Teddy Bridgewater is just the start. The Panthers still need to draft at QB at No. 7
The Carolina Panthers just spent $63 million on free-agent quarterback Teddy Bridgewater. They have signed P.J. Walker, Matt Rhule’s old college quarterback at Temple, as a backup QB. Will Grier, who was last year’s third-round pick for the Panthers, remains on the roster, too.
So on a team that bleeds with needs all over its defense, it now makes no sense to take a quarterback with the No. 7 pick of the NFL draft on April 23, right?
Wrong.
If Oregon’s Justin Herbert or Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa drop to the Panthers at No. 7, I’m still going to take that quarterback over anybody else.
If neither one is there — and LSU’s Joe Burrow won’t be, either — then give me Auburn defensive tackle Derrick Brown or Clemson linebacker Isaiah Simmons. But if Herbert or Tagovailoa somehow drop, give me a crowded quarterbacks meeting room in 2020 and all the accompanying controversies that go with it.
I know it doesn’t make immediate sense, because that quarterback likely wouldn’t see the field much at all for the Panthers in 2020.
But look at it this way:
Do you really care that much if the Panthers go 6-10 or 4-12 this season? In the long term, 4-12 or worse would actually be better for rebuilding with future draft picks.
Don’t draft for an immediate need on a team that’s going to be pretty bad regardless. Not if a QB is there.
New Panthers coach Matt Rhule is a genial fellow who is an expert at giving you a treatise on horology when you ask him what time it is. Witness his word scrambles on the release of Cam Newton (Rhule praised Newton repeatedly, but he and general manager Marty Hurney then fired him).
So it’s hard to say where Rhule is leaning on this one. But here was his partial response when asked Wednesday on a conference call if he had ruled out taking a quarterback at No. 7 in this draft:
“I’ll never rule anything out. ... Obviously I don’t know that’s our focus right now, a first-round quarterback. But at the end of day, if a guy drops in your lap that you think can, at any position, change your team, Marty’s advice to me — and I think I definitely agree with it — has been: ‘Don’t let need overtake what’s the best thing long term.’ Because, when you draft, you’re not drafting for the next 12 months. You’re drafting for the next four to five or six years.”
Exactly. One great quarterback can make up for so much else going wrong. One great quarterback who’s playing at a high level and still on his rookie contract? That’s a pretty good path to the Super Bowl.
Former Panthers coach Ron Rivera once told me that quarterback play was “55 percent” of any NFL game — and Rivera was a defense-first guy.
Listen, the Panthers are in a spot right now that is analogous to where the Charlotte Hornets were when they lost Kemba Walker in the summer of 2019. Teddy Bridgewater is their Terry Rozier — a steady starter who is inevitably destined to be compared to the superstar who came before him.
For both teams — and the Hornets were already doing this until COVID-19 abruptly suspended the NBA season — this is the time to play as many of the kids as you can. See what you’ve got without worrying a lot about the record.
Similarly, these Panthers are playing for 2021 or 2022.
Maybe by then a new quarterback is ready to take over for Bridgewater. Alternately, Bridgewater might be fantastic. That’d be a welcome bonus, but it’s far from a sure thing.
Panthers owner David Tepper said this not long ago: “You think people will wait five years for sustained excellence? For 20 years of winning seasons? They better, if they want that. You’re not going to get things, immediate gratification. ... Listen, I’m not going to sit here and BS people. It’s a building process. You heard about Rome, right?”
Yes, we heard about it.
Build the foundation now, thinking about 2022 more than 2020. And keep throwing resources at quarterback — including that No. 7 pick — because the payoff can be huge.
