Daley has had growing pains for Panthers at left tackle but vows to keep fighting
It was the sort of play that makes any offensive lineman cringe.
There was Atlanta’s Vic Beasley, circling in from the blind side toward unsuspecting Carolina quarterback Kyle Allen. And there was Panthers rookie left tackle Dennis Daley — his angle all wrong, his block ineffectual.
Beasley beat Daley to the outside and pounded Allen for a strip-sack. The football bounced onto the artificial turf.
As is the case many times after such a sack, the offensive lineman who allowed it is at least in the best position to recover the fumble. Daley leaped on the ball — but missed that, too, as it bounced away and Atlanta recovered.
“I’m taking all that as a learning experience,” Daley told me the next day. “Build from it. Make something positive out of it.”
It’s a good attitude to have after a bad play like that. Daley is experiencing some growing pains at left tackle this season, but he’s not played that badly considering what he thought his rookie season was going to be like.
“I didn’t even expect to play,” said Daley, who the Panthers picked in the sixth round out of South Carolina. “I told myself I was just going to come in as a rookie and learn from everybody else. Whether that meant I was just on the sideline, on the practice squad, whatever. I was going to learn.”
Instead, Daley has shown enough promise that he has ended up starting six of Carolina’s 13 games and has played in five more. On a team wracked by offensive line injuries yet again and forced to start four different left tackles, it is Daley who has ended up playing the most snaps at the line’s most difficult position.
The results have been mixed. Pro Football Focus named Daley its best left tackle of the week in mid-October, when he stifled the NFL’s leading pass-rusher (Tampa Bay’s Shaquil Barrett) in Carolina’s convincing victory over the Buccaneers in London.
But Daley also has had some technique problems while blocking some of the best pass rushers in the game. He listed San Francisco’s Nick Bosa, Green Bay’s Preston Smith and Beasley as some of his most difficult opponents so far. His occasional struggles have contributed to a reeling Panthers team that has lost five games in a row, gotten its head coach fired in midseason, and allowed a staggering 50 sacks this season (only Miami, with 51, has given up more).
When the Panthers drafted Daley, general manager Marty Hurney talked about how “stout” the 6-6, 325-pound Daley was.
“You’re not going to go through him,” Hurney said at the time. “He is strong, and he is a guy that we think has a ton of upside … I think he does have good feet and is athletic enough to play left tackle in the league.”
And left tackle is what Daley has been doing. Although second-round pick Greg Little would have seemed a more likely choice for that role, he has missed the majority of his rookie season recovering from a concussion.
“Whatever happened has happened, and that landed me in the starting lineup,” Daley said. “I didn’t expect it, but I’m really grateful for it.”
Daley started his last two years at South Carolina, also playing left tackle and facing a number of elite pass rushers in the Southeastern Conference. The leap to the NFL has still been substantial, he said.
“In college, everybody was just athletes,” Daley said. “In the league, everybody takes preparation to a different level. You’re going against vets who have been around and know exactly what to do.”
For Daley, he keeps studying. Keeps working. And vows that a play like the one Beasley made won’t affect him.
“I can’t let that one play — or any single play — beat me up,” Daley said. “I’ve still got a lot of football left to play.”
This story was originally published December 10, 2019 at 5:02 PM.
