Using Gettlemanisms to Learn From 2014’s Receiver Makeover

Bill VothJanuary 28th, 2015News, Senior Bowl32 Comments

The Carolina Panthers didn’t want to completely tear down their receiving corps last offseason, but that’s how it played out. A year later, it’s helpful to look back at what happened with the wideouts to further understand how general manager Dave Gettleman approaches free agency.

As I explained last week after my interview with Gettleman at the Senior Bowl, we spent nearly the entire 30 minutes talking football philosophy. The hope was to pass on nuggets that would be helpful to remember as this offseason unfolds.

A few of you commented that Gettleman’s quotes about free agency and the draft weren’t all that new, and that’s true. The problem is, many fans will still get their hearts set on a free agent wideout or assume Gettleman already has a left tackle picked out for the draft. If and when those things don’t happen, those same fans will be upset or confused, so some things may be worth repeating.

His quotes in this post aren’t earth-shattering, either, but if you want to keep trying to get into the head of the man, hopefully they help.

So back to the Great Receiver Rebuild of 2014. Steve Smith obviously wasn’t a financial decision, so for the sake of this discussion, let’s put him aside. The two guys to focus on are Brandon LaFell and Ted Ginn. Before getting into numbers, here’s a Gettlemanism:

“The litmus test for signing a player to a free agent contract or drafting a guy is: How quickly are you upset at what you did? If you sign a free agent and you’re upset before the ink is dry, you made a mistake. If you draft a guy and you’re upset five minutes after the pick, you made a mistake. The goal is to avoid that.”

View image | gettyimages.com

According to league sources, the Panthers were interested in re-signing LaFell and Ginn when they became free agents last spring. But:

“This is why you have to really evaluate your players first. You place a value on them,” Gettleman said.

To be clear, he’s not talking about LaFell, Ginn or any other specific players in these quotes. It’s all hypotheticals.

So after the 2013 season, the Panthers evaluated their 22 unrestricted free agents, including LaFell and Ginn. They were then assigned a value. Gettleman would have brought them back at the prices he thought they were worth, but other teams offered more. Each received three-year deals, with LaFell getting a reported $9 million from the Patriots and Ginn $9.75 million from the Cardinals.

You could argue LaFell’s production was worth $3 million this year, but Ginn’s wasn’t. Ultimately, Gettleman held his line and let others pay what he felt was above-value.

Of course, while an entire receiving corps was leaving, the Panthers had to sign some guys to replace the departed. One obvious candidate appeared to be Hakeem Nicks, who was in New York while Gettleman was in the Giants’ front office.

Gettleman talked to Nicks, and there was some mutual interest, but the Colts were willing to pay a reported $3.5 million for one season. Gettleman wasn’t.

Here’s another Gettlemanism:

“Say you have an unrestricted free agent. I’m really interested in this UFA. He can help us. I don’t turn around and say, ‘We’re going to pay this UFA X amount of dollars.’ I’m going to ask, ‘Where does the UFA fit at his position?’

“If that UFA is a second-tier player, I’m going to pay that UFA second-tier money. I’m going to pay market value. I’m not going to pay top-tier money if the UFA doesn’t warrant it. That fails the litmus test, doesn’t it? It’s about value.”

View image | gettyimages.com

Would LaFell have been a better option than Jerricho Cotchery this past season? Probably. Would Ginn have been helpful as a returner? Yup. Would Nicks have been more productive than Jason Avant? Sure. But were the three worth a combined $9.75 million? That doesn’t seem like a good value.

Next week, in part three from my conversation with Gettleman, we’ll get into the Panthers’ offensive philosophy, plus Cam Newton as a pocket passer.

jamos14

Agree with all your points. LaFell probably was worth the 3 million but hindsight is 20/20.
FriscoKTank

BlackBlueReview This was a terrific article.
MangoPanther

BlackBlueReview I like the way this guy thinks and wants to build the team. But I hope for Cam’s sake, he has a plan at LT, value or no value. We may have an LT fall to us in the 1st round but the percentage on 1st round tackles panning out is low, see Luke Joeckel and Eric Fisher. LaFell did not warrant that kind of money from what we all saw of him in the past few yrs. Now it could be a product of the offense we ran and the QBs we had. He is obviously benefiting from Tom Brady being his QB.
RLeeEarl

MangoPanther BlackBlueReview

My reading of this (not paying above a FA’s talent level) seems to throw cold water on the chances of him overpaying or a FA LT like King Dunlap. I don’t expect Gettleman to offer more than $5-7 million a year, for 3-4 years, but he may get offers of $7-9 million, for up to 5 years. Likewise, I don’t expect him to sign the only other LT who scored a positive grade from ProFootballFocus.com either. Mostly because the Titans Pro Bowl LT Michael Roos will be returning from mid-season microfracture knee surgery, at age 33. He may have no choice but to find their starting LT through the early rounds of the draft.

I also don’t see Gettleman paying $10+ million for any of the top 4 FA WR’s, because they have likely reached their max level of production, and may soon regress. Once again, the draft offers good WR’s in the 1st or 2nd rounds, at bargain prices. My personal favorite is Phillip Dorsett.
MangoPanther

RLeeEarl BlackBlueReview I agree..but if he is not willing to pay a good LT in FA then he needs to sign Byron Bell (as bad as he is) and then draft an LT. I am not Bell’s biggest fan but I would not trust the blindside to a rookie either unless he is one of the top ones. Based on what I am reading, WR seems to be a deep position again, so if we can get a good receiver in round 2/3/4 then we are good. I am not sold on Stephen Hill suddenly being this good WR. One thing I can say, I trust Gettleman’s judgment with drafting players, he may have drafted a bad player here and there but he never reaches a la Hurney (Armanti Edwards)
Xavier C Anderson

Ernest, Jason, Travis.,.by GOD, i think he’s got it.
sdanner52

PanthersAnon PantherNasty Cat_Chronicles clyde1784 JellyIntoAJam JayRay19 ncsujen CarolinaAbbie TMuhammad23 http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2342562-have-the-carolina-panthers-already-targeted-their-next-left-tackle
PanthersAnon

sdanner52 PantherNasty Cat_Chronicles clyde1784 JellyIntoAJam JayRay19 ncsujen CarolinaAbbie 1 instance where winning div cost us
PanthersAnon

sdanner52 PantherNasty Cat_Chronicles clyde1784 JellyIntoAJam JayRay19 ncsujen tho I wouldn’t trade div title for high pick
Jason Shaw

I would agree but when he says the same thing about that atrocious offensive line, the question is will the person be worth xdollars this year because the NFL is really a league of guaranteed bonuses not contracts. Taking the personal aspect out of it, how much would I pay for this persons performance this year and next, past that I’m cutting them if they underperform or keeping them if it is a good value. If they never made the playoffs how would you view his gettlemanisms. Let’s be clear he isn’t Pete Carroll, bill belichick with these picks.
Xavier C Anderson

I would say such..BECAUSE one thing is for certain…this team keeps getting better TALENT wise because of the theories of gettleman and i know it’s hard being a raiders fan to see STEP by STEP the method to gentleman’s madness. NOW u seem to be the ONLY that just realized our offensive line needs work….but only a WISE piece or 2 away. With that being said…with his mindset..he will get it done. YOU SEE IT, U FEEL IT & YOU KNOW IT! U can bring your hind parts out of the closet…imma make u apart of PANTHERNATION YET…hell i may even take u to a game…and besides…,what else do u have to root for?…#keeppounding
clyde1784

sdanner52 PanthersAnon PantherNasty Cat_Chronicles JellyIntoAJam JayRay19 ncsujen CarolinaAbbie Easily my favorite tackle in class.
sdanner52

PanthersAnon PantherNasty Cat_Chronicles clyde1784 JellyIntoAJam JayRay19 ncsujen Me either.
sdanner52

clyde1784 PanthersAnon PantherNasty Cat_Chronicles JellyIntoAJam JayRay19 ncsujen CarolinaAbbie Him and Trey would be happy.
IndiaJovonovich

Really like Gettleman’s approach to building the team. Solid, not flashy, and looking out for the long-term interests of the team and spending dollars unwisely for an attempt at a quick fix.
Jason Shaw

I will believe it when I see it. He can say what he wants but he has been trying to rebuild for two years and he has the “bad” luck of riverboat Ron emerging and having by far the crappiest division since the year Seattle went when they were under .500. Cam is going to get mauled and your secondary needs help. Benjamin did well but not great and lafell goes to the pats and lights it up and I won’t say anything about smith sr. #keeppoundingyourheadagainstthewall Hahahahaha
Xavier C Anderson

Description of the raiders is needed please!! Because what u just described sounded like a panther insider knowledge??
Jason Shaw

The raiders brass is trying to save their jobs. Mckenzie actually had a pretty ok ship with the o coordinator for the bengals but try to build through old stars. Khalil Mack and Carr were great pickups in the draft, we need to go young build on our lines. D line has good talent o line not so much and stop trying to go for the homerun and build a hard working culture. Don’t really like del rio but he will have a hard nose work ethic and we need that righ now
Xavier C Anderson

AGAIN….YOU SOUND LIKE A ….
qdog1125

Gettleman came in and blew up a 12-4 team, making them the laughing stock of play off teams. Not only did he deplete the WR corps, he fired the team icon with the grace that one might wipe his nose. Steve Smith had the type year that would have helped the offense generally, Cam and Benjamin specifically. It is inexcusable how he sent Steve packing without a face to face meeting. He talks about value, yet he paid Smith, while he played for another team. On top of that, he gave Belichick a RB he drafted for free.

Gettleman conveniently omits the fact that he hastened the retirement of Jordan Gross and RT Wharton. He also let OL starter, Handgartner walk, all while knowing his starting QB was recovering from surgery. He allowed Cam to get beat down, while insisting “Cam must win games now”. The guy is an embarrassment and there’s no doubt why he languished in the NYG front office and was repeated passed over for GM jobs.

After destroying the team, he went into hiding, until now. He wants us to believe all his personnel moves were money-based and that is just not true.
stevenjanowski

qdog1125 I’d like to politely disagree with a equally long, possibly longer response.
Gettleman didn’t come in with a 12-4 team, Gettleman made a 12-4 team, he inherited a team that was 1-5, and made them 7-9, 12-4, and 8-8-1. Gettleman’s overall record as a gm is thus 26-16-1 (Much higher record than any other GM we’ve ever had.)
Letting go of Smitty, while sad for fans who have seen him do great things for us was a business and personal decision for him. As an avid fan I look not only at Smith’s stats, but the stats of those around him. I look at the fact that when Smith was getting into his later years with the panthers, the panthers drafted a large amount of wide receivers with early round picks. If you can name a single receiver who panned out while with the panthers under Smith’s “leadership” I’d love to hear your argument (hint: there isn’t one). I’d argue Benjamin would never have had the same success he had this year under smith, because smith demands the ball, and doesn’t facilitate growth for the young guys under his wing.
He gave bellicheck a late 7th round pick, stop whining.
Cam playing injured was a coaching decision, and the right one. We stopped running the read option thus trying not to get him injured while playing. All of this was on Rivera and his coordinators not Gettleman. As for the makeshift offensive line, I think a combination of injuries, as well as a smart business decision by Gettleman was the rational here. 1. You have to keep in mind that Gettleman inherited a bad cap situation and pushed veterans to lower the cap hit (see gross and wharton). When they weren’t going to take the risk of less money while exposing to themselves to injury, Gettleman decided to see how the season played out and let the coaches do their job of coaching up our young guys. 2. He’s in a negotiation with Cam right now, if Cam doesn’t play well (no matter what the reason) he doesn’t have to pay cam as much in his next contract, that would be good for him. His goal was never to get Cam injured, make the panthers lose, or kill the team, he’s trying to build for the future.

If you’d rather take the first 20 years of the panthers than the 2.5 years we’ve had Gettleman, I suggest you become a Raiders or Browns fan.
RLeeEarl

stevenjanowski qdog1125

8-8-1, why aren’t you counting the Panthers final playoff loss?
stevenjanowski

RLeeEarl stevenjanowski qdog1125 You’re right, sorry, 8-9-1, which makes him as a career GM 26-17-1
DonUssery

I agree with some of getty’s logic about not overpaying for second tier talent but smitty was the heart and soul of the offense. He would’ve won us atleast two more games this past year by taking pressure of of olsen and benjamin. Now we probably would’ve still lost to seattle but they would’ve earned it. Also starting bell at left tackle and chandler at right was a catastrophe! And those old players in the secondary cost us games too
.he finally got rid of some of them but reacted too late. I hope he doesn’t experiment this offseason but get us playmakers on both sides of the ball.
JagGill

Gettlemanisms = Stupidity!

Steve Smith should have never been handled that way. Shame on the owner as well, for a man, a player and as face of the franchise who has done so much for the Panthers. If Steve Smith was a Panther we would have done better. Last year’s team (12-4) was better and PASSIONATE. All this idiot had to do was fill in some “holes” and not start gutting the team. I watched the Seahawks loss and no “player” had fire… Smitty would have brought that during the Playoffs. He would have knocked some sense into some of the youngers players at times as well.

You don’t cut the leaders and beasts from your team, period. You don’t cut the chemistry from your team. You can’t build that, it takes personalities, the right fit and patience. Legion of “Whom” had no flashy elite players – just a lot of heart. Speaking about the Legion…. I was at the Bills game in 2013 when we lost that game 24-23 (a game we should have won). Apparently after that game, Smitty had some harsh words for the team to get them motivated. They ended up only losing 2 more games after that. That’s leadership, chemistry, that’s fight…. that is contagious…. players start believing in each other and playing with passion. That can’t be replaced. This Dumbass GM will never realize that.

Oh and this GM’s Long Term Approach? How long? We were so close last year… another 5? 10? years to get to a Superbowl. I don’t buy into this GM. This guy is a crook. No balls, no direct approach… he will be out of town in the next few seasons.
BTaylor1

JagGill
JagGill
You are so right on every point you made. It’s disgusting that a new
GM can come in and, as you say, gut a good team that had every
likelihood of being far better the next year and bring it to its knees
for a time and yet he still maintains self-righteously that this is the
way to do it.

What we are seeing here is a prime
example of why the corporate world is so right NEVER to make someone who
came up through accounting CEO, EVP, etc.
Corporations,
for all their flaws, know that decisions that are solely financial will
destroy the business better than any other thing, and that leadership,
group chemistry, and determination to succeed can’t be replaced by
dollars.

As for Gettleman’s defense of cap space
issues, there’s some truth to it, but it doesn’t explain the stupid
decisions he made. He paid $5 million for Steve Smith to be one of the
Ravens’ (a better team’s) top receivers, in fact, their best receiver
much of the time, and Smith was still going strong during the playoffs
with over 100 yards and big catches in their narrow loss to Seattle. He
outplayed all of our receivers, certainly Benjamin and even DE Greg
Olsen, whom the Panthers don’t seem to like to get the ball to as long
as Benjamin is on the field.Gettleman also ran Jordan Gross
into retirement and gutted the O-line, leaving Cam to be beaten half to
death and take the blame and then there’s the secondary. After all that,
it was reported Gettleman never used more than $6 million in available
cap space. so it wasn’t all about money. It looked like getting rid of
strong personalities, who also happened to be leaders, i.e. Smith and
Gross, and being just plain cheap and as far as I’m concerned, dishonorable toward the players. That must be great for morale.
BTaylor1

stevenjanowski qdog1125 Smith did not hog the ball. For reasons beyond understanding, once Rivera was here, they stopped giving it to him as much, even when he was wide open and no one else was.
You think it was smart to pay $5 million so the Raven’s, a better team already, could make Smith one of their top receivers, most of the time the top receiver? He was top the first half of the season, had a slump, but then came back strong toward the end, and was still catching, some of those catches clutch plays, for over 100 yards in the close playoff loss to Seattle? He outplayed all of our receivers, even DE Greg Olsen and Benjamin, who only caught for 1,000 yards because he was the target most of the time, even when Olsen was playing better. Get 10 targets, drop 8 and catch 2 and you’re a hero, because no one else is getting the balls to do better Nevermind the fire Smith brought to the team, that we sadly lacked or the his superior states, you’re entitled to your opinion, but I think that was an astonishingly stupid decision.

And how smart was taking away Cam’sO-Line protection, especially forcing Gross into retirement, and to let the secondary walk when he knew Cam would be recovering from surgery and even able to practice with the team, until nearly game time and then limited, mostly passing practice
Dumb, dumb, dumb and worthy of firing in my opinion. He also sounds like an untrustworthy and dishonorable man, as corny as that might seem. All he does is hide and let everyone else take the blame and treat players like
BTaylor1

IndiaJovonovich Such a solid approach in a corporate world would have had him fired last summer.
BTaylor1

I would be surprised if you find many who agree with you that Panthers 2014-15 are better talent-wise than Panthers 2013-14. I certainly don’t. Can’t think of a single position where they are better, although some of the late season guys will do well and Benjamin will eventually be great if he can learn to stop dropping balls that are put in his hands, stop playing in the middle of plays, stop looking bumfuzzled like he doesn’t know what to do or what the play is, and stop having games where he drops 8 of 10 for no apparent reason in several cases.

You do know Smith outplayed any WR and Greg Olsen (why don’t they give Olsen the ball more when Benjamin is bumblefingered) and the Panther paid $5 million for him to take that to Baltimore and that there’s nobody on the O-line to come close to Jordan Gross who was forced into retirement and that Wharton was a loss, too, don’t you?

That better talent you speak off let Cam get sacked far more than any other QB, up to 9 times in one game and are partly responsible for some of his later injuries. Even sportsbroadcasters often bad-talked gettleman and blamed Rivera, too, for not protecting their franchise QB. The O-line was a joke and for a while the D-line, while not a joke, wasn’t anybody’s idea of a great one as last year’s was.
As for the secondary, for half the year or more, they didn’t even seem to know where their coverage was supposed to be, let alone catch the opponents.
Some improvement!
Next year, maybe, but only if we get some great new talent. But that will cost money and/or judgment, so I’m not holding my breath.
IndiaJovonovich

BTaylor1 IndiaJovonovich Luckily, the Panthers’ salary cap and roster moves are being managed more akin to running GE now rather than Enron.
qdog1125

stevenjanowski qdog1125 You don’t dismantle a 12-4 team. You tweak it. One thing that pundits got right was the team that would lose the most ground this year. It was us and it left everybody scratching their heads.

Do you know any other teams that went from 12 to 7 wins in one year? Oh, and Gettleman didn’t build a 12-4 team. He gets zero credit for that team. That was all on Rivera and the players. This guy was close to having a great team. Can you say that now?
qdog1125

Gettleman is a career pencil pusher who fell into a GM job after 30+ years in the NFL. Remember, he went to his son’s graduation, rather than being in the Panthers’ draft room on draft day. Everybody has a smart phone or tablet. There are ways to be there without being there. He should’ve had his ass at work.

Richard Sherman has to decide whether to be present at his son’s birth or the Super Bowl. There’s no comparison, but no question which one he will choose. Imagine Gettleman giving a player a day off to attend a graduation on game day. Well, he had one job and he took off on draft day. As smart teams get that hot young executive, we get an old guy who entertains with his quips, can’t relate to players and hides when things go bad. There’s a reason it took him so long to become a GM. It’s called lack of competence.

Talent has not been upgraded. Not even close.