2021 Draft Day 3 Transcripts

Sir Purr

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Mar 16, 2019
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Panthers head coach Matt Rhule and general manager Scott Fitterer


Opening Comments


Fitterer:
I just want to say what a great job all of our scouts, all of coaches, really the entire organization, anyone that walks in the building and is associated with the Panthers, really committed to this and really put forth a lot of effort. Our scouts were all over the country this year. A lot of school calls. A lot of days away from home in the spring. Coaches the same. Coaching the Senior Bowl. All the time they spent on Zooms. Calling the players. Evaluating. They went above and beyond. I couldn't be happier with all of the work that they've done. I do have to say, I had so much fun sitting here with Coach Rhule this week. Great guy to sit next to. A lot of fun. I really enjoyed the experience. Really easy to work with. It's fun when you have a coach that can evaluate. He knows how to recruit, evaluate. Just the leadership. I can't thank him enough.


What is the confidence level in Sam Darnold and the Panthers quarterback situation?


Rhule:
We brought Sam here because we believe that he can win for us. When we look at him over his last three years, we see a guy with tons of potential. We see a guy that we think in our situation, in our offense is going to do really good things. And we have a lot of faith in PJ Walker, we have a lot of faith in Will Grier, so we think we have a really healthy quarterback situation. It should be fun from here. All I want Sam to do is just take it one day at a time. Everything for him doesn't have to be a referendum on whether he's a great quarterback or not. He just needs to come into the building and work every day. I believe the quarterback position is really, really important, but I also believe great teams win. I think Sam is going to be as good as the guys around him, and we've tried to put a lot of really good players around him. I'm excited to have him. I'm excited for him to be with us day‐in and day‐out and ready to get to work with him.


Why did the Panthers feel comfortable trading and moving back in the fourth round?


Fitterer:
Looking at the board as we came back in this morning, looking at players. Coach, Pat (Stewart), Coop (Evan Cooper) and I and a few other guys got together. We evaluated players and we thought we could drop down and still get several players we liked while acquiring picks, which helps us later in the draft. The whole thing about doing this is putting yourself in a position to get the players that you want and building depth on your roster, and I thought we did that.


What is the Panthers process for evaluating the character of draft prospects?


Fitterer:
We're very thorough in what we do. We vet all these players. Our scouts go in and talk to everybody. We do background checks. Everybody drops sometimes for different reasons. Maybe they don't even drop. Maybe just the media assumes they are going to go higher. But we feel comfortable with all the players we took. We like them as people. We know people make mistakes when they are young, and we expect them to grow up. I made mistakes, and I know a lot of people out there did. But we trust these players. We know who these people are, and we look forward to growing with them.


What were the Panthers trying to do offensively in the draft?


Rhule:
To be clear, I didn't say just the offense. I said the team. I think Joe Brady is great. When we drafted Jaycee (Horn), his point was every time we get the ball back, that's one more possession for the offense. That's one more play for Sam (Darnold). I believe a team wins. You need to have great quarterback play, but a great team helps a great quarterback. We came in, established some needs. We felt like we needed a running back. We felt like we needed to have some big, powerful guys on the offensive line. And we felt like we needed some weapons at receiver. But at the end of the day we also knew that we wanted to go by the board and take the best available players. It's unique. Thirty two teams all have 32 different boards. I know when you watch it on TV, you're hearing it as if there is one board, but we all see things a little bit differently. But we just wanted to get as many good players in the building as possible. We thought we were going to find a lot of value late. When Scott made the decision at the start of the day to trade back (to 126) and we ended up drafting Chuba (Hubbard), we would have picked Chuba at 109. But luckily for us, it was a gamble that he took, and it got back there, and we were able to get him and acquire picks. We just want to get as many good players as possible at all positions. Then we just believe that you get a bunch of good players here, eventually the team figures out how to win together.


Were there any trades that were precipitated by players the Panthers wanted being drafted right before their pick?


Fitterer:
We didn't get in a position where we lost our guy right in front of us. It's just part of the process. I've been there when it's happened before. It's been kind of a gut punch, but that didn't happen today.


Was long snapper Thomas Fletcher drafted to replace JJ Jansen?


Fitterer:
We just believe in competition. We're going to bring him in. JJ has been here a long time and has done a great job. I saw him all the time down in the lunch room and in the building. He's an absolutely great guy. We're bringing in Fletcher to come in and compete with him.


Talk about your wife texting you to draft running back Chuba Hubbard from Oklahoma State:


Rhule:
I love my wife dearly, but I take Scott's opinion, and Scott takes my opinion. We came in this morning early and had several players in a clump that we liked. But at 109 Chuba would have been our pick. We think he was a dynamic player in 2019 who had two injuries last year that he had to rehab during COVID. It was just a hard time, a unique time, and he played through them. He was tough enough and cared enough about his teammates to play on a high ankle sprain, so it wasn't the same level of production. But this is a guy at one point I think was training as an Olympic‐type sprinter, a track and field guy. Some people have said, how fast is he? He's really fast and he's a really good player. Made the decision to move back, knowing that it could be him or a couple of other guys. The board fell the way that it fell. We got him. Julie, being a coach's wife, she's sat through a lot of games, seen a lot of people. It's funny. I had one former executive, a guy on TV, text me. It's pretty simple. When you play against guys and you hate playing against them, they're people someday you want to put on your team. That wasn't from my experience against him. That was from the tape and all the stuff we did on Chuba. We think what he can be is really special moving forward.


Was there one pick the Panthers were surprised to get?


Fitterer:
I don't know (if) surprised. I think we were pleased with a lot of the picks where we got good value guys. I don't think there's one that just jumps out. I think we're really happy with where we got the guys.


Rhule: I think one of the things that's interesting is we spent the time as a staff. When I say staff, not as a coaching staff, as an organization – like Linda O'Hora, Morgan Fleming, our digital team, our equipment (team). We all went down to Mobile and worked. During COVID, people put themselves out there. If you look at our picks, Keith Taylor was at the Senior Bowl, Deonte Brown was on our team at the Senior Bowl, Shi Smith was at the Senior Bowl, Thomas Fletcher was at the Senior Bowl. We had a chance to really get to know these guys and be around them and see them interact. That's just a credit to the entire organization and all the people whose names you don't hear. We all work for one goal, and I think it helped us.


What does running back Chuba Hubbard bring to the team that you didn't already have going into the draft?


Rhule:
Just another player. We have everything in Christian McCaffrey. We really like Rodney Smith. We really like Reggie Bonnafon. We like those players. We wanted to add another young back that could bolster that room. We saw last year you need depth at that position. We went through a lot of guys. Having another guy that's a home run threat that can catch the ball out of the backfield. Our special teams (coaches) were very convicted that they could use Chuba. I think he provides a lot of versatility. A big part of being an NFL running back is being a tremendous contributor on special teams, and Chuba can do that as well. I'm very excited about that pick.


What value did the Panthers get in defensive tackle Davyion Nixon from Iowa in the fifth round?


Fitterer:
We really liked him, the tape watching him. I thought we just sat back, not only for him but for all the picks. Just let the board work and come to us instead of us chasing players. It just got to a point (where) we couldn't pass him. He was too good.


What position will defensive back Keith Taylor from Washington play?


Rhule:
We see Keith as a corner. A 17‐game season, the people that we have to face, we're going to have to have tremendous depth on the defensive line and in the secondary. Those are the two places where injuries show up in a long season, and it's really hard to replace. Keith to me is a true bump‐and‐run, press corner. He's 6‐4, he ran a 4.4, so I think with that versatility he's going to be able to cover tight ends, cover wide outs, just kind of move all around. He's a young player. We'll get him here and we'll see exactly what he does best for us at this early stage.


What drives value on the Panthers draft board?


Fitterer:
From a scouting standpoint, we scout the player as a person, as the athlete and we grade them overall. Then we get the coaches involved, and they tell us the fit. That's what drives the value on our board. How we place them based on the roles they would play – year one, year two, year three. Do we see them as a rotation player? Do we see them as a starter? Do we see them as a depth level? That's what really drives us. It's a process that's a year long, and coaches and scouts are involved. That's how we figure out the value.


Rhule: I would agree with what Scott said. I think when you take a guy in the top 10, you're hoping to get an impact starter. As you go further down the draft, those things change. The thing that's different is as we look at each player, we have a medical grade on them that no one else sees. There are some guys that are really good players, but they might slide, or you might not take them because of their medical grade just because of injuries or the potential for future things to happen. We have intelligence testing. We have height, weight speed. We have all these things. So not everything is always out there. People value different things differently. The biggest thing is what role they play in your organization. That's the value. If they're going to come in and compete to start or if they're going to come in and be a rotational player or sub‐start or if they are going to be a special teams player. Those are the things that we try to communicate back and forth, and from there you establish this is what the value is. There is a concept sometimes out there of value where you could have gotten this guy later or you could have gotten him here. It really comes down to if you think a guy is a starter and you draft him to be a starter and he is a starter, then you got the right value. I think that is why Scott was so disciplined about letting the board fall to us. We think this guy is here. Let's not chase him. Let's get him where we think we should get him.


Why was important to acquire more picks during the draft?


Rhule:
Last year's experience was great. I thought our draft last year was great. I just think historically some teams get a lot more picks. The Panthers have averaged six‐point some over the last however many years. Coming into year two of where we are, we saw a lot of good players on the board that we liked. We weren't going to pass on a player we were really convicted on, but if you're sitting there and there's two or three players you know can help you and you have a chance to trade back and know you're still going to get one of those, then we added one. I think we started this draft with six picks, then we added two compensatory, so we had eight and finished with I can't do the math one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. Eleven. To me it just creates competition. It creates competition within the locker room, it allows us to have a lot of depth, and we still got guys that we truly, truly believe in.
 
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