Where Did The Carolina Running Backs Get Drafted?
Where did the Carolina Panthers running backs, specifically Johnathan Stewart and DeAngelo Williams, get drafted in the fantasy football drafts that went down in the past few weeks? Well, according to the stats at CBSSports.com, which runs its own huge fantasy football online league kit, Stewart was, on average, picked ahead of Williams. Though his lead was not very much. Because the two backs are slated to split time and carries in the backfield, there’s a sense that neither will produce the kind of stats needed for a No. 1 fantasy draft.
According to the stats at CBS Sports, Stewart was picked on average at about No. 76 overall and No. 28 among running backs. Williams was picked, on average, at about the No. 99 position overall and the No. 33 position among running backs. Does this mean that the Panthers will have a bad running game this season? Not at all. In fact, if these guys could really predict fantasy football, they certainly wouldn’t be working the sports media, they’d be winning big in Vegas. We like the Panthers’ odds.
To get Carolina Panthers tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Where Did Steve Smith Get Fantasy Drafted?
Yesterday we did a similar blog about quarterback Jake Delhomme, so we figured that today we’d keep wit the trend and look into where the No. 1 receiver on the Panthers ended up getting drafted in most fantasy drafts. According to the CBSsports.com averages, Steve Smith was taken, on average, about 39th overall, with a high coming in at 23, and a low at 59. This puts Steve Smith at about the tenth wide receiver taken overall, which is not a bad place to be. Other receivers around him include Torry Holt, Chad Johnson, Plaxico Burress and Wes Welker.
Tenth on the receiver depth chart isn’t bad at all. In fact, for a lot of fantasy football teams, Smith will be a No. 1 receiver. He loses ground because of the time he will miss because of his suspension, and also because Jake Delhomme is an injury concern. People want to draft a receiver who has a quarterback that’s stable, and unfortunately they look at the Panthers and, with the injury to Delhomme last season, they see a concern. Our prediction: Steve Smith and Jake Delhomme catch fire midway through they year and really put up some great numbers. Might want to trade for them a couple of weeks into the season.
To get Carolina Panthers tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Panthers Add Parker to Preseason Personnel
If you’ve been following the preseason storylines, you probably know that the Panthers are without a few receivers because of injury and suspension. Steve Smith is going to miss the season opener and the second game because the team suspended him for getting into a fight with Ken Lucas earlier in the year. Also, Jason Carter is going to miss the whole season with an injury to his knee. Ryne Robinson and D.J. Hackett will more than likely miss the season opener with knee and toe injuries, respectively.
So the Panthers have Muhsin Muhammad, Dwayne Jarrett, Dominique Thompson and Travis Taylor as their only wideouts with a chance of playing on day one. The Panthers added Sammie Parker yesterday to help boost the receiver corps. Sammie has played four seasons in the NFL for the Kansas City Chiefs, though he was recently cut from the Denver Broncos in the preseason. In 2006 Parker played in 16 games for the Chiefs, caught 41 balls for 561 yards. He’s not going to be much of a fantasy player– unless he starts returning punts and kickoffs, too—but he is very, very fast, and should help to spread the defense and give Jake Delhomme another down field target on deep pass plays.
To get Carolina Panthers tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Jake Delhomme: Where Did He Get Fantasy Drafted?
If you are one of the billions (well, maybe hundreds of thousands) of fantasy football managers in the world, you probably had your fantasy football draft recently. Did you select Carolina Panthers quarterback Jake Delhomme? If you did, chances are you picked him as your No. 2 quarterback, or so says the CBSSports.com fantasy football draft tracker.
According to the numbers, Jake was, on average, taken in the 110 range overall. Among quarterbacks, he was in the top 20, but usually not in the top 10. Other quarterbacks around his ranger were players like Phillip Rivers, Matt Schaub, Aaron Rogers, David Garrard and Eli Manning.
But for a player who did so well when he was healthy last season, why is Jake Delhomme slipping so far in the drafts? There’s the injury concern. Although Jake has looked fine in the preseason, and most reports say he’s good to go, some people are weary that he’ll miss time if he re-injures his elbow. Also, his main target, Steve Smith, will be missing the first two games of the regular season after being punished for getting into a fight with Ken Lucas during Panthers training camp.
To get Carolina Panthers tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Carolina Routs Washington in Exhibition Game
The Carolina Panthers beat up on the Washington Redskins over the weekend, winning their exhibition game 47-3. Although exhibition games are hardly an indication of how well things will go in the regular season, Panthers fans are certainly pumped about the performance. If you can gleam anything from the ruckus, perhaps the best thing is that the defensive line did particularly well.
Unlike last season, the D-line was superb, dominating the Redskins’ offensive line and constantly putting pressure in the backfield of Washington. Again, you have to check your excitement a little because it was an exhibition game, after all. However, according to the HearaldOnline.com article about the game, Damione Lewis, a Panthers defensive tackle, had this to day:
“If we go out and play like this every week, it’s going to be hard to beat us…. Especially up front, because how we go up front is how we go as a defense. So we just really need to be able to put this in week in and week out.”
To get Carolina Panthers tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Panthers Fantasy Predictions at CBSSports.com
The Panthers have a number of players fantasy football players ought to consider drafting for the upcoming season. If your fantasy draft has not yet happened, you might want to take a look at this article by Dave Richard for CBS Sports. He discusses one of the main dilemmas for fantasy drafters who would like to have a Carolina Panther on their team. Steve Smith will miss the first two games, and Jake Delhomme might get injured, but one of the main question marks for Panthers fans is who will get the most carries as the running back. As you might know, the Panthers drafted RB Jonathan Stewart a few months ago, and they already have DeAngelo Williams as the go-to back. But will they split time? According to Richard’s article, Williams had this to say:
“They haven’t told me anything about my role, but I’m prepared whether I’m the first guy or the second guy. The point is, (Stewart and I) are both going to be in there, so having an opportunity to play is something I like.”
To get Carolina Panthers tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Thomas Davis: A Panther Ready to Pounce
Thomas Davis was a first round pick for the Carolina Panthers back in 2005, but as yet he’s not been able to live up to the high expectations that were set out before him. It hasn’t been his fault, though. He played safety in college, but was drafted to play linebacker in the NFL, and the transition, plus some other moves, have been difficult to handle. Now, though, he’s been put in the weak side linebacker slot. Everyone who has seen him play this position has been thoroughly impressed, and Thomas himself seems comfortable there too. Could be a good year for this guy. According to the Charlotte Observer, Thomas had this to say about his new position:
“You have that freedom of really letting go when you really know what you’re doing. You can read and react, instead of read and think, ‘Is this where I’m supposed to be and is this how it’s supposed to be done?… I’ve got a better understanding of the position and it’s allowing me to react better and make plays. Everything is making a lot more sense these days.”
To get Carolina Panthers tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Charlotte Observer Observes the Panthers Training Camp
Check out this Charlotte Observer story on the Carolina Panthers. One of their reporters has been covering the training camp this season, and he has a few overarching themes that he discusses in his column. He has five things that are very positive that he’s observed about the team, and five things that might not slook so hot right now. If you are at all interested in learning about any of the following topics, you should really check it out:
- Jonathan Stewart’s toe
- Julius Peppers
- Thomas Davis
- Ryne Robinson’s Knee
- John Kasay
- Steve Smith
- Ken Lucas
- Jake Delhomme’s elbow
- DeAngelo Williams
- Jason Carter
- Gary Gibson
- D.J. Hackett’s toe
- Dwayne Jarrett’s leg
Overall, you get the impression that there’s a lot of optimism about the Panthers this year. There are still plenty of question marks, but unless all of them go to the worst case scenario, this should be a great year to see the Panthers.
To get Carolina Panthers tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Looking at the Chargers: The Panthers First Game
The Panthers will get a test right off the bat in 2008-’09. Carolina is slated to play the San Diego Chargers on the road in sunny San Diego for their first game of the season, on September 7th. As you are probably well aware, the Chargers are supposed to be the best team in the AFC West, and are one of only a handful that look like possible Super Bowl winners right away. Let’s take a look at the Chargers to see what the Panthers are up against.
Last season the Chargers went 11-5, went to the playoffs, and then came alive, beating the Titans, the Colts, and then coming about as close as anybody up until that point at beating the Patriots. They eventually lost to New England 12-21, but by that point LT couldn’t even walk. Needless to say, they were a pretty scary team last season, and not much has changed. They still have LaDainian Tomlinson leading the “charge” from the backfield. If you play fantasy football you know that LT is slated by most draft guides to be the No. 1 rusher this season. He could basically run the show himself, but they also have a streaky Rivers at quarterback who only needs occasional acts of competence to make sure the defense doesn’t pack the line. They finished 2007 ranked 5th in total offense.
On defense the Chargers were 5th overall in keeping their opponents from scoring. While Shawne Merriman gets a lot of the hype, they also have a superb defensive line and a solid secondary, so there’s no real weakness on defense. Overall, this will be a tough draw for the Panthers.
To get Carolina Panthers tickets, go to StubHub.com.
More Steve Smith-Ken Lucas Updates
The entire football world is abuzz about the incident between Panthers wide receiver Steve Smith and cornerback Ken Lucas. Apparently the two played against one another in practice for the first time since Steve Smith gave Lucas a broken nose during an altercation in training camp a few weeks ago. The two had been verbal sparring when Smith sucker-punched Lucas while he was on one knee. Smith apologized for the incident, but has otherwise been reluctant to talk to reporters about it. Lucas, meanwhile, had to take time out of his usual training regimen to heal his face.
The first meeting between the two seemed to go off without a hitch, or at least the reporters who were there did not say much happened- though they are fairly far away from the action and would not be able to tell if there were any words between the two. One has to imagine that Smith and Lucas have talked about it, or at least that their coaches have made sure that they’re on the same page.
To get Carolina Panthers tickets, go to StubHub.com.