Quote:FanPulse: Carolina Panthers fans are confident in the team’s direction after seeing a solid draft class

The Panthers went 7-for-7 on defensive players in the 2020 draft, and our FanPulse users believe that was the right thing to do.

Quote:The Carolina Panthers made NFL history by becoming the first team in the modern era to use all of their draft picks on defensive players. We asked our FanPulse users to grade the Panthers’ draft class, and a strong majority gave the Panthers an A grade. Coming in second place was a B grade, which is still pretty good. Apparently there were a few haters who threw out a D grade, and I don’t have an explanation for that — maybe they fat-fingered the button or something? I don’t know...

As I said shortly after the draft concluded, the Panthers did the right thing by trying to fix a major problem from 2019 by selecting seven defensive players.

I really like what the Panthers did with their draft class. Let’s face it: The 2019 defense was abysmal, and it wasn’t going to get better without the Panthers investing draft picks into it. They needed to get younger and faster on defense, and that’s exactly what they did this weekend. I won’t argue that they should have also focused some of their picks on adding to their offensive line, but I can’t knock them too much for focusing on repairing a very broken defense as efficiently as they did.

It appears that our FanPulse users agree with my stance, as the reply to the other question from this week’s survey shows a huge uptick in fan confidence following the draft.

Fans were asked ‘Are the Panthers headed in the right direction?’, and going from 40 percent to 90 percent is quite an accomplishment considering how upset the fanbase was following the team’s decision to part ways with franchise quarterback Cam Newton. I’m sure that most fans still aren’t quite over that yet, but it appears that seeing a solid draft class does take a little bit of the sting away.

Full disclosure: I voted ‘yes’ to the question because I believe the team is doing the right thing. They identified a huge need and made the necessary steps to address said need. There’s no guarantee this draft class will be successful (the draft is ALWAYS a crapshoot), but I like the thought process the team employed last weekend. And look on the bright side... if the Panthers fail, at least they’ll fail in a different way than they have over the last few years. That has to count for something, right?