points during the regular season, right?

Made them look like the best team in the playoffs the last few weeks. So it's, you know, that's one of those things. And I think I'm enjoying the fact that, and I don't know, there's a lot of people who were kind of upset with the whole dynasty and they're upset with Taylor Swift thing. I don't mind any of that. I love the fact that we can, we can talk about greatness and there's these periods. And when we look back on the 20 twenties, when it's the 2030s and 20 forties, we can say we were watching greatness and Patrick Mahomes and the chiefs and their dynasty during this time.

So I'm excited to see kind of what happens in that tug and pull with everything. But I just, I'm excited for just such a good football game with two historically great teams and historically great people, players on each side. I mean, how many, how many super bowls I've had this many potential hall of fame. And we're going to hear, who's going to be in the hall of fame, you know, tonight, hopefully Tori, Tori Holt will make it cause he should have been in it. But like, think about all the people that we've named before a lot of those guys, most of those guys are probably going to be hall of famous and that it feels rare.

I haven't looked that up, but that feels rare to me. Mahomes, Kelsey, for sure. We're not even talking about the defensive side of the ball. Chris Jones. Yes. Oh yes. Oh yes. There's a lot of hall of famers on the field and Andy Reed.

And maybe if Kyle Shanahan can stack some, some hardware, maybe Kyle Shanahan too, but definitely Andy Reed is going into the hall of fame. Chris Lee, I appreciate your time. Have fun tonight.

Five o'clock on the campus of North Carolina for the panel in front of Ghost in the Stadium. Appreciate your time as always, my friend. I'll talk to you soon. Absolutely, man. Hope you have a great day. You too.