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Love to see JJ Jansen back for another year. (Do you think he will ever retire?) As for my question: Do you mind ranking the top 5 needs (in your opinion) for the Panthers this off-season?

5. Xavier Legette improves or is replaced

4. Bryce Young‘s consistency improves

3. True alpha for the tight end room

2. True alpha in our inside linebacker corps

1. True alpha at edge rusher

But as a concluding statement, let me say that I have full trust in what Dan (and Dave, of course) will do this off-season to better us once again and KEEP POUNDING! — Micah, Gastonia, NC

JJ will likely keep playing until he can’t. Those 1 percent shares of minor league sports teams aren’t paying for themselves. I remember asking his mentor John Kasay once whether he’d consider retiring here rather than playing for another team. He looked at me like I was crazy, and replied: “You know they’re paying me $1 million dollars a year to do this, right?” (Those were 2010 dollars.)

As for your question, let me begin by noting that “true alpha” is clearly going to be a new entry in this year’s list of draft cliches. They can’t all be alphas. A team needs a few mus too, and then they all need to get in the boat, grab an oar, and rho.

Clearly, the Panthers are looking for upgrades on defense. The pass-rush need is obvious, and finding a long-term answer at linebacker would be preferable. Dan Morgan knows he needs to find someone to fall into the lineage that includes Sam Mills, Micheal Barrow, himself, Jon Beason, and Kuechly. That would fix a number of issues on defense, in the same way Moehrig solved a few problems with the run defense last year.

Finding a left tackle to start the regular season and perhaps most of the year needs to be pretty high on the list. With Ikem Ekwonu recovering from a torn patellar tendon, they can’t assume he’ll be ready; they have to plan around it. So whether it’s re-signing Yosh Nijman or finding an equivalent, that’s a have-to, not a want-to.

They need a center because they don’t have one who has played offense in the NFL on the roster at the moment.

I go back and forth on tight ends. Could they use one? Of course. But it’s not in my top five needs because they can function with what they have. They could certainly use a centerfield-type safety (though Nick Scott played better last year than anyone wants to give him credit for). And while Legette gets a lot of attention for the obvious reasons, they have two starting-caliber wideouts in McMillan and Coker, so it’s not nearly the panic for me it is for others. He’s still 25, and he’s big and strong and fast. Those guys get time to develop because they have traits that others don’t.