During a brief appearance on SiriusXM Radio’s “The Opening Drive” Wednesday, Panthers’ general manager Dave Gettleman put his first-round pick in some pretty good company.

When asked to compare Kelvin Benjamin to another receiver, Gettleman told Ross Tucker and Bob Papa, “You don’t want to put undue pressure on the kid, but when I watched him, I thought I was watching a young Plaxico (Burress).”

On the surface, a 6-5, 232 Burress and 6-5, 240 Benjamin analogy makes sense. But Gettleman was unlikely just throwing out an easy comparison. He helped bring Burress to the Giants in 2005, and while his career was later derailed by legal trouble, many forget how good Burress once was.

As far as first impressions go, Benjamin made a good one during Carolina’s rookie minicamp last weekend. He stuck out at the most-talented player on the field, and his spectacular one-handed catch Saturday made his general manager playfully clutch his heart.

“He made some OMG catches in the rookie minicamp,” Gettleman said Wednesday.

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OTHER NOTABLE QUOTES

On pre-draft criticisms of Benjamin:

“There’s so much time between the combine and the draft, these guys get raked through the coals. It’s almost too much what people are doing to some of these kids.”

On Panthers’ current salary cap situation:

“You don’t want to constantly chase your tail, and what we’re trying to do is get the cap under control ,and we’ve made progress, we’ve got more to go, but we’re getting there. And we’re going to get there sooner rather than later.”

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