The Carolina Panthers are having a really tough time trying to find themselves a quarterback. So there’s no need to shove their noses in it.
But, Bill Polian did it anyway.
As part of his comparison between the Panthers and the Cincinnati Bengals on Monday, Joseph Person of The Athletic gauged the opinion of the Pro Football Hall of Fame executive. And Polian — who served as Carolina’s general manager from 1995 to 1997 — said the team’s current quarterback in Sam Darnold is “universes apart” from AFC champion Joe Burrow.
“The quarterback’s the most important guy,” Polian said. “He handles the ball on every play. And if you look at Joe Burrow, he makes up for a multitude of sins because he gets the ball out of his hands so quickly, processes so quickly, he’s so accurate.”
Although he might’ve been a bit off a time or two on his quarterback evaluations, Polian does know about timely roster construction. After all, he did build the Panthers into the NFC Championship game in just their second year of existence.
Unfortunately, though, he probably doesn’t see the Panthers getting anywhere close to that run as long as Darnold is under center.
“And now you see against Kansas City some mobility that most people didn’t know was there,” he also said to Person. “So he makes up for the sins of an offensive line that gets him sacked nine times. Plus, to say nothing of being tough as nails to survive that. The Panthers’ quarterback doesn’t have any of those attributes, or at least not to the level of Joe Burrow.”
Seeing as though one is a few days away from playing in the Super Bowl and the other is at home after a 5-12 season, there are definitely different levels to this.
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