Sitting here, on the brink of free agency, the Panthers currently have 54 players under contract for next season – 31 of those 54 will start next season aged 25 or younger. While it can’t be guaranteed that all 31 will end up on the 90-man roster let alone the 53, with limited funds to go out and make major moves in free agency it seems almost certain that the Panthers will have one of the youngest rosters in the NFL once again in 2021.
While there is obviously going to be downside in the short term of having such a young roster, it also means the Panthers have a fantastic opportunity for improvement through player development.
Photo Credit: Carolina Panthers
It should come as little surprise then that when Matt Rhule spoke to the media yesterday in preparation for the start of the new league year, as well as the usual comments regarding how the team plans to build through free agency and the draft, he made a point to emphasize the value of player development with his closing remarks:
“We’ve got to have another really great offseason personnel-wise, really in the three areas,” said Rhule. “We have to be great in free agency, we have to be great in the draft, but we also have to be great at player development. Some of our young guys have to step-up and our veterans have to play their best football.”
Making significant strides through player development is certainly an admirable aspiration, if not an actual necessity for young teams without swaths of cap space at their disposal, but going from talk to on-field results is something else entirely.
Quarterback Teddy Bridgewater (5) during team scrimmage at Training Camp on Saturday, August 22, 2020. (Photo by. Brandon Todd via Carolina Panthers)
When discussing player development, it is worth noting Rhule’s background, and the work that the coaching staff, especially the defensive staff, have already put in in Carolina. As much improvement as many of the younger Panthers players have shown this season, however, this offseason and early ramp into next season offers an opportunity to take significant strides forwards as a team, and this is something that Rhule recognizes as well.
“The young players are just scratching the surface of what they can be, they haven’t even had an offseason with us,” observed Rhule. “They have so much potential and have a long way to go.”
Wide Receiver Brandon Zylstra (16) and Defensive Back Stantley Thomas-Oliver III (23) battle at Training Camp practice on Friday, August 21, 2020. (Photo by. Brandon Todd via Carolina Panthers)
The Panthers have had an entire season’s worth of practices to work with these young players already, and so it might not be clear why there should be so much focus on the offseason in particular. A lot of the reason why so much focus is put on the offseason in terms of teaching and development is simply because, during the season, there is a lot more for players to be worrying about.
Each week they need to watch tape on their upcoming opponents, take onboard a new game-plan and potentially even install some new plays as the coaches look to develop and build upon the playbook. While it would be unfair to say that there isn’t time for teaching in-season, it is certainly true that when you are having to recover from a game, break down your past performance and prepare for a new opponent, there isn’t a huge amount of time for teaching, or indeed learning, left.
Wide Receiver DJ Moore (12) catching a pass at Tranining Camp practice on Thursday, August 20, 2020 (Photo By. Brandon Todd via Carolina Panthers)
While the offseason workouts are not entirely dedicated to player development from a technique point of view, there is certainly a lot more time to work on these things with a longer-term view, and player development takes time, something that Rhule made a point of mentioning:
“I would just say the details and the techniques and the keys, those things have to be learned traits. Erickson says it takes 10 years or 10,000 hours” said Rhule. “I always say it takes 1000 reps, so just those reps on all those things. Situationally, third down, everything comes from meetings; come from practice and comes from meetings.”
The Panthers’ young players, at least many of them, got a lot of those reps as live game reps this past year, but for the likes of Troy Pride, Stanley Thomas-Oliver and Kenny Robinson, the offseason offers a chance to get a significant fraction of those 1000 reps under their belt in a way that hasn’t been possible to this point.
It’s easy to forget, but 2020 was really a very difficult year for the Panthers.
Running Back Christian McCaffrey (22) stiff-arms defensive back Kenny Robinson (27) during team scrimmage at Training Camp on Saturday, August 22, 2020. (Photo by. Brandon Todd via Carolina Panthers)
With a new coaching staff, the Panthers were always going to be at something of a disadvantage when it came to being as ready as possible for the start of the season. They weren’t just looking to work on preparing their rookies to be able to see the field early, and to work on developing the existing players they had but they were also having to do this while installing new schemes on both sides of the ball and, as is fairly typical for a new regime, having to get to grips with an awful lot of new faces.
This is something that Pat Meyer talked about when he spoke to The Riot Report during the Senior Bowl:
“Last year we met with these guys for months online, virtually, on Microsoft teams and calls and all that. We met them, literally, for hours and hours, hours upon days and days and weeks and months and I’d never even met some of them [in person],” said the offensive line coach.
On top of this, the Panthers had to deal with what is almost unquestionably the strangest NFL offseason in memory as a result of the COVID pandemic. Almost all of their work was done virtually and players were forced to adapt an improvise in order to find ways to keep in shape, let alone trying to get significant reps under their belt in terms of working on technique.
Photo Courtesy: Uncle Jut
This, of course, was not something that was unique to the Panthers but, for a new coaching staff with an extremely young roster, the impact of this was likely particularly significant. While the Panthers tried to make the most of the situation through virtual meetings, Matt Rhule was also clear about the inherent limitations of such a process:
“We had a lot of good meetings virtually, but you have to do it live, you have to get feedback and get it corrected and do it again” noted Rhule. “I can watch a YouTube video on how to swing a golf club and I can mimic all the things, but I can’t swing. I have to go out there and do it and correct myself and do it and get feedback and do it. That’s what the offseason would have brought.”
Photo Credit: Brandon Todd/Carolina Panthers
This extra time should not only allow the Panthers coaches to cover more but also to be more thorough, with less time pressure to get ready for the season allowing them to go into the details with players on what they are asking them to do, something that Pat Meyer also reiterated:
“Where I’m hoping that this year, if we get to be able to practice with them in the Spring, that now let’s slow this down, because [last year] when we first got together it was July and we didn’t have much time it was like “right, we’re together now let’s go”… hopefully we can slow this down and really dissect it and say “here’s how we’re going to approach this, here’s how we’re going to approach this” said Meyer
Needless to say, he is hopeful that the 2021 offseason will be quite different in that regard:
“Hopefully we have a true offseason so we can help with that, as opposed to last year where guys were in their homes. So hopefully we’ll have a great offseason and hit on all three areas and I think player development starts with the players but hopefully we can assist” said Rhule.
Photo Credit: Brandon Todd/Carolina Panthers
Great, so the Panthers will hopefully have a lot more time to work with their players this offseason, and time spent with players is generally useful for a coaching staff, but every other staff around the NFL will also be able to do the same, and while the Panthers will likely continue to be one of the youngest NFL rosters next season (it shouldn’t be ruled out that they will get even younger), what is there to suggest that this will give the Panthers a meaningful competitive advantage?
The background of the Panthers’ coaches offers some reason for optimism. While it would be foolish to think that all coaches coming from the college game are good teachers simply because they have a history of working with younger players, the context of the success that Matt Rhule and Phil Snow have had in particular is encouraging.
They have not come from major colleges with a tranche of five-star recruits, but rather from small to medium-sized colleges on the whole where they certainly looked to be competitive in recruiting, but where a key element to success was taking the players they were able to recruit and making them the best version of who they could be.
The other element of this that was talked about a lot last offseason, but then was never really able to take shape, was the sport science elements that Matt Rhule has hoped to bring to Carolina and which were a major part of his approach in college. While a lot of this is more focused on physical development and conditioning, which is especially relevant for younger players who are still developing physically, the Panthers clearly expect this to have an impact particular to the offseason.
“We’ve done a lot of the sport science stuff, we weren’t able to utilize it all offseason, so we have some stuff that we use now in season, but we weren’t able to do it in the offseason, which is really when your development and all those things happen” observed Rhule. “So, in terms of all of the metrics that we use, the catapults and all those things, managing player load and all that. We have all of that available to us and we’re using that but in terms of some of the other stuff, it’ll be more offseason based.”
Photo Credit: Brandon Todd/Carolina Panthers
Of course, there is a big difference between working with 18-year-olds and 28-year-olds, but the Panthers’ coaching staff (at least those who have come through with Rhule and Snow), have got to this point in part because of their ability to be teachers. There is also some evidence that the Panthers’ coaches might know what they are doing in this regard from the progress that was made by some players, either compared to where they were last season or over the course of last season.
It would be wrong to take anything away from the work that Brian Burns has clearly put into his development by suggesting that this was only made possible by Rhule and his coaching staff, but the sizeable step he took from an already very promising rookie season should be testament of what is possible under this coaching staff.
Photo Credit: Brandon Todd/Carolina Panthers
A clear and consistent failure of the Ron Rivera Panthers was the inability to consistently develop young talent and the unwillingness to give young players chances to see the field. Matt Rhule has already shown that he is more than willing to let young players see the field, even if they might take a little time to come into their own, and the growth that a lot of the Panthers’ rookies in particular showed over the course of the 2020 season is evidence of the value of this approach, as well as to the coaching staff’s ability to develop such players.
While it is still unclear just how much COVID might impact this offseason, the Panthers should expect that they will be able to get a lot more done before training camp starts than they were in 2020, how much they can do is still to be seen. With COVID numbers starting to go down around the country, and vaccination numbers starting to go up, the signs are promising, but a full offseason cannot be guaranteed just yet:
“I have calendars all the way through to next season, I just don’t know what COVID’s going to bring in terms of what we’re allowed to do with players once April comes. So, we’ll have to wait and see what exactly is there for us in terms of the rules and NFL protocols” observed Rhule
Photo Credit: Associated Press
Assuming that the Panthers are able to experience something closer to a ‘normal’ NFL offseason this year, however, it is clear that they are very much entering it with a sense of expectation with regards to their ability to make real progress. The Panthers are also not short on players with a chance to take a real step.
As good as Jeremy Chinn and Derrick Brown were last year, both showed significant improvement over the course of the season and both also have the athletic ability to get better still. If one or both of them can take yet another step this offseason then they have a chance to be a major force for the Panthers moving forwards. While the rest of the Panthers’ rookies saw less playing time, both Yetur Gross-Matos and Bravvion Roy were able to show real flashes as rotation pieces, with Gross-Matos in particular clearly having the potential to take yet further steps forwards.
This potential for growth also exists outside of the 2020 draft class.
Greg Little and Dennis Daley have both shown flashes of talent in limited playing time, in part due to injury admittedly, and could be called upon for bigger roles as the Panthers look to rebuild their offensive line. Ian Thomas has yet to turn the promising signs he showed as a rookie into consistent production and while Donte Jackson and Jermaine Carter both played at a high level down the stretch last year, both will want to take yet further strides as they enter the final years of their rookie deals.
While it would be unreasonable to expect all of these players to take a significant step forward this offseason, there is a lot of talent on this roster that has yet to shine as brightly and as consistently as they have shown the talent to. While the players themselves obviously bear some responsibility for that, the coaching staff also can also make a massive impact on young players, for better or for worse.
If the Panthers really want to become the developmental franchise that Matt Rhule has spoken about, then this offseason offers both a huge opportunity and a huge test of their abilities.
(Top image via Brandon Todd/Carolina Panthers)
