By drafting Derrick Brown, Panthers must think it’s 1983. So much for Rhule innovating
In the final minute leading up to the Carolina Panthers’ pick in Thursday’s virtual draft, the television broadcast captured the drama of the moment by showing, for several seconds, Matt Rhule at his desk looking at his phone.
Likewise, we’re all still waiting. Still waiting for the new-look Carolina Panthers to show how innovative they are, how they’re smarter and faster than everyone else, which is basically what David Tepper promised when he brought in Rhule and his staff of whiz kids and then let Cam Newton and half of the rest of the team go.
Their pick of Derrick Brown, the Auburn defensive tackle, made all the sense in the world, but it had all the pizazz of Roger Goodell trying with trademark awkwardness to fire up a Zoom monitor full of fans. It was a Marty Hurney pick, to the core. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s hardly a glimpse of the future of football, either.
If anything, it’s a blast from the past. Nothing says old-school football-style football like a defensive tackle, a run-stopper in a league where games are decided by the passing game. The Panthers’ best player on offense is a running back. They’re building to win Super Bowl XVII. They’re going to party like it’s 1983.
Which isn’t to say the Panthers didn’t need help at the position; their run defense was as strong (and, now, scarce) as single-ply toilet paper last season, and that was before letting several of those players walk. Brown is one of the best players in the draft, the best at his position by far, and if he slipped to seven it’s only because other teams deemed other positions more essential in 2020.
There’s nothing about this that’s a bad pick. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s safe. It’s sound. It’s sane.
But the Arizona Cardinals took Isaiah Simmons with the next pick, the Clemson linebacker-slash-safety whose biggest negative is that he doesn’t have a position because he’s so good in so many places. He’s the kind of hybrid player that a really smart, innovative, ahead-of-the-curve coaching staff could turn into a game-changing secret weapon — a defensive Christian McCaffrey.
That’s the kind of raw material you’d like to see Rhule and his staff get their hands on — a chance to subvert normality and evolve the game by brute intellectual force. There may be a little of this with Brown, who the Panthers spent as much time talking about as a pass-rusher as anything else, but by definition a defensive tackle’s impact is geographically limited.
“There’s a lot of media buzz and people want to ask about one player because he’s versatile,” Rhule said. “Big men that can move like him are versatile. So we can use him all across the front.”
Put another way, Ron Rivera would have absolutely loved this pick. This was the kind of pick that would have had Rivera and Hurney vibrating harmoniously in simultaneous ecstasy. Apparently Rhule is operating on the same frequency.
It’s increasingly clear at this point that no matter who the coach is, the Panthers aren’t going to be bold. They’re going to take the trodden path, and for all the talk about analytics and culture change, they’re going to continue to do what they always would have done.
Like the Brown pick, there’s nothing wrong with that. But there’s nothing new about it, either. So many of the faces — Rivera, Newton, Luke Kuechly, Greg Olsen, Eric Reid, Kyle Allen — may have changed. The Panthers have not.
This story was originally published April 24, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
