The book on Dan Morgan was that he was competitive and aggressive, able to move well in traffic and hit holes with a burst.
That scouting report is nearly two dozen years old and described his linebacker skills coming out of Miami, when the Panthers drafted him in the first round. They were just as accurate in helping make sense of the first draft Morgan ran as Carolina’s general manager.
“It was really cool in the draft room just seeing the process,” said Panthers head coach Dave Canales, ”really just seeing (Morgan’s) patience, just working through.”
Shows solid field awareness and moves fluidly towards the ball.
The Panthers had traded away their first round pick, long before Morrgan took the job. They entered the NFL Draft with no picks on Thursday night but the first pick in Friday’s second round, where Morgan planned to take a wide receiver and expected several to be available.
Then, as Thursday’s first round wore on, demand for the position seemed to explode.
“Once the wideouts were taken—Brian Thomas was taken (by Jacksonville at pick 23, 10 spots before the Panthers’ would pick on Friday) I felt like there was going to be a little run on wideouts after that,” Morgan said. “And then Xavier Worthy got taken (by the Chiefs, at 28). We liked some of those guys. We don’t want to put ourselves in a bad situation where we don’t get the guy we want to get.”
It was almost time to make a move.
Displays the body control needed to tackle in open field.
Canales was ready to pull the trigger and move into the first round with a trade, but Morgan wasn’t going to fall for the first couple of jukes. Linebackers know to watch the target’s hips and ignore the superfluous moves.
“Seeing the guys coming off the board and he’s just saying, ‘Not yet. Not yet,’” said Canales.
The first round came down to the final pick, and, instead of the Chiefs making it, as was the case entering the evening, the Buffalo Bills were on the clock, having swung a trade to pick one spot ahead of the Panthers. Bills GM Brandon Beane, a former assistant GM of the Panthers and Morgan’s boss in Buffalo for a few years, was also believed to be seeking help at wide receiver.
It was an unexpected move, and Morgan had to read and react.
“I wasn’t sure what they were going to do,” he said.
In his analysis, it was time to make his move.
Hurls his body around in reckless abandon, doing anything that he can to make the play.
“In Dan Morgan fashion, there was daylight and he went ‘Bang!’” said Canales, clapping his hands for emphasis. “He hit the hole, just like we’ve all seen him do in his career.”
Morgan offered to swap picks with Beane, sweetening the deal by giving Buffalo a fifth-round pick in exchange for their sixth-rounder.
Suddenly, the Panthers were in the first round and chose the receiver they’d been eying all along, South Carolina’s Xavier Legette. It was a player that Morgan had been interested in throughout the draft prep process.
Weaknesses: Can tend to over pursue on some plays.
Xavier Legette had no doubt the Panthers were going to take him. While the draft process is filled with smoke screens and false starts, Morgan and Carolina were very straightforward in their interest, displaying that straight-line pursuit skill that Morgan was known for coming out of college.
“I just got the vibe from them,” he said. “If it wasn’t going to be them, I didn’t know where I’d go … At the Senior Bowl, we had three days to meet with teams, and each day, I had a meeting with the Panthers. That’s when I realized, ‘They really want me! They like me!’ Then, I just kept meeting with them. At the Combine, I met with them. They had four or five folks from the staff at my pro day, and I was like, ‘Okay, these guys (are) serious.’”
As for Buffalo, they used the Panthers’ pick, at the start of the second round, to take the receiver they were targeting—Florida State’s Keon Coleman.
“Everybody’s boards are different,” said Morgan. “You become paranoid. You think guys are jumping up to get your guy. It doesn’t always turn out that way. Thank God, we got our guy.”
And if he hadn’t? Well, the old, yellowing scouting report had one more line under strengths.
Bounces back quickly when knocked down.
