FanPost

Who Will Not Be a Panther Next Year?

Here is a list of all of our 2020 Free Agents: https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/free-agents/2020/all/carolina-panthers/. The most notable ones would be: Gerald McCoy, Mario Addison, Daryl Williams, Torrey Smith, Bruce Irvin, Ross Cockrell, Jarius Wright, Shaq Thompson, Vernon Butler, Chris Hogan, Kyle Love, and James Bradberry.

We could easily let the majority of these free agents walk without any consequences, but there are three who stand out as core players: Mario Addison, Shaq Thompson, and James Bradberry. We are projected to only have about $28 million to spend next year, and as we all know roughly 5-10 million of that always goes to our draft class, so that's not much money to throw around.

If we're lucky we could just barely resign Addison, Thompson, and Bradberry, but we would have to let the rest walk. But let's assume that we want to resign as many of our Free Agents as possible, and that Addison, Thompson, and Bradberry have career years where they would want to be paid like a top 5 player at their respective positions. We could also try to save some money for the eventual extensions of Cam, Luke, KK, and Turner coming up in the next few years. So if we had to let one core player leave, Addison, Bradberry, or Thompson, who would we let walk away?

Addison is getting up there in age, but he's still productive, and he's our most experienced D-lineman. I know a lot of you aren't a fan of Thompson, but he's still a former 1st round pick, and we have so much confidence in him that we were willing to let the all-time-great Thomas Davis leave. We also don't have much depth at his position. Bradberry has been our most consistent CB since Josh Norman left, and considering how inconsistent our secondary has been since we let Norman leave, it would seem like a wise decision to resign him.

I really think we would have to use a 1st round pick on the position of the player we let walk away. Not only would there be a hole at their position, but we don't have many needs for next year's draft, so their position would by default become our biggest need. So assuming Thompson, Addison, and Bradberry all have career years to the point where they can reasonably ask to be payed like a top 5 player at their respective positions, who would you let leave in Free Agency? Please let me know who and why in the comments.

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