The Panthers are making a mistake by holding onto Brian Burns
The Carolina Panthers are having a rough season right now. How rough? Besides being winless, the Panthers are struggling to get anything on their offense or defense going and they're staring down the barrel of being the NFL's first 17 loss team. At least the team has their first round pick next year right? Oh […]
The Carolina Panthers are having a rough season right now. How rough? Besides being winless, the Panthers are struggling to get anything on their offense or defense going and they're staring down the barrel of being the NFL's first 17 loss team.
At least the team has their first round pick next year right? Oh wait, that's right, they traded that pick to the Chicago Bears so they could have the opportunity to draft Bryce Young with the first overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft. That could be a problem.
Now there's two ways to solve this. The ball is in your court on one and then in the court across the street in the other.
The one where the ball is out of their court is where they way overpay in a trade for a first round pick closer to the draft and mortgage their future even more down the road. How many times have we seen teams do this?
The easier move is that the Panthers could trade Pro Bowl edge Brian Burns at the trade deadline on Halloween and get back a nice haul that would more than likely include a first round pick or possibly two. On top of that, they get to save a lot of money in their pocket instead of making Burns one of the top, if not the top, paid edge rushers in the entire NFL.
For an example, the highest paid guy right now is Nick Bosa and he's making $34 million a year. I don't know if Burns can get that, but he can get around that. Wouldn't it be sweet to go into free agency in March with all of that money instead of spending that money on one player?
Here's the problem. That's not going to happen for the Panthers becasue according to ESPN's Dan Graziano, the Panthers are telling teams that they are not trading Burns.
Now the Panthers have put themselves in a situation where they are the worst team in the league and they will have no first round picks to help continue their build in 2024 and they now have to figure out how to pay Burns top NFL dollar while also continuing their build with only the 12th most cap space in the league. Most of which is going to be tied up by Burns.
Unless they franchise tag Burns. Which is always a great way to piss a player off and spend the summer going back and forth on potential hold outs and what not before you finally crack under the pressure and pay way more than you ever wanted to just so you can make sure that one player stays on the roster. This happens every year and teams don't learn from it. Those teams usually just keep on losing.
I'm not saying that trading Burns leads to wins, but trading Burns could lead to a lot more roster building opportunity with more draft picks and more money. Things that rebuilds desperately need.
There's still time to make a move and maybe they will before the 4PM ET deadline on Halloween night. It wouldn't be the first time a team traded a player they told everyone they weren't trading.
