Ben McAdoo sees “avenue to win” on offense

McAdoo said his faith was mainly based on head coach Matt Rhule, with whom he has a number of ties from their respective days with the Giants. But he also believes Darnold can improve after an up-and-down season, considering the help he has at the skill positions, and an upgraded offensive line.

In a 2018 interview with the New York Post, the former Giants head coach said he liked many things about the just-picked Jets quarterback, though he had some reservations about his mechanics. In that interview, he said Darnold “has a lot of magic in his game,” while noting a “fundamental flaw” in his passing motion.

But Tuesday, he said he was bullish on Darnold after their short amount of work together.

“Yeah, Sam was one of the people that intrigued me about the job, to be honest with you,” McAdoo said. “I think Sam does have some magic in his game. I think he’s got some athleticism to him. I’m excited to work with Sam. We’ve been working the last few days here to kind of get up to speed on the offense.

“And he’s shown flashes of being a good player in this league, and working together, hopefully we can get that to show up more consistently.”

Darnold led the Panthers to a 3-0 start, playing competent football last year. But when Christian McCaffrey went down with an injury in Houston in that third game, it started a collective skid on offense that the Panthers never really steered out of, while using 13 different combinations of linemen in 17 games.

Otherwise, McAdoo mostly spoke in generalities, since players have been in the building two days, and won’t take the field together for a couple of weeks.

He wasn’t offering much in the way of big opinions on draft prospects either, since the Panthers hold the sixth overall pick and have been looking intently at all the top left tackle and quarterback prospects.