the FRANCHISE qb

The Carolina Panthers announced another coach that had been added to the staff, Offensive Line Coach John Matsko. Since Ron Rivera has stepped into the Head Coach position, it has not taken him long to start filling in the staff. Currently, it looks a little like this.

Ron Rivera - HC
Rob Chudzinski - OC
Sean McDermott - DC
Brian Murphy - STC
Ron Meeks - Defensive Backfield
Sam Mills III - Defensive Quality Control/Asst. Defensive Line

and most recently added ...

John Matsko - OL Coach

I have been very impressed by the organizations hires in the last few weeks. It seems as if we have a group that could really turn this team around. However one looming questions continues to be brought up about the Carolina Panthers, who is our qb going forward?

I am not posting this to defend or object to Jimmy Clausen as our starting quarterback, but instead posting because out of all the names being thrown around, one seems to be missing over and over and over again.

If you look at a list of the current free agents or quarterbacks that will be free agents this year, you find the same list every where.

Marc Bulger (UFA) - Baltimore
David Carr (UFA) - San Francisco
Kellen Clemens (UFA) - NY Jets
Kerry Collins (UFA) - Tennessee
Todd Collins (UFA) - Chicago
Brodie Croyle (UFA) - Kansas City
Dennis Dixon (RFA) - Pittsburgh
Trent Edwards (UFA) - Jacksonville
Brett Favre (UFA) - Minnesota
Charlie Frye (UFA) - Oakland
Bruce Gradkowski (UFA) - Oakland
Chris Greisen (UFA) - Dallas
Rex Grossman (UFA) - Washington
Caleb Hanie (RFA) - Chicago
Matt Hasselbeck (UFA) - Seattle
Tarvaris Jackson (UFA) - Minnesota
Matt Leinart (UFA) - Houston
J.P. Losman (UFA) - Seattle
Peyton Manning (UFA) - Indianapolis
Luke McCown (UFA) - Jacksonville
Matt Moore (UFA) - Carolina
J.T. O'Sullivan (UFA) - Oakland
Jordan Palmer (RFA) - Cincinnati
Chad Pennington (UFA) - Miami
Patrick Ramsey (UFA) - Minnesota
Chris Simms (UFA) - Tennessee
Alex Smith (UFA) - San Francisco
Troy Smith (RFA) - San Francisco
Jim Sorgi (UFA) - NY Giants
Brian St. Pierre (UFA) - Carolina
Drew Stanton (UFA) - Detroit
Tyler Thigpen (UFA) - Miami
Michael Vick (UFA) - Philadelphia
Billy Volek (UFA) - San Diego
Seneca Wallace (UFA) - Cleveland

Seems like a pretty long list right? Now obviously there are only a few quarterbacks on this list that have been mentioned in the media as being possabilities in Carolina. (I have bolded some of them, as well as placing those quarterbacks that are retiring or will not be let go in italics) However there is one guy that is not on this list that I think could make an impact on the team, bring in some experience, and allow us to let Jimmy Clausen develop. Vince Young.

Vince Young has played 54 games in the NFL (-) has a 57.9% completion rate throughout his career, has 54 TD (42 passing, 12 rushing), 42 INT, and just over 8,000 passing yards. He has a career passer rating of 75.7; however he is coming off of his best season thus far. This year alone he had 10 TD, 3 INT, 1255 yards, and a passer rating of 98.6% in just 10 of the 16 games.

Why is this guy not showing up on the radar for the Carolina Panthers?

I am interested to see what happens once the coaching positions are filled and the CBA has been agreed too... hopefully Mr. Richardson will be writing checks.

GO PANTHERS!

Face of the Panthers

Just wanted to send a quick 'Welcome' and 'Congratulations' to the new head coach of the Carolina Panthers; former San Diego Chargers Defence Coordinator and former Super Bowl Linebacker, Ron Rivera. Welcome to Carolina Country!

In The News

I have been a Carolina Panthers faithful for as long as I can remember; however it has always been a struggle, not because of the ups and downs of each season (which were struggles) but because I have never lived in a close proximity to North Carolina. Therefore I have always had to rely on the internet to really stay up to date on what is going on with the Carolina Panthers. With the regular season coming to a close, there are very few teams that are making headlines these days, one of them is Carolina.

Who will be the next head coach? Who will the Panthers take as the number 1 pick? What players are getting re-signed? Which players will they trade? What are they going to do on the Free Agency Market? What picks will they trade up for or down for? What is Jerry Richardson having for breakfast?

Okay, so they may not be talking about that last one, but I love all the coverage. So what should the Panthers do with their Number 1 pick? Andrew Luck is out, is AJ Green the best option at this point? I know that AJ Green is a great athlete but I feel like that adding an additional rookie into the mix with our current young receiving core, would not help our situation at this time. I believe that Jimmy Clausen has a pretty good connection with B.LaFell and D.Gettis, and by adding Green, it would not benefit the team as much as working on our lines.

Well from my previous post you can see that I believe our biggest hole on the team is the Offensive Line. However that being said there are a few players that I believe we should take a took at for the first overall pick.

CB - Patrick Peterson
DT - Marcell Dareus
DE - Da'Quan Bowers
CB - Prince Amukamara
DE - Robert Quinn
DT - Nick Fairley
OG - Rodney Hudson

I would also like them to look into:

OG - Orlando Franklin
C - Stefan Wisniewski
C - Kristofer O'Dowd

The nice thing about the Offensive Line, is I think you could get a couple good/key players in some of the later rounds. Currently Carolina has Round 1: Pick 1, NO Round 2 Picks, Round 3: Pick 65, Round 4: Pick 97, Round 5: Pick 129, Round 6: Pick 161, Round 7: Pick 193. This does not take into consideration of any kind of compensation picks that we will receive. I believe that you will see some trades take place in order to receive a few more picks. That being said, it should be interesting to see what happens once the CBA is signed. According to Jerry Richardson, the checks will be flowing after this happens to bring key personnel to Carolina. Let's hope so.

In the mean time, GO PANTHERS!

No Such Luck

2011 has not started with much luck for Carolina and today the realization of getting Andrew Luck the projected Number 1 pick out of the upcoming draft crushed the Carolina Organization and fans by announcing that he will not be entering the draft this year. He will be returning to Stanford to finish out his architectual design degree. Which leaves the Carolina Panthers with a big "?", what do we do with the first pick of the 2011 draft?

So before we get to deep into the subject, lets really look at Andrew Luck versus our current rookie quarterback, Jimmy Clausen.

Andrew Luck 2009 Stats:

- 162/288 CMP/ATT (56.3% CMP %)

- 2575 YDS

- 8.94 YPA

- 13 TD - 4 INT - 6 SACK

- 143.47 Rating

Andrew Luck 2010 Stats:

- 263/372 CMP/ATT (70.7% CMP %)

- 3338 YDS

- 8.97 YPA

-32 TD - 8 INT - 6 SACK

-170.16 Rating

Now obvious improvements from 09 to 10, but what lets take a look at the stats for our own Jimmy Clausen. We will look at the two years of stats prior to Jimmy Clausen getting drafted, as Carolina would have only had two years of stats to look at for Andrew Luck if they would have selected him.

Jimmy Clausen 2008 Stats:

- 268/440 CMP/ATT (60.9 % CMP %)

- 3172 YDS

- 7.21 YPA

- 25 TD - 17 INT - 21 SACK

- 132.49 Rating

Jimmy Clausen 2009 Stats:

- 289/425 CMP/ATT (68.0 % CMP %)

-3722 YDS

- 8.76 YPA

- 28 TD - 4 INT - 24 SACK

- 161.43 Rating

In comparison side by side the last years of their college careers (as of yet) Jimmy Clausen had approximately the same CMP % and YPA. He also had less INT, more total yards, and was obvioulsy rushed a lot more as Jimmy Clausen was sacked 24 times compared to Luck's 6.

There is more to this than just the numbers, but before Carolina fans really get down in regards to not getting Andrew Luck this year, if we build a good enough Offensive Line to protect the rookie quarterback that we have. I think we have the potential to return Jimmy Clausen to his college level stats.

So who do we take? Where are our areas of weakness?

I believe our number one area of weakness is our offensive line. Now I think Ryan Kalil is a great player, but how many times did we have a fumble exchange between Center and Quarterback this season. This is something that is practiced approximately 80 times a day, there should not be an issue with this. The other big issue is the protection of the quarterback. The Carolina Panthers as of week 13 of this season had allowed 36 sacks and 78 hits to the quarterback, that is third and second highest totals in the league.

These stats and the performance of our quarterback(s) leave me to believe that if we do not fix our offensive line quickly, we will continue to have problems with our quarterback, which leads to problems with our passing game, which ultimately leads to problems with our running game. (which was only averaging 4.0 yards per carry, ranked 20th in the league, with two RB's that broke NFL records just a season ago)

Looking forward to hearing what happens in the next few days, weeks, and months, but mainly looking forward to the upcoming Fall in hopes that Carolina will have turned this around like we did in 2003.

As always, GO PANTHERS!