Don’t expect much from the Panthers at the trade deadline

They’d rather build with guys like Brian Burns than without them.

Rumors have been swirling about the Carolina Panthers trading away their best and brightest players since they fired their former head coach, Matt Rhule, three weeks ago. Some of those rumors have turned into actual events with the trades of Robbie Anderson and Christian McCaffrey. The rest have a deadline of 4:00 PM EST today to become official trades.

The Los Angeles Rams are rumored to have offered the Panthers two first round picks last week for star pass rusher Brian Burns. Neither of those picks was reportedly a 2023 first rounder, which tracks because the Rams are not in possession of their 2023 first round pick. While the story was fun in its own right, its ultimate value for today is that it sets the floor for a Burns trade.

The Panthers may have come down a little in their hopes for this year after losing to the Atlanta Falcons yesterday, but they are planning more for the future than for any surprise successes in the here and now. That means that any team wanting a core player off of the Panthers defense will still have to pay a premium to get them. Anybody the team gives up is a star talent that they will have to replace at a time when they are already in the market for more star talent.

Burns is far and away the Panthers most attractive player from the perspective of other teams and the floor for his trade is set at two first round picks with at least one being in the 2023 draft. That’s a high price for a half season of work in 2022 and a probable—and large—contract extension going into the final year of his contract.

That’s a decision that a team should have made last week, not in the final seconds against the NFL’s deadline for in-season trades. This isn’t to say that can’t happen. Things can and often do happen quickly in the NFL. It’s just that the team willing to pay that much for Burns is the team that thinks he is the final piece to put them over the top this year. Teams at that level of relevance also tend to have more methodical, strategic leadership.

Everybody else who the Panthers could trade away, as we have already discussed, probably wouldn’t garner a huge return. And we aren’t even going to talk about the Panthers trading for talent. That would require the team to give up assets instead of stockpiling them for their potential quarterback plans next year.