Everette Brown is a Ron Meeks football player. Fast, undersized, gets in the backfield. The most significant aspect of Carolina opting to trade next year’s 1st rounder to land Brown is that it signifies that John Fox is really going to let Meeks run his own scheme.
Brown is almost a carbon copy of Meeks’ DEs at Indy — Dwight Freeney and Robert Mathis — rather than the big block-catching DEs Fox prefers. Fox’s DEs jam up or try split double-teams on the edge while Meeks’ guys run around them. This might be the formula needed to break the pattern of FSU DEs looking like world-beaters in college only to get beaten up in the NFL
We’ll have to get to camp to find out, but the Brown pick up also makes me wonder if Tyler Brayton and Charles Johnson will see more reps at DT with Brown on board. Johnson especially is a Meeks-sized “rush” DT.
The Panthers got Meeks more help in CB Sherrod Martin another big, versatile ballhawk in the mold of Charles Godfrey, who might blossom into a Pro Bowl safety this year. Martin will have ample opportunity to earn playing time, if he can grasp the complex schemes Meeks employs and avoid the injuries that shut him down for two seasons in college.
Now the Panthers must add OL depth, quality depth, depth that could step in and start when injuries hit considering that is what they lost in the off-season. Do that and there will be cause for more hope in Carolina than many — including me — thought possible.
Bonus Observation: Stupid, stupid! Did not occur to me that the Browns were targeting Indy’s Mohamed Massaquoi as well as Hakeem Nicks with the team’s calls to the school. But Nicks to the Giants makes perfect sense. Eli Manning might toss Hakeem a dozen TDs during the season.
