Charles Woodson? Make him an offer

The Panthers are apparently in the running for the services for former Green Bay defensive back Charles Woodson. He's ancient by league standards, at age 36, but he would also undeniably improve a secondary that remains one of the team's biggest question marks.

According to The Denver Post, Woodson met with the Broncos Wednesday but left without a contract. He is believed to have an offer already from the Oakland Raiders, his former team, and apparently the Panthers have at least inquired about getting him. Coach Ron Rivera was coy about that Wednesday night.

Why not more NFL-wide interest in Woodson, who has made eight Pro Bowls -- including as recently as 2011? Because he was hampered throughout the 2012 season with a collarbone injury, he will probably still want a healthy salary and he's going to have to cover players who were in elementary school when he first came into the league.

The Panthers went down this road once before, signing a Packer in his late 30s with an enormous reputation and a recent AP NFL Defensive Player of Year award, hoping he could push them to a playoff berth. That was the late Reggie White, and that one didn't work out well. White started every game and was a steady locker room presence, but the team dropped from 8-8 in 1999 to 7-9 the year he played.

But that Panther team in 2000 was not as talented as this one is, and Woodson would be very helpful to a team that released cornerback Chris Gamble in the offseason and has questions at both safety and cornerback (Woodson has played both -- he can play pretty much every position in the secondary, including nickel corner).

If there's any shot at all at getting him -- assuming he is healthy -- the Panthers need to make a serious offer. This is quite an opportunity.

What should Panthers spend DeAngelo savings on?

The Carolina Panthers have done some clever restructuring of running back DeAngelo Williams’ contract, virtually assuring the franchise’s all-time leading rusher will at least be on the roster in 2013 and quite possibly the next two seasons as well.

By reducing Williams’ salary-cap number, the Panthers are now $8.46 million under their adjusted 2013 salary cap number of $126.232 million – these numbers were first reported by Yahoo Sports.

So what do you spend more than $8 million on in the NFL?

Actually, a fair amount of this money will be eaten up when the Panther sign their five draft picks – that’s why having some flexibility this time of year is so important. And it is also important to plan ahead for the inevitable monstrous contract extension offer Cam Newton -- who is signed through the 2014 season under relatively modest rookie contract terms -- is going to receive sometime in the next 6-18 months.

But the two places I would look hardest if I were GM Dave Gettleman right now would be on the offensive line and in the defensive backfield. He should use this savings to upgrade at least one of those positions. I’m not at all convinced the Panthers have quite enough depth (particularly at safety and at offensive tackle, two positions they were not able to address in the draft).

There’s no doubt the Panthers have already overspent at running back, but Gettleman inherited those contracts. He didn’t write them. Williams is getting huge money and only played slightly more than 40 percent of the offensive snaps last year. But in his final game of the season, he also set the franchise’s all-time record with 210 rushing yards in only 21 carries vs. New Orleans. In that game, he ripped off runs of 54 and 65 yards. Williams still has some burst.

Former Panther GM Marty Hurney gave Williams, Jonathan Stewart and Mike Tolbert combined contracts worth north of $100 million. And then Cam Newton led the team in rushing in 2012 – the first quarterback to do so since Donovan McNabb in 2000.

So all this is not ideal, but Gettleman is doing his best with the cards he has been dealt. Williams, now 30 years old, doesn’t have tremendous trade value. This contract restructuring makes it far more palatable to keep him (and tough to release him because of the way the "dead money" would kick in earlier). And the running back position is fraught with the possibility of injury on every play, so having quantity at the position as well as quality is a good idea. I think the Panthers made a good move by restructuring Williams, but to turn it into a great one they have to spend the money they saved very wisely.

Panther Hall of Honor more like crawlspace

With John Kasay's official retirement as a Panther this week, I've gotten a number of fans asking me about the Panthers' "Hall of Honor" policies.

Kasay, the Panthers' all-time leading scorer by more than 1,000 points and as classy a guy as you will ever find in an NFL locker room, should definitely get into it. Right now, the Panthers' "Hall of Honor" is more like a crawlspace. Mike McCormack, the team's first president and a man instrumental in securing the franchise in the first place, was inducted in 1997. The late Sam Mills was inducted in 1998, only about nine months after he retired (and well before he was diagnosed with cancer).

And that's it.

Fifteen years, no individual inductions. Amazing, isn't it? What kind of hall is that exactly? The team did induct its permanent-seat license holders as a group in 2004.

So when I went to Kasay's "one-day contract" retirement party on Tuesday, I wouldn't have been surprised if owner Jerry Richardson had said "John will be our third individual member of the Hall of Honor."

Instead, a Panther spokesman told me that day something I had never heard before -- that the team has a five-year, post-retirement waiting period for players before they are considered.

Now it's quite possible I have just never asked the question before, because this issue rarely comes up. But certainly Mills only waited nine months -- this five-year policy wasn't in force then. The spokesman said it had been enacted at some point in the mid-2000s to "let the dust settle" before such a decision is made.

And who makes the decision? It is basically the 76-year-old Richardson, although he does have input from others. Richardson, incidentally, should be inducted into the hall himself, of course. But I would imagine that induction will be posthumous, because who would want to vote yourself into a hall you control? That will likely be left to the next team owner to do, so that induction hopefully is many years away.

I don't have a problem with the five-year rule. Many sports hall of fames have similar criteria. I do wonder why such a rule is not included in the Panthers' official statement about the hall of honor in their media guide. It should be.

Kasay, for his part, said he had never thought about the hall, didn't play for those kind of honors, didn't know whether he would want a statue of himself outside the stadium and had never had a discussion about it with Richardson one way or the other. According to the rule, Kasay wouldn't be eligible until 2018, since he didn't officially "retire" until this week even though he did not play last year.

So there's your answer, fans. If Kasay goes in, unless the Panthers change their five-year rule (and of course, they could -- it only takes one man to change it) it won't be until about the time the Panthers and the city are again doing that weird mating dance about another "tether" that will keep the team permanently in Charlotte.

Other players could be (and likely have been) considered right now -- Mike Minter, Wesley Walls and Mike Rucker for instance -- while Jake Delhomme and Muhsin Muhammad are still technically ineligible for consideration. Steve Smith should be a shoo-in once he retires but, again, his actual induction will be way down the road. Julius Peppers would be another possibility, but given his acrimonious departure for Chicago would seem less likely.

Kasay, the Super Bowl kickoff and the Hall of Honor

John Kasay was one of the finest gentlemen and best players the Panthers ever employed, and so it was well and good that he signed a one-day contract Tuesday so he could officially retire as a Panther. It's even better that he will remain a part of the Charlotte community as the new athletic director at Charlotte Christian (as well as the football team's special-teams coach).

My favorite stat about Kasay is this: he not only leads the Panthers in scoring, but he is more than 1,000 points ahead of everyone else. Kasay scored 1,482 points in his 16 seasons. Steve Smith is next, with 430.

Kasay remembers the game-winning kicks, yes -- but he also said he liked the "game icers" just as much. Those kicks, when he put a game out of reach and got to enjoy his teammates' reaction for a few more minutes on the sideline, were just as satisfying as the "walk-off kicks," he said.

Almost every Kasay memory that Panther fans have is a positive, because he was so clutch. About the only high-profile one that wasn't? When he hooked a kickoff out of bounds in fourth quarter of the 2003 Super Bowl, with the game tied at 29-all and 1:08 left in regulation. Starting at his own 40 after the kick, Tom Brady got New England into field-goal range and the Panthers lost, 32-29.

Kasay said he "agonized" afterward about that kick, and he knows very well what went wrong.

"I had practiced that kick for years and years and years," said Kasay, who was trying to kick the ball toward the corner to give New England's return man fewer options. "You can try to kick it on a straight line over there. The other way is you can almost bend the ball like in golf... I did both at the same time.... I put some spin on the ball as I aimed over there as well, Because I wanted it to be so perfect. If I had just given myself more of a margin of error… I hit the ball good but when my toe hit the ball I remember thinking, ‘Oh no.'"

I have always believed Brady would have gotten the Patriots into field-goal range even if Kasay had booted the kickoff through the uprights and New England had started from the 20. Brady was just too good that day. And remember this: the Patriots' average drive-start on Kasay's previous kickoffs had been the 27. The errant kickoff likely netted New England only about 13 yards.

Still, it stung Kasay, because he hated so much to let his teammates down -- and he did it so rarely in his career.

As for the future, the 43-year-old Kasay will be a fine AD, and he will eventually be inducted into the Panthers' Hall of Honor. Kasay said Panther owner Jerry Richardson has never talked to him about that -- the only Panther player currently in this very small hall is the late Sam Mills -- but there could be no more fitting recipient than No.4.

Tebow to Panthers simply would not work

So Tim Tebow is suddenly available to anyone, with no draft-pick compensation -- the New York Jets cut him today. They tried to trade him for weeks, apparently, but no other NFL team would even give up a seventh-round pick for him, which should tell you something.

The Panthers have the read-option offense in their package and obviously like mobile quarterbacks. Their first backup QB is old; their second is poor ol' Jimmy Clausen. Seems like Tebow might be a good fit here as a backup, right?

Absolutely wrong.

I admire Tebow for the way he handles himself personally, and for his college career at Florida, and for the way he and John Fox somehow interacted so well in that one magical month or two in Denver (whatever you think about Fox, that was some serious proof that the guy can coach).

But Tebow here doesn't work. The biggest reason why is that his mechanics aren't very good and he's simply not a very good NFL quarterback. The second-biggest reason why is this: I wouldn't want the Tebow Circus to come to town. Cam Newton's psyche doesn't need the man who used to start in Florida in front of him peering over his shoulder in a meeting room every day.

Oh, everyone would put on a happy face about it if it came to that, but it simply wouldn't work. That's a dynamic that Cam once had in a flip-flop sort of way in Florida, when Tebow was the star and Newton the backup. But Newton has since established himself as a budding NFL star. To have Tebow in that QB meeting room every day would feel like a threat to Newton, I believe. And Tebow, as genial and well-meaning as he would be, couldn't help but be a distraction. (Newton, incidentally, is getting along famously so far with new QB coach Ken Dorsey).

Plus, Derek Anderson is better than Tebow (and he's only 29). He's way more accurate. He's a better decision-maker. Shoot, Jimmy Clausen is better than... OK, wait, I'm getting carried away. Tebow could be the Panthers' third-string quarterback. He's better than Clausen.

But where he would really fit better here and elsewhere in the NFL is at tight end, and he's not interested in making that position switch. He still has the NFL quarterback dream, and I don't blame him for that.

The Panthers, though, are set at quarterback and are headed toward a good season. An ill-fated spot on the Tim Tebow's Happy Train to Nowhere might be just the sort of thing that could derail them, in much the same way it derailed the Jets only a season ago.

An inspiring golfer, an unusual story

Eli Hager practices at his home course. (Observer photo by Diedra Laird)



About a year ago I first heard about Eli Hager, the middle-school golfer with prosthetic legs who plays on the Lincoln Charter Middle School golf team alongside able-bodied golfers in Lincoln County. He had been named MVP of his team in 2012.

By that time, though, his golf season was over. So I kept Eli in the back of my mind, figuring I would write about him in the spring of 2013. The result is this column. I like to diverge from my regular subject matter occasionally -- the Panthers, the Bobcats, college sports -- and write about a young man or woman in the sports world who can inspire others. "The Magic Touch" was another such story that comes to mind -- about two girls who didn't know each other and the moment that linked them in a cross country race.

To write this story, I interviewed Eli and his parents at their home in Alexis, which is on the Gaston-Lincoln County border. I also watched him deliver a 32-minute sermon on "Youth Sunday" at his church and talked to some of the church members there about him, as well as interviewing his golf coach and the school's athletic director.

One side note: I didn't know before writing this how accomplished a waterskier Eli also is, but it turns out that he is also one of the better trick and slalom disabled water skiers in the country. He will take a trip to Milan, Italy, this fall to represent the U.S. in a disabled water skiing competition along with two other Charlotte-area athletes. They are raising money to go on that trip. If you happen to want to help Eli and that team in their fundraising, the contribution is tax-deductible. The address to send contributions is:

Charlotte Disabled Waterski Team

2198 W.T. Carpenter Drive

Lincolnton, NC 28092

So now what for Panthers on final day of draft?

So now what?

After taking back-to-back defensive tackles with their first two choices, the Panthers have picks left in the fourth, fifth and sixth rounds of the 2013 NFL draft Saturday. Then they will work the phones and get their share of undrafted free agents, hoping 1-2 of those make the final roster as well.

While I’m generally a fan of the Panthers bulking up on the defensive line with Utah’s Star Lotulelei and Purdue’s Kawann Short, they now absolutely must address the offensive line. Taking an offensive lineman somewhere in every draft is a good idea given the demands of the position and how many of them you need. And the Panthers have to prepare for the eventual loss of Jordan Gross, their left tackle who will be 33 before next season begins.

General manager Dave Gettleman has done some work on the secondary already via free agency and the Panthers like some of the young talent they have there. But certainly defensive back is a strong option for Saturday, given the loss of Chris Gamble and the inconsistent play at safety last season.

Other possibilities for Saturday's three draft picks: a wide receiver, a tight end and a second offensive lineman. Coach Ron Rivera said the offensive coaches are getting “antsy,” given that the first two days of the draft have been devoted solely to defense – that should get rectified to an extent on Saturday.

One additional note, since I like to keep this blog fan-friendly: You really should consider coming out to the Panthers’ free draft party for fans on Saturday. It is free and open to the public from noon to 5 p.m., and I saw a lot of cool stuff already being set up on Friday at the stadium as they prepare for the fan onslaught. Autographs from players like Luke Kuechly and some of the new draft picks will be available, and fans will have access to behind-the-scenes tours of areas in the stadium not typically open to the public (including the Panther locker room). It's a good place to bring the kids, and the price is right.