Brownlow's Twitter Mailbag: NFL Draft edition

By Lauren Brownlow, WRALSportsFan columnist/reporter

It's the offseason, so it's time for my weekly Twitter Mailbag! Although to be fair, it's almost like the season is back in session during NFL Draft week. And all of your Mailbag questions this week, of course, reflected that.

So let's get to the questions!

To answer quickly and bluntly: yes.

Friends, let me tell you I was cautiously optimistic as the draft started to fall the way I wanted it to fall. All defense early, the elite offensive linemen still on the board. That didn't mean the Panthers would do the right thing, though. This is a franchise that could find the banana peel in an all-yellow room. But it was right there for them. A guy that was supposed to be gone already in Ikem Ekwonu? A local guy at that? An ELITE LEFT TACKLE? DRAFT THIS MAN!

I should have known that as much as the Panthers upset me, they usually don't upset me in the first round. That trend continued, and I felt ... relieved? I was happy, sure. Ickey was fun as hell to watch at NC State and the Panthers have been overdue to draft an elite tackle. To have a Charlotte native and a dude I covered play for my team? And a REALLY GOOD player at that? Yes. YES.

Does this fix everything? Of course not. But you can't have a good offensive line, much less a great one, without two really good tackles. If Ickey projects like he's supposed to, he'll join Taylor Moton who's been really good at right tackle and it's a huge upgrade already. The Panthers actually have decent starters now, just not as much depth as they'd like. The problem now is way more the whole, you know, not having a good quarterback thing. Really, I should say a functional quarterback. Do you know how sad I am after the freaking Cam Newton era that I am already so broken I am willing to settle for functional? But I'm too old to live through another Jimmy Clausen era.

So to answer your question, yes. The Panthers got better already in this draft. But there are still question marks in important places, like the dude who is responsible for giving the ball to everyone (on his own team, now; you'd think this doesn't need clarification but it clearly does!) and the dude who tells the aforementioned dude how to do that. A lot of dudes, I know, but if the head coach and quarterback don't actively help you win games, you're not going to ... win many games.

I have a very specific memory of watching the NFL Draft with my extended family one time, and for the life of me I cannot remember why we were all together but I just remember us all being crowded around the television all day off the on. I don't remember exactly what the TV format used to be, although I know it changed in 2010. I do know that there were a *ton* of rounds on the second day. Like, most of the rounds.

I remember watching the draft a lot, but I don't remember a lot about specific drafts, if that makes sense. I just remember getting joy out of watching the draft during the day and being like, "Oh hey, I loved watching that guy play college football! He'll fit in great with (NFL Team X)! Good for them."

I'll say this: I like the idea of a weekend for the NFL Draft, and I would really like it I think if it were Round 1 on Friday night and then Rounds 2-7 on Saturday, starting at noon and going until we finish. One thing I miss about the format change is this feeling on Day 2 that you were really seeing the entire gamut of dudes who comprise NFL rosters drafted on the same day. The guys drafted early might end up in the Hall of Fame. The guys drafted later would struggle to make a practice squad and would be out of the league for good within 2-3 years, probably. (I made up that number, but it sounds right?)

And there's just something comforting about the idea of being able to come and go while the draft is going on and the draft still going on in the background, waiting for you to come back from Home Depot or whatever and turn it back on. Okay, I'm now starting to see why they changed it. But that doesn't mean I can't miss it. I definitely miss the two-day format. This does not need to go three days. And I don't miss the old format nearly as much as I miss the skills challenge at the Pro Bowl.

For the old people like me, allow me to enlighten you: "fit" refers to outfit. And I have to enlighten you because for longer than I'd care to admit, I thought "fit" referred to the WAY an outfit looked on someone. To be fair to me, I thought that because the first time I remember seeing it was in reference to Cam Newton, and clothes wore Cam Newton rather than vice versa.

Oh, you asked about the outfit! I love it. I know he wore the jacket to honor his heritage. I also know that he wore this:

Ickey is too cool for this franchise.

I fancy myself a bit of a cereal connoisseur. I legit go through about a box of cereal on average a week by myself, between eating it and snacking on it. I now have special airtight cereal containers that I use so that I can fit more cereal in my pantry, although I must say it has not helped me realize how much cereal I'm eating at one time.

Not to get too technical, but this is important: I'm assuming that I can't freeze anything? So the milk is room temperature at best? Is it even pasteurized? Okay, I've gone too far down the rabbit hole. So fine. Let's assume the milk, bowl, spoon, all that is normal. As is the cereal.

So a big key here? One cereal has to be a different experience in milk and without milk. So one cereal will be Life. I've been on a big Life cereal kick recently. I can eat it with milk, although you've really got to watch your milk-to-cereal ratio. Life can become soup in a hurry. But as a snack, that sugar coating on it really makes it extra satisfying, as does the crisp without the milk.

Oh's! are a cereal that rank high on my personal power rankings, and probably higher than Life. But I can't have Life and Oh's!, so they're out.

It's weird: as a kid, I was only allowed to have sugar cereal on weekends and even then, if it was a cereal that my mom found to be too ridiculous, I couldn't have it. I think I got to have Cocoa Pebbles like once, as a treat. Anyway, the point is that I tried to maximize the amount of sugar I was allowed to eat on the weekends and during the week. I was allowed to eat Life during the week. So I learned to make it sweet enough for me. But I sort cereals in this way and I sort of need a variance. I can't have only overly sweet cereals lying around.

Okay, so we still need two more cereals. I feel like I'm going to have to pick one between Lucky Charms and Cap'n Crunch. I can't explain why. They're not the same cereal. But I can't live in a world without Lucky Charms, so they're coming with me, as hard as it will be for me to leave my Cap'n behind.

There are some elite cereals that are going to be left out by necessity. I can't snack on Cinnamon Toast Crunch without making a big mess. We already talked about the Oh's! situation. And a chocolatey cereal is going to be too much if it's one of only three cereals I get to regularly eat.

There are some sweeter cereals that became staples for me but really flirted with that line between sugar and non-sugar cereal: I think of them like daily cereals rather than treat cereals. So we're talking your Raisin Brans, Honey Bunches of Oats, Multigrain Cheerios as daily cereals. But the flirting with the line cereals? Frosted Mini Wheats, Golden Grahams, Honey Nut Cheerios. The latter two might havre even technically BEEN sugar cereals, but I feel like they weren't.

So I have a "daily" cereal in Life, and a sweet cereal in Lucky Charms. A good snackable cereal won't make a huge mess (a mess will be had), either by what it leaves on your hands or the crumb factor. Honey Bunches of Oats aren't that sticky, but far too many tiny pieces. Smacks? Apple Jacks? Same and same. Even Froot Loops get a little too messy for my tastes.

All right, you know what? I'm doing it. My third cereal is going to be one that is rarely around anymore, but one that shaped significant portions of my childhood and one that is just as good to eat with milk as it is without: Waffle Crisp.

So, my final list is:

1. Life

2. Lucky Charms

3. Waffle Crisp