Panthers still looking for more positional flexibility

Sir Purr

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Mar 16, 2019
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"If you find a great one, and they're great at a specific thing, that's what you'd try to do," Holcomb said. "I mean, if there's a Luke Kuechly sitting in front of us, we have to take Luke Kuechly."


But those kinds of players are rare, so improvising might be part of what they have to do.


The law of supply and demand kicks in at a certain point, as college offenses dictate the way teams try to defend them. So with more schools spreading the field, there are more players with coverage abilities than there might be three-down linebackers who can thump against the run and drop and cover a tight end with equal success.


"We may be looking for a certain type of player, a certain body type, a certain skill set, just because of how the offensive game is more than anything," Holcomb said. "You've still got to stop the run, but it's a pass-first league. So you try to get as many athletic guys on the field as you can that can develop into pretty good run defenders, but who can cover running backs and tight ends."


Having guys who can do more than one thing helps in several ways, including game-day roster construction and depth.


But having players who can do a lot of things can also keep opponents guessing, which is part of the strategic challenge of the game.


"If we can coach 'em up, we can use them like chess pieces," Holcomb said. "The offense has to figure out, where is Brian Burns going to line up? Is he down, back? What's he doing? Is he on the left? Is he on the right? Where's Jeremy Chinn? . . .


"You want to find really good athletes, coach them up, and then shape your defensive system around them to highlight and accentuate the things they do really well and let their athleticism flow and go make plays."


The Chinn experiment has also changed the way the Panthers consider evaluations, and seeing players in Mobile gives them a chance to see what level a player's ceiling might be.


"In these settings, you can stretch these guys out and put them in different spots," Holcomb said. "You see what they can do, as opposed to just seeing some of the things they can't do from an evaluation standpoint."


The list of things Chinn couldn't do turned out to be quite short. So now they're taking a longer look at a number of players to see what else they might find.
 
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