Panthers' Draft Shows Rushing the Passer Reigns Supreme

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"Mel Mayock's" last post got me to thinking about how teams are built, what they do, and why they do it. I'm taking a bit of a bigger-picture look at things here.

How Carolina's Division Influences Their Draft Philosophy

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A wise man once said that the first thing you have to do as a NFL team is win your division.  It's really the only way to control whether you get into the playoffs or not.  Shooting for a wildcard spot leaves team disappointed more often than not. (See the Arizona Cardinals who won 10 games last year and sat home during the playoffs.)  If the Panthers don’t win the NFC South in 2014, Carolina will be competing with the likes of San Francisco or Seattle, along with those Cardinals, and others like the Packers or Bears for those final spots.  Two spots is not a lot.  Now maybe that will change to three spots, but still there will be a lot of quality teams vying for a few spots.

Alternative Carolina Panthers "AfterMock" Draft

The consensus of the 2014 Carolina Panthers draft seems to be that fans like parts of it and don't like others. That much is par for the course, but I think the one thing most of us have in common is that "need" positions on offense weren't addressed adequately. 

Let's take a look at what an "alternative" draft might have looked like, with each of the following picks having been someone on the board AFTER the player we took was picked:

Is the BPA Draft Strategy Really Just BS?

Is the BPA (best player available) draft strategy really just BS? Yea, kind of. No one really thinks that BPA can be applied sterilely in every situation.  If that was the case, GMs would have to take players that wouldn’t start or improve the make-up of their team. The extreme example of a team with a franchise quarterback, like New England or Green Bay, taking a quarterback over a top rated player in a position of need alone dispels sterile application of BPA.

But the Godfather Gettleman has reminded us over and over that is what Carolina plans to do, take the best player available.