Cameron Jones

DCPanthersfans.com 

I had a hard time deciding what I was going to write about for my first column of the 2007-08 season. It's a weird month in the NFL season. June is close enough that you begin to think about the impending weekends in front of the tube but its still too soon to have any idea about your team.
Training camp is still a month away, the new draft picks are still getting used to their new surroundings, the latest Bengal arrest hasn't occurr--oh wait nevermind. That said, I guess I'll do my best to recap everything that has happened since the Panthers walked off the Superdome turf on New Years Eve after a very disappointing 8-8 campaign.
As usual, Carolina didn't make any big offseason moves opting instead to let the draft take care of its position needs. The first part of 2007 was going along normally until the NFL Network dropped the bomb that Mike Minter was hanging up his cleats at the end of this season. It was a hard one to take as Minter was one of my all time favorite players and I felt that he had several good seasons still left in him.
Then came the draft where I thought the Panthers were going to grab Reggie Nelson at 14 to fill the gap that Minter was going to leave but instead traded down to get LB Jon Beason from Miami. I am not going to question the move as we've done very well with our picks the last five years but I hope that we can survive at the safety position this season.
Where I thought we made a splash was in round two with the acquisitions of USC greats Dwayne Jarrett and Ryan Kalil. Both guys will probably get serious playing time this season and hopefully now we have the missing piece that will take away the double and triple coverage off Steve Smith.
That leads me to the biggest offseason story for us so far: the release of Keyshawn. Many people have been going off and saying it was stupid of us to do this and that our GM Marty Hurney has lost it.
I think Hurney had a good reason to get rid of him. Though it wasn't publicly disclosed, I am hearing that trouble began after the Eagles Monday night game when Jake Delhomme missed Keyshawn on a fade and the ball was picked off to end the game. Subsequently, Johnson tossed his helmet (he was fined later) and didn't defend Delhomme in the media.
Rumor is that the relationship between the two soured along with the relationship between Johnson and the front office. It all came to a head at this year's draft where Keyshawn, who was guest commentating for ESPN, made puzzling comments throughout the day about who we should and shouldn't draft. When he questioned us not drafting Brady Quinn at 14, I knew that there would be backlash. I didn't think he would be released but the relationship between Hurney and him may have reached the breaking point by then.
But it's time to move on and while Keyshawn's contributions were plentiful, we need to focus on the future of our team and get ready for this season.
Hopefully this season everything will be better than the last. We have some great out of division opponents this year and I'm looking forward to catching all of them.