Carolina Panthers

Charlotte Observer >> Ex-reporters challenge city, Panthers deliberations

I've just been some articles about the Panthers day 3 of OTA's, and thought I'd pass the news along. DE Greg Hardy has lost around 15 pounds, trying to get faster this season. He's dropped from 297 pounds last season (that's more than I remembered), to 283 pounds, and that still sounds big enough to me. I had forgotten that Hardy had broken his thumb in the 3rd week last season, and had to wear a "big black cast" much of the season. Hardy's 2013 salary is $1.35 million, but says he's unconcerned about the money, and that his agent has approached the Panthers about a contract extension. www.newsobserver.com/2013/05/23/2913300/panthers-greg-hardy-leaner-just.html The CO's Jonathan Jones - Nate "Chandler was actually the team's emergency offensive lineman last season ... Stewart worked out on the bike along side WR Lamont Bryant and CB Captain Munnerlyn,...". www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/05/23/4060350/analysis-five-impressions-from.html Beason - "...took part in individual workouts and ran 20 50 yard wind after practice." Gross & Kalil - "... worked in the conditioning and installation periods, but sat out offense vs defense drills." Jonathan Stewart - "very limited" www.sports.yahoo.com/news/panthers-perfect-otas-attendance-232033653--nfl.html I've just been some articles about the Panthers day 3 of OTA's, and thought I'd pass the news along. DE Greg Hardy has lost around 15 pounds, trying to get faster this season. He's dropped from 297 pounds last season (that's more than I remembered), to 283 pounds, and that still sounds big enough to me. I had forgotten that Hardy had broken his thumb in the 3rd week last season, and had to wear a "big black cast" much of the season. Hardy's 2013 salary is $1.35 million, but says he's unconcerned about the money, and that his agent has approached the Panthers about a contract extension. www.newsobserver.com/2013/05/23/2913300/panthers-greg-hardy-leaner-just.html The CO's Jonathan Jones - Nate "Chandler was actually the team's emergency offensive lineman last season ... Stewart worked out on the bike along side WR Lamont Bryant and CB Captain Munnerlyn,...". www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/05/23/4060350/analysis-five-impressions-from.html Beason - "...took part in individual workouts and ran 20 50 yard wind after practice." Gross & Kalil - "... worked in the conditioning and installation periods, but sat out offense vs defense drills." Jonathan Stewart - "very limited" www.sports.yahoo.com/news/panthers-perfect-otas-attendance-232033653--nfl.html

My name is Steve, and I am a Panthers addict. It's nice to be among so many who understand what I am going through, here in this safe place. Sometimes I feel so lonely. I can't talk to my fiancee about my addiction. She doesn't understand. She doesn't know what it's like to wake up on a cold morning in January, sweating and shaking like a leaf, knowing that its going to be three months before the draft, and seven months before the start of training camp. She has never traded her favorite guitar - the one her parents gave her as a gift on her sixteenth birthday - for two upper-deck tickets to a pre-season game. She hasn't driven seven hours and stood in the scorching South Carolina sun for five hours just to get a linebacker coach's autograph on her raggedy, eight year-old, falling-apart-at-the-seams #51 jersey. And she never cried as she read a newspaper article saying that man had died, less than a year later. via www.toddandrewssculpture.com She didn't have a noise complaint filed against her in 2003 when a little guy named Steve Smith hauled in a 69-yard touchdown pass, and she surely didn't have the cops called when she trashed a room at a Best Western in Pensacola, Florida two weeks later, as a kick sailed out of bounds with just over a minute left in the 4th quarter of the Super Bowl... via nbcsportsmedia3.msnbc.com No, I can't talk about my addiction with my girlfriend, or anybody else in my close circle of friends and family. They just don't get it. That is why Cat Scratch Reader is so important. This is where I come when I need someone to understand my plight. And you all understand it so very well... But something has changed recently, as another member pointed out in a comment earlier today. PanthersRoar mentioned that we are losing our way, bickering amongst ourselves and becoming divided, and he is right! Threads are being derailed by long, non-sensical comment trains with weird cat photos and latent use of profanity. No one is paying their dues anymore, and BW is running around in his infamous chaps again. Noobs are waxing intellectual and playing armchair General Manager, and if Lamont Bryant doesn't make the Pro-Bowl this year I think someone may actually have an aneurism. I haven't seen a quality TopCat photo in weeks, and James has been reduced to writing articles about long-shot defensive tackles being switched to long-shot offensive tackles. TerribleMetaphorGuy has disappeared into the wilderness, Oldy is even more dolorous than usual, we all apparently hate some guy named Ivan for no reason I can discern other than the possibility that he is a viking (Not a Viking FAN, a real viking. I would never stoop so low to call anyone a Viking fan.), public rosterbation is running rampant, and I have even seen blurry pictures of PT sightings floating around the late-night threads... It's a madhouse around here, apparently, and I am left wondering: "Where did we go wrong!?!" I sat up into the wee hours of the last thirty minutes pondering this question, and after significant soul-searching I had an epiphany: It is the OFFSEASON. You know, that time of year when there is no real football news to keep us sated; when we dig through twelve-year old Combine numbers for over-the-hill free agents that we convince ourselves will be the final cog in the elusive World Champion machine; that time of year when Star Lotulelei is Haloti Ngata 2.0 and The Kraken is the result of a science experiment gone wonderfully wrong (see: John Randle in his prime getting bitten by a radioactive spider while simultaneously being shot by gamma-rays). This is that magically terrible time of year when we are all excited, angry, sad, bored, and a little bit hungry... And it is drawing to a close. Take heart, my CSR brethren. Things will get better. We will weather this storm, as we always do. We will make it through the dog days of summer, and we will sweat it out in Spartanburg. We will watch as the ro

Thursday marked the third day of OTAs for the Carolina Panthers, and the first day that was open to the media. No player really made a case to move up…Click to Continue »

Robert Griffin III's rehab started with a "cry festival." Then came a special new passcode for his cellphone and a chance to hash things out with coach Mike Shanahan.Click to Continue »

Drayton Florence intercepted a Cam Newton pass and D.J. Moore nearly did the same during practice Thursday.Click to Continue »

Greg Hardy, the Carolina Panthers' trash-talking defensive end, dropped nearly 15 pounds in the offseason, hoping to improve his speed-rush and prove his breakthrough 2012 season was not a fluke.Click to Continue »

Out here in California all the fans are either Niner or Raider fans so it is hard for me to get a word in edgewise but I know that all my fellow fans hear me so here I go. A lot of people that I talk to tell me that my team sucks and can't get it together. However when I give them facts about how young our team is and how we are a few years away from winning the championship they laugh. But how can you laugh at a team that has a young core nucleus like we do? If you look at our team you see a lot of young players I believe that we have one of the youngest teams in the NFL and I could go and get a bunch of stats proving that but we all know who is young and who is veteran. So looking at our team I see a lot of promise in many different parts of our team. First I will start with the offense. Our offense led by Superman AKA Cam Newton has been scrutinized due to the fact that we don't close games well, but again you can attribute that to the youth on our team out of all of our players on offense we have only Jordan Gross, Geoff Hangartner, Ryan Kalil, Steve Smith, Deangelo Williams and Johnathan Stewart that have more than 3 years of experience of playing time in the league. Now Cam is entering his third year which I believe will bring more leadership and more consistency to his game which is scary to think about considering all of the success he has already had. Factor in the fact that our starting left guard now has one year of NFL experience should make for a more reliable pocket for Cam to sit in thus making way for more time to find the best possible play to develop which also is scary to think about. Yes a lot of people will say but we just changed offensive coordinators and that will push everything back but I argue that by stating that Shula not only has been the QB coach for the last 2 years but he also has a close relationship with Cam which is always important to the development of a QB and he also has had a lot of experience with our offense and has seen first hand how it operates and when it does well and when it does bad. So in seeing this and not having to be responsible for making the necessary changes he has had more time to observe and make his own notes. Furthermore he is not as how we say aggressive in his offensive attack he is more methodical which will translate into a more balanced game thus making it harder for defenses to know where we are going to go with the ball, unlike Chudz who seemed to want Cam to do EVERYTHING for the offense as evidence in Cam leading the team in rushing yards. And while I am glad that Cam has the ability to do that I think that we can all agree that it is not the most efficient way to play the game especially when we have 2 running backs that have an established track record of success in the NFL. Then you add in the two other running backs that we have in our talented stable and the sky is the limit for our running game not to mention Cam. Also you can look at the beginning of the year as a failure because we went 2-8 but I see that as a way to see what we had to do to win. As soon as we went back to a more traditional offense with a power run game and a good passing game we won 5 of the last 6 games. So what is stopping us from winning 15 of the next 16 games? A lot of people will point to our defense and that they couldn't stop the other team from scoring or running the ball for that matter so on to the defensive side of the ball. Our defense while it did finish in the top 12 of the league overall a lot of people still doubt that we can have success based on that group. But one of our major flaws has been fixed by drafting Star Lotulelei and Kawann Short while bringing back Dwan Edwards to have a veteran presence. Our defense should be one of the best in the league as we have our defensive leader in Jon Beason returning to make sure that all of our guys are where they need to be not to mention adding a great player to an already good defense. A lot of arti

Hey folks, the following is a second post by guest poster, Anthony Dunn. Anthony is a longtime Panthers fan and catcrave.com reader: Less than two years ago, Panther fans would have thrown proverbial rotten tomatoes at me for saying “I’m glad Rob Chudzinski is gone!” Cleveland can have him for all I care. Luckily for them, Weedon and the read-option would be seriously funny. Carolina’s tepid offense cooled fan love for Chud last year. Superficially, Panther production didn’t drop off as much as one would think. Carolina fell from offensive rank 7 to 12 overall, declining in points per game, 20+ yd passing plays, and rushing yards and TDs. Had Carolina not picked it up late in the season, the numbers would have been much worse. This too little, too late offensive stabilization of Chud’s gimmicky read first, hope Cam figures something out second offense, led critics to claim that defenses had figured out the sophomore phenom. Dec 30, 2012; New Orleans, LA, USA; Carolina Panthers running back DeAngelo Williams (34) carries the ball up the field against the New Orleans Saints during first quarter of their game at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports Peer a little deeper into the numbers, and it’s clear that defenses didn’t figure out Cam, they figured out Chudzinski’s run-read offense! Chudzinski exploded onto the Charlotte scene in 2011, contributing significantly to Newton’s rookie success. With a strong running attack, opposing defensive coordinators believed the Panthers would play it safe with Cam. Instead, the new offensive coordinator pushed the raw rookie quarterback to the limit, stunning defenses by opening up the vertical passing game. Consequently, Newton won the offensive ROY and Steve Smith avoided retirement. Draft experts had questioned Newton’s ability to transfer his skillset to the pro level. Chudzinski appeared a genius by simplifying his complex system into a “hike it to Cam and let him do his thing” scheme. It worked. This read-option offense, however, fell into a muddle in 2012. Better prepared defenses overpowered Carolina lineman, who struggled with their blocking assignments. Run blocking should be a lineman’s easiest assignment. Pick a guy, and push him backward. In the read-option, however, lineman have to pass block for a moment and then transition to run blocking, creating a momentary hesitation where defensive lineman can gain an edge. Carolina linemen played on their heels behind the line of scrimmage too frequently. Carolina’s running backs suffered the most in this scheme. DeAngelo Williams’s conspicuous absence prompted questions concerning his relationship with the coaching staff. When Chudzinski did call his number, Williams found himself in the read option, where he always looked awkward. Unsurprisingly, Jonathan Stewart’s suffering was from the sidelines as normal. November 4, 2012; Landover, MD, USA; Carolina Panthers running back Jonathan Stewart (28) runs with the ball as Washington Redskins inside linebacker Perry Riley (56) makes the tackle in the third quarter at FedEx Field. The Panthers won 21-13. Mandatory Credit: Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports Chudzinski finally incorporated more traditional run sets late in the season. Williams flourished, averaging 5.8 yds per carry and amassing 378 yds and 2 touchdowns in the last four games. The Panthers went 4-0. Now that Chud has moved on to the magical land where football dies, Cleveland, offensive coordinator Mike Shula is predicted to move the Panthers in a more conservative direction. Shula will hopefully rely less on designed QB runs, and instead place Cam in down and distance situations that promote consistent success. Cam will still flash out of the pocket when necessary, but I think this will be based on opportunity rather than by design. Cat Crave’s Ken Dye suggested this week that the Panther ground attack is poised for a comeback. Look for Williams and Stewart to break out af

Here's a small tidbit of breaking news today out of Charlotte from the Panthers' official Twitter page: The #Panthers have officially signed fifth-round pick @ajklein47 and sixth-round pick @kbdeuce4. #KeepPounding twitter.com/Panthers/statu… — Carolina Panthers (@Panthers) May 23, 2013 With the signing of both Klein and Barner the Panthers now have their entire draft class under contract, and they can now begin focusing on preparations for the 2013 NFL season. Former Panthers beat writer and current Pro Football Talk columnist Darin Gantt said it best when he tweeted the following: So, the Panthers signed their entire draft class in the last 30 hours or so. Say it with me gang: "It doesn't have to be that hard." — Darin Gantt (@daringantt) May 23, 2013 You're absolutely right Darin - it doesn't have to be that hard. Thankfully the Panthers didn't experience any hardship by getting these guys under contract, though it's kind of hard to do that now with the new rookie wage scale in the CBA. The terms of both contracts are currently undisclosed, but as soon as we have the numbers we will surely let you know, so stay tuned for updates to this story.