Carolina Panthers: Ranking Remaining Offseason Priorities

With the 2015 NFL draft in the books, the Carolina Panthers can turn their attention to training camp. Most of the roster is already set at this point, and it stands at 90 players after the Panthers signed five tryouts from their rookie minicamp.

It is highly unlikely that they’ll make any more significant roster moves between now and the beginning of training camp, so the 2015 Panthers have mostly taken shape at this point.

That doesn’t mean, however, that there’s no more work to be done. There are still some significant decisions that have to be made, ideally before the season opener against Jacksonville on September 13.

There are no more major players to be brought into the fold, but the Panthers need to iron out the depth chart, finalize contract situations and find on-roster replacements for players who have left this offseason.

So, while the team can be excited about the additions of players like Devin Funchess and Shaq Thompson, don’t take the end of draft season as reason to believe that there’s no more work to be done. If the Panthers are going to repeat as division champions in 2015, there are still questions to deal with.

Here are five situations the Panthers need to find answers for before the 2015 season begins.

5. Who Starts at Cornerback?

Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press

When the Panthers go to nickel, their cornerbacks will be Josh Norman, Bene Benwikere and Charles Tillman. This is a perfectly solid secondary, assuming Norman and Benwikere continue their excellent performances from last season and Tillman’s able to come back from a season-ending triceps injury at age 34. Benwikere will presumably cover the slot, while Norman and Tillman handle the outside coverage in that nickel set.

When they only have two cornerbacks on the field, however, things could get interesting. Who starts at cornerback when the team is in its base package?

If the Panthers are getting pre-injury Tillman, that’s the obvious answer. In his last full season (2012), Tillman was an All-Pro with three interceptions and 10 forced fumbles. He was legitimately amazing that season, and he might have gotten some consideration for Defensive Player of the Year had J.J. Watt not been from another planet.

Since then, however, Tillman has appeared in all of 10 games. His torn triceps muscle has kept him mostly out of the picture for two entire seasons. At age 34, can he really come back from missing multiple years?

If he’s able to come back anywhere near the level he played at for the majority of his career, he’ll be the starter, but that’s far from a guarantee. This might be a situation where they save him and his aging body for nickel and dime situations, simply having Benwikere move from the outside to the slot in larger packages.

4. Which Wide Receivers Make the Team?

Jeff Haynes/Associated Press

There are two wide receivers who are locks to make the 2015 team—last year’s first-round pick Kelvin Benjamin, and this year’s second-round pick Devin Funchess.

The rest of the position is a mishmash of aging veterans, free-agent acquisitions and undrafted prospects. Three or four slots should be available, and there’s no guarantee at all as to who will be filling them.

Free-agent acquisitions Jarrett Boykin and Ted Ginn seem to be in the lead in the clubhouse. While neither received contracts that would be difficult to move on from should they fail to live up to expectations, it stands to reason that the team wouldn’t have brought them in if it didn’t believe they were better than the options already on the roster.

Ginn received a larger contract than Boykin and has had success in Carolina in the past, making him the more likely of the two to earn a spot.

The two returning receivers most likely to make the final roster are Jerricho Cotchery and Philly Brown. Cotchery caught 48 passes last season for 580 yards, making him Newton’s second-favorite wide receiver target. He also was the most sure-handed wide receiver on the team, dropping only three passes, according to Pro Football Focus. Benjamin, by contrast, dropped 11. 

Meanwhile, Brown actually received the highest PFF grade for all of Carolina’s receivers, albeit on less than half as many plays. He likely has the most potential of all the various players left on the roster.

That list, however, would exclude Brenton Bersin, who has squeezed onto the depth chart the last two seasons. It would leave off Stephen Hill, who impressed on the practice squad last season, according to David Newton of ESPN.

The list would also involve having six receivers on the active roster—more than the Panthers have started the season with the past couple of years. It should be a tight battle for those last slots.

3. Who Starts at Right Tackle?

Ted S. Warren/Associated Press

The biggest free-for-all in training camp will be for the right tackle spot. Michael Oher, with his large free-agent contract, is fairly locked in at left tackle, so that leaves four players battling out for the other side of the line.

Mike Remmers finished last season on a high note. Including the playoffs, he started the last seven games for the Panthers, and he played well. Four of the seven games had him grade out positively, according to Pro Football Focus, though there was clearly a downward trend as the games went on, culminating in a rotten performance in the divisional round game when he was routinely beaten by Michael Bennett.

He was still the second-best pass-blocker the Panthers had last year (after Trai Turner), and he will deservedly get the first-team reps at the beginning of training camp.

You do have to worry about a player who has bounced from practice squad to practice squad and never made the field, however. Was Remmers’ success a sign that he was a late bloomer who just needed a chance to succeed, or a small-sample-size phenomenon who will wither under a full season’s workload? We simply don’t have the answer to that question yet.

His main competition will be fourth-round pick Daryl Williams from Oklahoma. On most teams, Williams would probably move inside and play guard, but considering the relative strengths of the tackle and guard positions in Carolina, he’ll remain a tackle for now. 

At the moment, just based on his college film, Williams is a better run-blocker than Remmers. He also has an excellent record in the passing game, allowing no sacks last year. However, his lack of speed makes him vulnerable to NFL-caliber speed-rushers, meaning I’d trust Remmers right now more in pass protection.

Don’t fully count out Nate Chandler, who started the beginning of last season at right tackle. Yes, he had an awful season in 2014, but his contract is such that it’s unlikely he’ll be cut this season simply for salary-cap reasons. That means he’ll at least have a chance to compete, and remember: The Panthers liked him enough to give him a three-year extension last season. Don’t count him out yet.

If Jonathan Martin, who came over after the 49ers released him, ends up as the starting right tackle, something has gone horribly wrong.

2. Who Provides the Pass Rush?

Bob Leverone/Associated Press

Here are the quarterback-pressure numbers—sacks, hits and hurries—the Panthers racked up in 2013, according to Pro Football Focus:

Player	Sacks	Hits	Hurries	Total
Greg Hardy	14	25	44	83
Charles Johnson	12	9	43	64
Kawann Short	2	10	24	36
Mario Addison	2	8	18	28
Dwan Edwards	3	7	14	24
Other	29	13	69	111
Total	62	72	212	346

Here are those same numbers for 2014, when the Panthers were without Hardy for nearly the entire season: 

Player	Sacks	Hits	Hurries	Total
Charles Johnson	8	11	53	72
Kawann Short	4	6	20	30
Mario Addison	8	6	14	28
Dwan Edwards	4	11	12	27
Star Lotulelei	2	3	14	19
Other	15	23	60	98
Total	41	60	173	274

You can see that Johnson, while improving on his overall numbers from 2013, didn’t quite fill Hardy’s shoes. No one stepped up to fill Johnson’s shoes as the second pass-rushing threat, either, and you can go down the list and see that at every spot, the Panthers were less successful than they had been the year before. Hardy’s departure had a serious knock-on effect to the rest of the pass rush.

This is in large part because Hardy’s direct replacements, Wes Horton and Kony Ealy, did not notably step up in the pass rush. The two combined for just 32 quarterback pressures in 2014. While no one’s expecting them to be as good as Hardy—one of the elite pass-rushers in the league—that’s nowhere close to adequate. The Panthers need to find another source of quarterback pressures.

Perhaps that’s the return of Frank Alexander, who missed most of the 2014 season for violating the substance-abuse policy twice. Perhaps it’s development from last year’s second-round pick Ealy, who had something of a nightmare rookie season.

This is the biggest position of need that the Panthers did not address at all this offseason, so the answer will have to come from within.

1. Cam Newton's Contract

Elaine Thompson/Associated Press

While four of the priorities in this slideshow deal with on-field issues, there perhaps is no move that is going to have a larger effect on the future of the Panthers than coming to a deal with their franchise quarterback.

Cam Newton is not under contract after the 2015 season. He’s playing this season on the fifth-year option for first-round draft picks, counting about $14.7 million against the salary cap, according to Over the Cap.

After that, he’ll become a free agent. The Panthers could slap him with the franchise tag in 2016, but that will be north of $18 million and possibly over $20 million, if current trends continue.

That’s obviously not an ideal situation to be in. Considering Newton’s stance as a franchise quarterback for the team, as well as the best the franchise has ever had, it’s time to lock him down over the long term rather than playing year-to-year footsie with him.

The Panthers don’t absolutely need this to be done before the 2015 season begins. They’re sitting about $9 million under the cap at the moment, according to Over the Cap, giving them enough breathing room to make in-season moves in reaction to injuries and the like. However, leaving Newton without a long-term contract as free agency beckons will make negotiations much tougher.

According to ESPN, Newton’s not expected to sign a new deal until Russell Wilson and Andrew Luck set the market. This is a great move for Newton and his people, as those upcoming megadeals are likely to drive the price for quarterbacks even further into the stratosphere. That’s unfortunate for the Panthers’ future salary-cap situation, but it takes two to do a contract.

The ideal situation for the Panthers is if they could get Newton to sign a contract like Colin Kaepernick’s. Before the 2014 season, Kaepernick signed a contract that essentially becomes a year-to-year deal starting next season. He has large base salaries, but they’re almost all non-guaranteed and have de-escalators in case the team fails to make the Super Bowl or Kaepernick fails to become an All-Pro. It’s an incredibly team-friendly deal—it pays Kaepernick a fair rate if he’s great, and it lets the 49ers escape if he’s not.

That deal, plus a few million dollars thanks to being signed a year later, would be the ideal situation for the Panthers. It’s certainly a less terrifying prospect than the rumored fully guaranteed contract that Wilson might receive, according to NFL.com.

One way or another, Newton’s likely to get an average of somewhere north of $20 million a year in his new deal. The sooner he signs for the long term, the sooner the Panthers can plan the future of other high-priced players like Thomas Davis, Mike Tolbert and Charles Johnson.

Bryan Knowles is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report, covering the Carolina Panthers and San Francisco 49ers. Follow him on Twitter @BryKno.