Like the majority of top-three picks in the NFL Draft, Sam Darnold was immediately thrown on the field without much of a chance to gain developmental experience when he started his career with the New York Jets. Sometimes, players can succeed with that formula. Other times — and in Darnold's case — that isn't how it played out.
That's exactly what Carolina Panthers head coach Matt Rhule will try to change now that Darnold has been given a relatively clean slate with his new team for the 2021 season. Yes, he will undoubtedly be the starter come Week 1 of the regular season, so it's not as if he'll be able to sit and watch from the sidelines while he learns from a veteran signal-caller in front of him on the depth chart. But no, he won't be expected to be as polished and flawless as a quarterback with a whole lot of experience. He's just 24 years old after all.
Rhule sat down with Trey Wingo on the "Half-Forgotten History" podcast, available on Audacy, and discussed his expectations and desires now that Darnold is at the helm of the Panthers offense.
"...I think when you look at young quarterbacks, everyone wants you to be a master carpenter without being an apprentice carpenter," Rhule explained. "Everyone wants you to jump from stage one to stage six, and if you look at most of the quarterbacks over the years, they develop on good teams... so we think we're building a good team. We think we have a good foundation. And we thought, Sam is [24] years old, he's played three years in New York. Coming into our system we know he's starting over, but I think he's got the mindset.
"One thing you see when you watch him play, he's got the moxie, he's got the toughness. And the more you ask about him, the more you realize the people who've coached him and the players who played with him respected him... we want to get him here, develop him, and the things that have hurt him, we want to be part of the solution for him."
One part of the aforementioned solution? According to Rhule, it's messing up from time to time, something he actively hopes occurs in Darnold's first action as a Panther.
"He's young, but he has to develop in our system, and every day can't be a referendum on where Sam Darnold is," Rhule said. "I hope he has bad practices. I tell him all the time, 'Man, I hope you have a bad practice here soon, I hope you make mistakes,' because we really only learn from our mistakes. We try to learn from others and all that, but really at the end of the day what changes our behavior is when we make a mistake.
"...He's a worker, he's a grinder, he takes things personally, he's a good teammate, he's a guy you root for. Now, we all have to go out there and put him in good positions."
Rhule added that he hopes Darnold "embraces the adversity" that he's had to power through in his young NFL career and use it to propel him as a better quarterback going forward. And boy, has there been some adversity — if you've been paying any attention, you'll know that everything from mono to ghosts to Adam Gase has gotten in his way, and some of that adversity is already showing in Carolina.
According to ESPN NFL Nation Panthers reporter David Newton, Darnold did not have a great day on Tuesday, tossing an interception to Jeremy Chinn "on a throw to a wide-open Dan Arnold" on top of several other overthrows. But based on what we heard from Rhule, this might be exactly the type of stuff Darnold needs to have a successful 2021 campaign. Is that a glass-half-full approach? Perhaps, but a little optimism never hurt anybody.
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