The club has got in the deal the reserve linebacker Jamar Williams. Harris goes back to Chicago within 3 years after he was traded to the Panthers. He was deemed expendable following his struggle in 2009 and the Panthers had added depth at safety.

Marty Hurney, the general manager of Carolina, said: “Chris is going back to an organization where he has familiarity and we wish him the very best… He has done everything we have asked and has been a valuable member of our team. Right now we have some young safeties who will get the opportunity to continue to earn playing time.”

Harris now joins the starters Jake Delhomme, Muhsin Muhammad, Brad Hoover, Damione Lewis, Na’il Diggs and Maake Kemoeatu. All of them have moved on because of Panthers’ youth movement. The club had even let Julius Peppers, the Pro Bowl defensive end, leave in free agency.

Williams, 25, had played all the sixteen games in each past 3 seasons with the Bears. Last season he had a career-high of 43 tackles. Well, he was not able to win a starting job with the Lance Briggs in front of him. He was finally a restricted free agent.

Hurney said, “Jamar is a versatile linebacker who brings experience, athletic ability and can help on special teams as well as compete for time at linebacker.”

The roster of the 2010 Pro Bowl players that are included in the All-Decade team became available on Wednesday. In the history of the past 15 years, Peppers is one of the three Panthers that was added to an All-Decade roster.

After coming off a dreadful season of 1-15 in 2001, Peppers was overall second pick in the draft of 2002 for the Panthers.

Peppers has a list of 81 sacks in his 8th season playing for the Panthers. He has become a machine force since his 2007 season when he only managed 2.5 sacks out of 14 games.

For whatever reason be it an illness in training camp, or simply a down year, Peppers had an abysmal season last year, barely being able to put together a pass rush, and looking nothing like his usual pro bow self. Because of this bad season, Carolina can’t afford to pay Peppers. Sure it works out if he bounces back and records another 13 sack season, but if he doesn’t? The risk is just too great. Carolina could end up paying franchise money for a player that averages five sacks a season. Yes Peppers does have a career total of 56 sacks in six seasons with the Panthers, but in the NFL its “What have you done for me lately?”

Another reason that I think that Peppers can’t get paid is that not only has Peppers gone 16 games with only 2.5 sacks, but looking back into 2006, he only had 2 sacks in the last seven games of the season. That’s 23 games with only 4.5 sacks. This seems to be overlooked because Peppers had gotten out to such a great start in 2006, recording 11 sacks through the first 10 games, and lots of times, multiple sack games come in clumps, but for whatever reason Peppers cooled down, and it looks like that cooling down might have carried over into 2007. It could just be that Peppers cooled down in 2006, and had a down year in 2007, I hope it’s just that, but by looking at the numbers the Panthers just cannot afford give Peppers the big contract, not yet at least.

Peppers had a fantastic month, pileing up seven sacks, seven hurries, and 21 tackles.  With so many questions about Peppers floating around over the offseason, it’s good to see that Peppers has put all doubts aside and has proven that last season was just an off year.  This means that the Panthers need to start hammering out a deal with Peppers before he becomes a free agent in Feburary.  Whatever he wants the Panthers better pay it becuase he is one of the main reasons why the defense has rebounded from last season.

Taylor may prove to be a surprise player in training camp next week, receiving all ACC honors.

So far the Panthers have signed fiver picks: DE Hilee Taylor, LB Dan Connor, TE Gary Barnidge, G Mackenzy Bernadeau, and DT Nick Hadyen.

With the recent retirement of Mike Rucker, Julius will be required to step up as one of the veteran players on the defensive line. If Julius Peppers can step up into his new position, and get his sack average back up to par (he averages about twelve sacks per season) then he will be a major asset to his team, he will also be greatly appreciated by fans. Although we saw several bright spots from Peppers this past season, it is consistancy that the Panthers need, and hopefully we will see that consistancy in the 2008-2009 season.

Excluding last season, Julius Peppers has been a beast in Carolina, racking up 54.5 sacks in five seasons, putting Peppers up there with the league’s elite, but for whatever reason Peppers fell apart last season, collecting only 2.5 sacks. I’m not going to dive into all of the possible reasons why Peppers played so bad, that’s a whole other story, I’m simply going to look at his chances of having Hall of Fame numbers by the end of his career.

Right now there are 14 defensive ends in the Hall of Fame, but the thing is, the NFL did not record sacks until 1982, which means that there really isn’t a bar for how many sacks Julius Peppers needs to shoot for. If Peppers rebounds next season and the seasons following, Peppers would need to keep up the same pace he had in his first five seasons, for the next 10 seasons, for him to have any type of numbers close to hall of fame worthy. Peppers will need to put up some pretty impressive seasons, I’m talking 18 or 20 sacks, if he wants to be considered for the Hall of Fame. I’m not saying he can’t do it, with his power years still to come, Peppers might be able to, but with the chance of injuries, poor play by your teammates (means Peppers is double teamed), or a mystery bug, it just isn’t likely.

Another thing hindering Peppers is the number of players in front of him to be selected, Bruce Smith (all time sack leader) and Michael Strahan to name a few, have yet to be inducted, as well as quite a few others. If Peppers was to end up with l50 sacks, there would still be a long list of players in front of him that are Hall of Fame worthy. The bottom line is that Peppers chances really dropped because of last season, and he needs to have some phenomenal seasons in order to have any shot at getting into Canton.

Hall of Fame Chance: 15%

The Panthers picked up one of their former wide receivers Muhsin Muhammad. Carolina lost him due to salary cap issues in 2004. Along with Muhammad Carolina also acquired D.J. Hackett from Seattle. Hackett has been in the NFL for four years, but is also known to be injury prone. If D.J. can stay healthy in 2008 he will be a huge asset to the Panthers offense. As it is clear to see, the Panthers depth chart is greatly equipped with wide recievers.

Another Plus to having Mushin Muhammad back on Carolina’s team, is the fact that he and Quarterback Jake Delhomme have had experience working together.With all of the threats that these new coming players pose, it should prove to work at taking the double team off of Steve Smith. Many people believe that the Panthers lack depth in the wide reciever position, but as the above statements show, the Panthers have very experienced players, and also some younger developing players in that position that should deliver this coming season. The players performance in training camp and the other summer training events will determine who exactly is placed where on the Carolina depth chart.

With that horrible 23 sack performance last season, General Manager Marty Hurney and Head Coach John Fox, were faced with overhauling the defensive line. I wouldn’t say it was a big overhaul, but they made some definite changes. First, they traded Kris Jenkins to the Jets, leaving a big hole in the DT slot. With Jenkins gone, last year’s backup Damione Lewis was left to fill the hole. Lewis has been in the league for eight seasons and hasn’t exactly lived up to the slot the Rams drafted him (No. 12 in 2001). Lewis has shown some bright spots, but there will be some questions as to how he will perform next season. Lewis will start along side big Maake Kemoeatu, and will look to both pass rush and stop the run. With the two guys Carolina has starting, Kemoeatu will be the big physical presence on the defense (he’s 6-5 and weighs 345), while the smaller Lewis (6-2, 301) will look to put pressure on opposing defenses. This combination means that the Panthers should be able to put some pressure on opposing quarterbacks, unlike last season where they had two run stuffers in Jenkins and Kemoeatu.

My original post on the Defensive Tackle Position

Now looking at DE, we all know that Peppers had a really bad season last year, and I wrote a few weeks ago that I thought the Panthers shouldn’t extend his contract just yet, but the Panthers seem to think that Peppers is going to be fine. The Panthers are in contract negotiations with Peppers and his agent, and last season’s performance is supposedly a non issue. Everything (trying to resign him, not going out and getting a big name DE in the draft or FA) points to the fact that whatever came over Peppers last season won’t happen again, and he will be back to normal in 2008.

With Peppers switching to the right side to fill the void left by Mike Rucker, second year man Charles Johnson will battle with FA Tyler Brayton, and Stanley McClover. Johnson appears to have the edge right now, and if he starts, he will be an improvement-probably not much though- over the Mike Rucker of 2007 (33 years old, Rucker had knee surgery in 2006 and just wasn’t the same in 2007). Brayton and McClover, along with Hilee Taylor, a seventh rounder from April’s draft, will be able to add sufficient depth at the position as well.

My original post on the Defensive End Position.

So with all of these changes, the Panthers will have only one player starting the same position as last season on the defensive line. By far the line is the biggest question mark for the Panthers next season, but they appear to be moving in the right direction, starting the smaller Lewis and the younger Johnson.

Overall Line Grade: B- (assuming Peppers is back to normal)

Looking at all of the reasons why Carolina should trade for Taylor, there are a lot. For starters, the Panthers would have one of the most dominant defensive lines in football with Taylor and Peppers starting together. Taylor’s presence would take a lot of pressure off Peppers, who has had to deal with countless double teams over the last two years with Mike Rucker getting injured and aging. With Peppers on the left and Taylor on the right, Carolina could forget about their shaky defensive tackles, because if Taylor and Peppers are their usual selves they most likely should have 20 sacks between them at least. I know I ripped Peppers yesterday about not performing last year, but if Peppers bounces back, Carolina would have quite a scary pass rush. You can’t totally eliminate his playmaking ability, and after watching Michael Strahan and Osi Umenyiora eat up the Patriot’s offensive line in the Superbowl, we all know what a good pass rush can do.

While the upside to the trade looks very promising and would seem to make Carolina a definite playoff contender, the repercussions could be equally as bad. Let’s just say that Carolina decides to trade their third and fifth round picks in next years draft. That would mean that Carolina will have only four picks in the 2009 draft (they traded their no.1 in 2009 for Jeff Otah), Down the road, Carolina may have some issues due to the low number of draft picks. Also I mentioned Taylor’s age, because the reality is that Taylor really is past his prime and will most likely retire in the next three years. But because Head Coach John Fox and General Manager Marty Hurney will most likely be fired if Carolina doesn’t reach the post season this year, what do they have to lose?

Besides the losing draft picks immediately, the Panthers would also be struggling to get under the salary cap for the next few seasons if Taylor wants a large contract (but again, if Fox and Hurney aren’t going to be here, what’s it to them?). I think that John Fox’s conservative nature was already pushed when the Panthers traded up to get Otah, and if the Panthers win (which they should) Fox and Hurney wouldn’t want to dig themselves into too deep a hole just to secure their jobs for seasons to come only to have little room to operate come future seasons, so don’t count on the Panthers aggressively going after Taylor.

Whether or not Carolina will start trade talks with the Dolphins remains to be seen, but at least it will fill some news space this upcoming June and July. Under the right terms I think the Panthers should try and make a move for Taylor, but if the price is too high, they already have the nucleus they think they need to contend, and Taylor would just be icing on the cake.