A chuckle at The Madden 23 coins Panthers is the best way to react after their months-long fling with Baker Mayfield finally resulted in a trade. Carolina's slow approach to their QB job seemed to be wrapped more around saving their egos than building a long-term success, first attempting to trade for Deshaun Watson after which they were linked to all available QBs on the market before finally drafting Matt Corral.
There's something inherently hilarious with one team currently having the No. 1 . and the No. 3 from the 3 and No. 1 picks from the Madden NFL 23 Draft, both of whom are quarterbacks. But neither has lived up to expectations. While trading for Mayfield now lacks foresight ahead of the biggest QB draft in recent history however, there's a possibility in which this might work out for the Panthers but it is still to be determined if Carolina has a real plan.
Before we look at how this deal may be beneficial and what it could mean, it should be noted that I'm still not happy with this deal, for all of the same reasons that I did back in May. I don't see any upside to trading for Mayfield when you're the Panthers. They're probably the worst teams to play in the NFC South, and Baker certainly isn't likely to cause Carolina to take on the Buccaneers for the division championship as well as the NFC remains a death row, specifically on the NFC West which makes it hard to see any wild cards imminent. If this happens to be the secret sauce that ties everything together, what the team will gain is that they'll have to sign Baker an enormous contract to keep him, based on a small sample size, or losing him for nothing.
What it does, however it does is make the Panthers watchable in 2022 when we take the assumption that they weren't going to begin Corral in his first year. The team is probably discussing "open competition" for the time being however, when the main obstacle is a subpar Sam Darnold who already proved he can't be "the guy," any pretense of the actual existence of a QB contest is only for buy mut 23 coins posterity to remember. In 2021. this was a team that was 5-12 and with Mayfield the team could be ... I dunno, 8-9?