An Outsider’s Take on the Panthers

Yahoo! Sports is running a series of offseason progress reports for teams across the NFL, and yesterday’s post was concerning the Carolina Panthers - and largely spotlighting the mess they’ve made with two key players on the roster: Julius Peppers and Jake Delhomme. These two players take up a significant part of Carolina’s salary cap, and neither one is necessarily expected to be a saving grace for this year’s team. Peppers will likely return with the Panthers this year under pressure to perform well so he’ll be picked up by another team next year, but if his heart isn’t in it, we’re wondering how the season will pan out for the defensive end. On the other side of this, Jake Delhomme has expressed his interest with staying in Carolina long-term, but football critics are cringing at the $20 million extension Delhomme was guaranteed this offseason.

Another interesting point of this offseason for the Panthers is the fact that no free agents were signed with the team. Zero. Zip. Nada. The Panthers picked up a large number of undrafted rookies and got some golden picks in the draft as well (DE Everette Brown being the frontrunner here,) but not a single free agent has been signed in the offseason. On top of this, Carolina lost a significant number of free agents, including CB Ken Lucas, OT Jeremy Bridges and C Geoff Hangartner, but even with some of these almost-questionable selections in the offseason, the Panthers still have the core of their stellar team (including DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart,) meaning this will be one tough team to beat in ‘09.

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