I am a Panthers fan and the Sam Darnold trade broke me

I’ve typed out and erased like five ledes for this blog.

The first couple would have either gotten me fired or landed me on some type of FBI watch list. The next few were about how the Panthers have broken me as a fan over the last few years, which nobody actually cares about.

And, really, there’s no setup needed here. The Panthers trading second-, fourth- and sixth-round picks to the Jets for Sam Darnold is the setup. And the punchline is the team immediately picking him up his fifth-year option, guaranteeing him about $19 million in salary in 2022.

This comes a year after the team gave Teddy Bridgewater $33 million guaranteed and two years after the team used a Day 2 pick on Will Grier, who’s thrown as many NFL touchdowns as you have and four more interceptions. Up next on the conveyor belt of mediocre Cam Newton replacements is Darnold, who was the second-best quarterback on the NFL’s second-worst team.

Yay?

I mean, I do get the allure of Darnold. He’s young. He’s athletic. He’s got some arm talent. And the Jets did not really give him a chance to succeed. But he was also outplayed by the corpse of Joe Flacco in 2020 and wasn’t very good in even the most ideal situations.

Sam Darnold will be in a much better situation in Carolina but it's hard to overstate how bad he's been with the Jets. His DVOA/DYAR have gotten worse with each successive year.

Last year, Darnold had just 7.7% passing DVOA from a clean pocket. Only Haskins and Smith were worse.

— Aaron Schatz (@FO_ASchatz) April 5, 2021

The numbers are bad and, outside of a few splash plays, the film isn’t much better. Darnold is still largely the same quarterback he was coming out of USC. The athletic talent is there still there, but so are the questions about his decision-making and accuracy. In other words, he’s a bad quarterback.

Beyond all that, the Panthers gave up more than they probably had to for the right to rehabilitate Darnold’s career. According to NFL Media’s Ian Rapaport, the Panthers were the “sole suitor” for Darnold. ESPN’s Rich Cimini says the Jets had pretty much given up on the idea of keeping Darnold around to sit behind the rookie QB they inevitably draft next month.

#Jets considered idea of keeping Darnold + pairing him with a rookie, source said, but they liked notion of fresh start for all parties. The organization also was cognizant of a potential QB controversy and felt it may have become a distraction. (Probably right about that).

— Rich Cimini (@RichCimini) April 5, 2021

So Carolina was bidding against itself and still ended up sending the equivalent of a late first-round pick to New York for a quarterback who probably would have been available for nothing in the next few weeks. It’s possible the Panthers wanted to get him on the roster before the deadline to pick up a fifth-year option … but that doesn’t really make sense either because if the team offered Darnold an extension that paid him $19 million in 2022, I’d imagine he’d sign it.

It just didn’t make any sense for Carolina to rush this move. The draft is just weeks away, and with the Panthers picking eighth, there’s still a decent chance that one of the top QB prospects slips to them at that spot. Why not wait until after the draft to make the move for Darnold? Maybe Carolina considered Darnold a better option than the prospects in this year’s class, but there is very little evidence to back that up. And Darnold is going to cost the team a lot more money if he does end up being the starter for more than two years.

We’re now headed into Year 2 of the Matt Rhule era and there still isn’t a clear long-term plan in place. Like Bridgewater before him, Darnold will have a year to prove he’s worth a long-term investment. If/when he doesn’t, and the Panthers end up drafting in a similar spot (just outside of QB range) what’s next? What is the plan? Is there a plan?

This team has its fan base caught in this weird loop of mediocrity that really is unique when you look around the league. There is nothing to be excited about in the present. There is nothing to look forward to. There is no reason for hope. If the Bears’ Andy Dalton “QB1” tweet were an NFL franchise, it’d be the Panthers.

What Sam Darnold’s trade to the Panthers means for the NFL Draft