Tom Talks: Auburn’s Derrick Brown would be an ideal fit for Carolina Panthers
I’ve never met Derrick Brown, but I feel as if I know him. The Carolina Panthers select seventh Thursday in the first round of the NFL draft, and unless a mock draft has the Panthers trading the pick, almost all of them have the Panthers selecting Brown. This has been going on since the first of the mock drafts, which began a few hours after the 2019 draft ended. By now, it’s as if Brown is 30-years-old and has been wearing a Panther jersey for most of a decade.
Brown is a defensive tackle from Auburn. He’s 6-foot-4, 326 pounds and the best player in college football at his position last season. He’s not flashy and won’t make you jump and shout the way some picks will.
But the Panthers desperately need a defensive lineman who will disrupt, take up space, get to the quarterback and maybe even stop the run. Brown isn’t a great pass rusher. But imagine him next to Kawann Short, who can be. Short missed the final 14 games last season with a torn rotator cuff. If Short comes all the way back, he and Brown would make a great tandem, big, aggressive and talented in the middle of the line.
The beauty of the draft, however, is the surprises. That’s one reason TV ratings are so high. There are always upsets, always players expected to go high who fall, and players expected to go low who go high.
I know this is unlikely, but the player I would love to see fall to No. 7 is Ohio State cornerback Jeff Okudah. Okudah will be a star, and star cornerbacks are rare. Line him up and watch him go. There’s not a cornerback on Carolina’s roster who is better than average.
The other possibility, a possibility greater than Okudah falling, is that Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa falls. If he does, if Tagovailoa is available when the Panthers pick, what do they do?
What would you do?
Think about it. Are you willing to give up a safe pick to draft a not very tall quarterback who is coming off a serious injury?
Teddy Bridgewater will be Carolina’s quarterback next season. On the bench, for the moment, are former XFL star P.J. Walker and second-year quarterback Will Grier.
Tagovailoa is 6-0 and 217 pounds, about as tall as Drew Brees and Russell Wilson. He’s undergone two surgeries on an ankle, hurt his knee and went down last season with a dislocated hip.
But what if he’s healthy, and what if he can stay healthy? If so, he’s a quarterback you design your offense around. Tagovailoa can move, throws a beautiful deep pass and sees possibilities. He is a franchise quarterback, and if he trickles down to seven, he’ll be tough to pass on.
What if Clemson linebacker-safety Isaiah Simmons slides to seven? Simmons’ speed and versatility are such that he can play both positions. General manager Marty Hurney knows what to do with athletic linebacker-safeties. He and then coach John Fox took Thomas Davis 14th out of Georgia. Davis initially was stuck at safety before being moved to linebacker. When his instincts caught up to his athleticism, he became a star.
If Carolina stays at seven, if it doesn’t trade, and all four players I mention are available, I’d rank them (1) Okudah, (2) Tagovailoa, (3) Simmons and (4) Brown. If Brown is the least of those players, they still win.
And if they do trade, I suspect they’ll trade down. If they don’t trade down too far, a candidate is Florida cornerback C.J. Henderson. The Panthers have to draft a cornerback, and they have to draft him early, in Round 2 if not Round 1. Henderson is not as polished as Okudah, but is a superb athlete.
Documentary reaffirms Jordan’s greatness
I watched Michael Jordan play at North Carolina, and went to Chapel Hill when he was a freshman to talk to him. He was in his Mike phase then. I watched him with the Chicago Bulls when the Bulls came to Charlotte and in a playoff series in Atlanta.
I drove to Zebulon to watch the Birmingham Barons, the Chicago White Sox Class AA team, for which Jordan played.
But until I saw ESPN’s “The Last Dance” on Sunday, I allowed myself to forget how great Jordan is. Of course I knew he was great, knew was tenacious and knew he was an amazing athlete.
Yet being amazing is not the same as being Jordan. His leaping ability, going up in front of a defender, hanging in the air and, while the defender and everybody else falls back to earth, taking and hitting a jump shot, is extraordinary. He saw openings that didn’t exist and leapt and drove through them.
How do you guard the man? All you can do is try to disturb him.
We knew, those of us who watched at the time, how he led. If teammates didn’t move to his beat, Jordan pushed and cajoled and insisted until they did. He was ruthless and he was effective, as his three-peat championships twice attested.
So, think about the competitor he was. When you buy a team, does that zeal to be the best end?
It can’t. Jordan bought the then Charlotte Bobcats in 2010, so long ago that neither Cam Newton nor Kemba Walker had arrived in Charlotte. Since Jordan’s purchase, the Hornets have made the playoffs three times, twice losing in four games, and have yet to win a series. Their postseason record is 3-12.
The Hornets were having, for them, a good 2019-20 season; they committed to young players, won 23 games and lost 42. It was a season you have to go through to get to what comes next. Since Jordan bought the team, and since the NBA sold the franchise to Bob Johnson, they’ve been moving toward what comes next.
What comes next are the playoffs and a playoff series victory. But they aren’t close. Trying to reconcile Jordan the owner, who is 57, and Jordan the player, is a challenge. I’d love to talk to Jordan about it. Cynics say, that since he’s made lots of money on his investment, that he doesn’t care.
Play as hard as he did, and win as often as he did, of course you care.
It will be years before the Hornets are competitive. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy the look back. NBA Entertainment got great access, and in the first two installments of the 10-part “The Last Dance” series, took us inside. They’ll continue to, and we’ll see eight more installments of perhaps the greatest athlete to play a team sport.
Ali’s on? Of course I’m watching
The old NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball games televised during the COVID-19 sports drought haven’t moved me enough to watch one in its entirety. But on Saturday, ESPN televised all three Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fights.
I couldn’t have missed Ali-Frazier if I attempted to. My phone lit up with texts, calls and emails from family, friends and former co-workers.
Are you watching?
It’s Ali. What do you think? Of course I’m watching.
In Charlotte, there is a boxing underground, and I’m proud to be part of it. Go to a local boxing card and there are the managers and trainers who selflessly and for almost no money work to keep the sport alive in Charlotte. There are the former fighters who instead of ending a sentence often punctuate it instinctively with a left jab or hook. There are the fans, the 200 or so stalwarts. When the bell rings, they are there. We’ve seen each other so many times that we might not know each other’s names, but we know the faces.
Some of the best people I’ve met in my 39 years in Charlotte I’ve met beneath the bright fight-night lights.
A local business brought Joe Frazier to Charlotte early in my career here, and I interviewed him in front of about 25 people. I asked Frazier much too early about Ali. He was not here as the guy who fought Ali, the guy who won the first of their three-fight trilogy and lost the next two. He was here as Joe Frazier, out of Beaufort, S.C., and he didn’t need Ali to command a room. He made it clear he didn’t like the question.
My interview technique that afternoon is not one I recommend. I should have saved Ali until the end.
Ali came to Charlotte in 2003. Then 71, he walked into Duke Mansion for a Parkinson’s disease fundraiser and I froze. There were two people in the world I wanted to meet more than any others (Ali and singer Robert Plant) and Ali was right here in front of me.
I got to spend a minute with him one-on-one. I’ll take one-on-one for a minute over an hour with a group. Ali was magic, and so was the afternoon.
My dad, a boxing fan, always believed that Joe Louis would beat Ali. My kids, who were Mike Tyson fans until Tyson went buffet on Evander Holyfield’s ear, believed that Tyson would beat Ali. Both were wrong, and after the bite fight, my kids came around to Ali.
You know what was cool about watching Ali-Frazier I, II and III? I found myself cheering. Come on, Ali, the fight (II) is too close and you need to win these last two rounds. Come on! I was sweating before the decision was announced.
Did Ali win? Or course he won. He was the greatest, and he earned the moniker every time (until he got old) he stepped into a ring.