July 25, 2012 Charlotte Observer, Ryan Kalil Issues his guarantee for a Panthers Super Bowl this year
By David Hauser
Heck, I’m not even laughing, I’m just impressed.
Impressed first, that a young guy is so well versed in his franchise’s roots, especially considering that Kalil is a Cali kid with no ties whatsoever to the greater Smoky Mountain region. How does he know so much about such a young and mostly anonymous NFL franchise, a team that he grew up literally 5,000 miles away from? A lot of professional athletes get tagged with the mercenary label: there to get a pay check, fame, and a bunch of twitter followers…and barely know what city they are playing for. Not Kalil, you can almost feel the retro-active pain he feels for his club’s “Dom Caper Years,” when all that Panther Nation[1] had to root for was possessing the league’s most unheralded fantasy QB in Steve Beuerlein[2] and rooting for one of the greatest names to ever bless the field of sport in tailback Tshimanga (pronounced Tim-monga) Biakabutuka.
And secondly, the iron clad balls of this guy. I know the Panthers are trotting out Cam Newton for Round 2, but Super Bowl?!? A playoff berth guarantee in the Charlotte Observer by Kalil would have been worth a dramatic Colbertesque raised brow, but Super Bowl champs in the Queen City, huh.
I guess it is just that time of year. Players report, training camps commence, and the hype begins. There is no kind of hype quite like NFL training camp hype. You have tens of millions of (gamblers and) fans looking for a fantasy edge and hundreds of John Clayton types eager to dish out endless spin. July comes and every fan base believes they can win and that THEIR 6th round rookie will turn out to be the true draft sleeper. As a Bills fan, I can count on two hands the number of seasons I ardently believed that Trent Edwards had turned the corner and was ready to manifest his Pro-Bowl caliber arm into a Bills playoff berth because of “the great reports coming out of training camp.”[3]
On that note, I’ve got to scramble off and mark down DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart as fantasy sleepers. What can I say; I’ve got a reliable source on the Panthers O-Line that says this team is going places.
[1] Is this a real movement?
[2] Beuerlein sneakily finished as #2 overall player in all the NFL for fantasy point in ’99…and then was wildly overdrafted in 2000
[3] Editor’s note- Edwards only played with the Bills for 4 seasons, and this writer does indeed have 10 digits. See even I’m starting to trumpet the hyperbole. It is July. It’s a right of passage.
Headie Sports 
Pretty cool gesture, and Kalil is definitely a Mad Men fan
good comp. If we run with this analogy more and it holds true, then the Panthers are bound to miss out on the playoffs (Sterling Cooper gets ostracized from big accounts as Don is told at the bar during the Codfish Ball), yet Kalil will get plenty more All-Pro nods and “buried in awards” as he will be rewarded for his brass.
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