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Guaranteed Human. Hello, everybody. Welcome into the Fantasy Pro's football podcast. I'm Ryan warmly, joined by Andrew Erickson and by Jake Sealy from The Athletic. And we are talking takeaways for every NFC team. Today, we are doing the NFC South. If you miss it, we've already done the North and the East and all the AFC teams last week. So be sure to check those out if you have missed them. And we keep an eye out for every division that we're doing here throughout these two weeks. The surprise winners of this division, Erickson, the Carolina Panthers, maybe not so much of a surprise to you. That's where we're starting here for our takeaways. What's your big takeaway in Carolina this year? Carolina Panthers plus ten and a half was the lock of all locks.

Although my hard rock best bet was the Philadelphia Eagles, unfortunately, last week.

So that one didn't shake up.

But after Saturday, after that first game, I was on cloud nine.

You feeling good.

My Carolina Panthers.

But my takeaway here besides the Carolina Panthers winning the NFC South, was that you can lose your job because of an injury, especially if the backup is capable.

So we saw this play out with Chuba Hubbard, RICO Dowdell, where Chuba Hubbard got paid by the Carolina Panthers, was there started to open the year.

He got banged up.

He missed time.

And what happened by the time he came back, he didn't have his starting job anymore. It was Rico Dowdow. And Rico Dowdle was the R-B-1 in the office. Now, it did kind of change a little bit as the season progressed. And the team kind of went away from Rico. And it just kind of morphed into a really frustrating backfield when everything kind of ended for the Carolina Panthers in their season.

But I think it's just worth always kind of when you're looking at backfields, evaluating

team by team and kind of asking yourself going through the exercise, like, you know,

what would it take for this guy to actually lose their job?

I get that we can kind of attach ourselves to, well, they got the contract, right?

He's impervious to losing his job. But Rico Dowdle, man, he showed out pretty well in Dallas. Like, he rushed for over 1,000 yards. I kept pointing out in the offseason, like, both these guys are good. Like, Rico and Chuba Hubbard are both good running backs. And I think that always just creates a sense of caution where I'm all in on Chuba Hubbard in 2025.

I think Rico Doudal is a zero burger.

That's not really how you should be approaching it, in my opinion.

Like, you need to evaluate each player and how good they can be.

And Rico took his opportunities and ran with it and ran with his starting job.

It made Chuba Hubbard a guy that was a glorified handcuff, essentially, and definitely not worth where you drafted him in, you know,

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