The Panthers didn't expect
CHARLOTTE -- All Marty Hurney could do was wait.
As the second round began, Jimmy Clausen's name sat atop the Panthers' draft board. They didn't expect his name to still be there; like most draft followers, they felt the Notre Dame quarterback would be long gone by the end of the first round, let alone the middle of the second.
But teams kept picking, and kept avoiding the quarterback. By the 47th pick of the draft, only New England stood between the Panthers and Clausen -- and the chances of the Patriots selecting a passer with a three-time Super Bowl winner on their roster were remote.
Then the Cardinals traded up ... and the Panthers held their breath, since Arizona was just three months removed from losing Kurt Warner to retirement. Surely, Clausen's slide down the draft board was about to stop one slot shy of Carolina's position.
Not so.
"It was a great feeling when Arizona made its pick and it wasn't (Clausen)," said Hurney, whose team didn't even use half of its allotted seven minutes before turning in the card that confirmed Clausen to the Panthers with the 48th pick. "You always say the fun of it is (that) anything can happen. Whoo -- it happened."
The Panthers started trying to make it happen with the first pick of the second round, which belonged to the St. Louis Rams.
"(Head coach John Fox) told me they were trying to get up to the 33rd pick," said Clausen by telephone from Palm Springs, Calif.
"Sometimes the best deals are the ones you don't make, and that was the case tonight," Hurney added. "We were very fortunate (Clausen) was there."
Clausen, who was playing pool with friends and wasn't even watching the draft, was equally ecstatic with the end result, even though he expected to learn his NFL destination a day earlier.
"It's been a dream come true," he said. "At the end of the day, everything happens for a reason."
That being said, dropping through the draft ranked him, although it only serves to provide extra motivation.
"It's frustrating sometimes. It's definitely going to be in the back of my mind every single time I step on the field, every single time I'm in the facility working out and watching film, to make me that much better. It's a dream come true and I just can't wait to get there.
Unlike the two quarterbacks that preceded him in the draft -- Oklahoma's Sam Bradford to the Rams and Florida's Tim Tebow to the Broncos -- Clausen has vast experience in a pro-style offense. The system he executed at Notre Dame was imported by former head coach Charlie Weis from the New England Patriots and shares similar DNA to the offense of Panthers offensive coordinator Jeff Davidson, who worked with Weis in New England.
"Coach Fox told me it's the same exact system I've played in the past three years at Notre Dame, so I'm really excited about that," Clausen said. "I'm just going to hit the ground running and try to do everything I can to help the organization and the team win."
And Clausen expressed confidence he would eventually be able to do just that.
"You guys just made the best pick in the draft," he said, "and I'm going to make you guys proud."
