Two. Chris. That’s the number of catches that Deontay Johnson and Jonathan Mingo have combined since they’ve been trading away from the Panthers two. Wow. It’s almost like the Panthers were their best opportunity. Imagine that? Imagine that get dialed in Panthers fans. Here comes an in depth. Look at your team exclusive interviews. Lock a room in sight. Let’s huddle up. Let’s just do it. Ok. For Panthers Playbook driven by Carolina Ford Dealers here are your hosts, Dennis Cox and Chris Lee. Welcome back to another episode of Panthers Playbook. That’s Chris Lee Dennis talk with you. Little Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving to each and every single one of you out there. I hope everyone’s enjoying time with friends and family. Maybe watch a little bit football today or sometime this weekend, including the Panthers. This coming Sunday. It’s a four o’clock kick at Bank of America Stadium. Chris, you and I will both be there a lot of holiday. Hoops this week too. A lot of different stuff going on. A lot of good sports this week before we, by the way, leave your thoughts on Bryce Young in the comment section down below. But before we get started Carolina Ford dealers, our sponsor of Panthers Playbook with a Ford F 150 on your team. It’s game on to your Carolina Ford dealer today. The reason why we bring up Bryce Young is because I know he wasn’t the most passing guards he had in the game in his career. Chris and his, you know, 1.5 seasons. I feel like it was his most complete game that he has played from start to finish. It felt like it was his most complete game. But the big question is going forward, what do you do next? I always have the saying of anyone is capable of a great moment. That moment can be a particular play, a series or a game for Bryce Young Sunday against the Chiefs has to be more than a moment. This has to be a consistent thing in and we got to prove that he is a starter long term in this league. Yeah. Um I, I think that, you know, he has to exactly what you said. I mean, I’m basically gonna just regurgitate what you said. He has to, he has to, uh, just show everything just beyond this week. You know, it doesn’t necessarily need to be wins, right? Because there’s so many things that goes into winning a football game than just quarterback play, right? Your defense has to get a stop when you need defenses have to get stops. Uh, you know, coaches have to call right plays and maybe have to run the ball more than three times in one a half. Um, you know, there’s a, there’s a lot of factors there. Uh, but I, I want him to continue to be not the reason why they lose, you know what I’m saying? Like, you can’t look at anything that the Panthers did on this past Sunday and say if Bryce Young would have done this better, like, no, Bryce did what he was supposed to do. Um, you know, there were certain balls that weren’t caught. It wasn’t because of Bryce because he was putting them in the right place, man. Uh, I mean, we were in the press box just in awe of like, look at that placement, like, look at where you put that and, you know, you got guys who just simply missed it. So, uh, it, this was the guy that we were hoping that we were gonna get, uh, coming out of Alabama. Now, we just need to see this on a consistent basis, uh, for us to end the season. I know you and I said after the Denver Broncos game that we feel like he’s a backup quarterback and I, I still have my, I still have my reservations about what he can be long term. I still think long term. That’s what he is. But Chris, you and I are not afraid to say if we’re wrong and this is where we talk about the consistency of coming from Bryce Shaw. If, if he keeps playing like he did this past Sunday, if he keeps doing that on a week in and week out basis, consistently, I’ll eat the humble pie, I’ll eat crow, I’ll mix the two together. I’ll bake crow into the humble pie if I have to. I’m ok with the, with doing that just because we say that we think that Bryce Young is a backup long term. That’s what we think doesn’t mean. I hate Bryce or that I don’t want Bryce Young to succeed. I think that some people actually get that thing confused because if Bryce Bryce haters, right? No, we love Bryce. He’s a great guy. He really is a good dude. He really is. If Bryce is successful for this team long term and we’re wrong with our assessment. Fine. I’m ok with that because this team has spent over the last four years, 11 draft picks and they sent DJ Moore away to try and fill this one spot on their team. There’s a lot of pressure on this guy to work out. There really is. There’s a ton on it, there’s a ton on it and he, he’s had plenty of stumbles along the way. Go back to even just earlier this season wasn’t that long ago, but if it does work out for him, awesome because I’m tired of wondering what this team’s future is gonna look like at quarterback. I want that settled so we can build the rest of this team. Maybe Bryce isn’t the answer. We’ll figure that out in time. I still think there are limitations with him physically. We haven’t seen it on a consistent basis, but hey, if it works out awesome, awesome. I want this team to win. Here’s the thing with me and Dennis, right? Like, you know, we’re, we’re not just for everybody who’s watching, we’re not these guys who are going to come out here and give hot takes. Um, just to try to shock people. Like, so I, I’m let me peel back like the, the, the, let me show you what’s happening on the fourth wall, right? There’s some people who have, who have podcasts or TV shows or whatever, they’ll go out there and they’ll say things they don’t necessarily mean just so it’s a hot take so they can get people to talk about it. They get a reaction and, and we’re not doing that, we’re simply reacting off of what we’re seeing. So after the Denver Denver Broncos game, if we come on here and say he looks like a backup. Well, that’s the information that we have at that point because we’re taking it into effect his overall win total, which up until that point was only two and they came last year. And so we saw the first two games of the season where there’s plenty of things wrong with the Carolina Panthers, including defense but also one of the reasons why they lost those two games was because of Bryce Young. All of a sudden you insert somebody else into another game and they look like a completely different offense and a completely different team. I just want everybody out there who’s watching to remember the information that we have at a time. We’re reacting to the information that we have. Right. And we’re assessing based off of that information. I’ve always been the type of person if the information changes. So will my opinion. Right. Because I’m not gonna have an opinion on some old information. So it’s not flip flopping. And there, there’s this whole thing that people think about that on the internet that’s not flip flopping, flip flopping is saying, you know what Dennis? I think that, um, I think that turkey is the best Thanksgiving meat, right? And then the next year you’re watching the podcast again. I say, you know what? I think Ham is the best Thanksgiving meat. Well, wait a second, you said last year that and, and the, the recipes don’t necessarily change it. It’s, you know, it’s, it’s the same stuff every year. That’s, that’s flip flopping and that’s just a low level definition of it. We’re watching football where things change every single week and right now what we saw this past Sunday, Bryce Young looked really good. He’s got to prove it on a consistent basis for us to change what we thought after the Denver game because anybody can have a really awesome one game. Right. He was drafted number one overall for a reason. He went to Alabama for a reason. He played well at modern day for a reason. We’ve said all this before. Right. He’s a talented guy. He just has to show it on a regular basis. We are all judged by that. Yep. And everything that we all do, we’re all judged by that. And so that’s what we’re doing with, with Bryce Young. And if he comes out and he balls out for the rest of the year, I would definitely say I was wrong with the information I had at the time during the Denver Broncos game. But then after that and he started getting better, he showed me something different and that’s not on us. And here’s something to keep in mind as well is that we saw last year, I mean, we addressed this at the end of the podcast last week, but we saw last year where the, the actually it was Christmas Eve. He had the 300 plus yards, multiple touchdowns against the Green Bay Packers. The, the Panthers lost 3330. But we’re all like, yo, ok, maybe like this is the turning point. This is the turnaround. This is the guy we wanted to see the next, next two weeks he combines against Jacksonville and Tampa for, I think it was like 202 yards and the offense literally scored zero points in those two games combined like that, that’s what we saw after. So it’s like, man, that was an awesome moment and then he follows up with goose eggs and then we saw the first two weeks of the season offense was non-existent. There was an interception on the very first pass of the season. They barely, they score 10 points. He doesn’t even have a touchdown pass. It’s him rushing the ball the next week against the Chargers three points. He throws for less than 100 yards, didn’t even complete a pass that went further than 10 yards downfield. I think it’s benched like that was just this season. That was two months ago. So it’s again just because he has one great game doesn’t mean all of a sudden, yo, yeah, this guy is handing the keys to the franchise. We have to wait and see what he does consistently week in and week out since he’s come back and been the starter. There have been really good flashes in different games, whether it’s a great series or some great throws. Yes, there’s been some drops by some guys, but we have seen some moments and we’ve seen his confidence grow. That was one of my big concerns is that the way his confidence was shot, Chris, I was like, I don’t see how he recovers from that, but the confidence, the swagger that we saw Sunday, ok. What happens when the next time he throws an interception or has a bad series or a bad drive. What, where does his confidence go from there? That’s something that we have to wait and see. And also, like, first off, we’re just being honest with the, with the things that we notice and the things we see, like you do this on every day on radio and in Raleigh, uh, 3 to 6, listen to the Tim Donnelly show if I’m sorry to drive with Tim Dowley. Excuse me, if you’re ever in, in the Raleigh area, right? Um, and, um, I work at WRL, you see it back here behind me. Like we’re covering sports all the time. We got to be honest about teams and honest about teams that we actually like, right? Like, we’re not hating just to hate and actually we’re not hating at all. Like, I like the Carolina Panthers. As a matter of fact, you guys have watched Panthers Playbook and not knowing I’m wearing Panther socks at the time. That’s true. You know what I’m saying? You know, like I’ve, I’m, I’m an actual Carolina Panthers fan. Yeah. There you go right there. I’m an actual Carolina Panthers fan. As a matter of fact, I went to a T and a show recently where I had on a Cam Newton jersey on, I’ll find it in just a bit, but like, we’re just honest with what we see and, um, and, and we’re gonna continue to be that way. And that doesn’t mean that we’re hating on Bryce younger or wanting, uh, his downfall is we don’t want his downfall. We, I want to see him work out because the team that I love hasn’t had a franchise quarterback in a while, they let that guy go unceremoniously and they haven’t replaced him since and we’ve gone through the whole history with it with David Tepper. Um, there’s a situation, uh, here, here’s a picture, by the way, look at you, there’s a situation over the summer. Dennis me and you, right. Um, AC C kickoff. Yeah. Uh, we are in Charlotte, the hotel in Charlotte. This is back in, back in July and we are talking to a bunch of people that work at ESPN people that you watch all the time and there’s a few of them just like, I don’t know about Bryce Young. What do you guys think about it? And we’re the ones telling them, hey, Bryce Young last year wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t that Bryce Young was bad. We think CJ. Strout would have been just as bad if he was, if he was drafted to that team because there was other things happening that had nothing to do with Bryce. Were there some faults with Bryce? Of course, because he’s, he was a rookie. He’s getting a chance to learn and you’re not gonna make all the right decisions. Reads have the best footwork, all that good stuff, but you can’t blame anything on Bryce. We had that conversation with people from ESPN and there’s one guy who’s in a know that will remain nameless. That was like, yeah, you guys are right. I expect a big year from Brayshaw. Now, we were wrong at the beginning of the season because we just didn’t know what was going on with his confidence and now that he’s got confidence back, he’s starting to prove us right? But all, all that has to be just going back to the whole theme every single Sunday. We need to see some semblance of that. It’s OK to have, you know, to kind of regress back sometimes, but you can’t go all the way back to where it was, uh, in weeks one and two earlier this season, you just can’t. And, uh, you, you just gotta, you gotta, you know, it’s, it’s time to put on the big boy pants now and, and go out there and become the person that you were drafted to be. And that’s, that’s literally all we’ve ever said. Yeah, we’ve seen, we’ve seen flashes of, of great games even from guys who are, who are genuine, like backup quarterback. Journeymen. Remember a guy by the name of, uh Mike White. Mike White played for the Jacks. I played for the, uh, the New York Jets for a little bit. He had a game back in 2021 where he threw for 405 yards on 37 or 45 405 yards, three touchdowns. He balled out. Yeah, against the Bengals back in 2001 dude balled out. I’m not saying Bryce Young is Mike White. My point is what we saw Sunday is that anyone’s capable of doing that in the NFL. Not, not anyone, not anyone, but some people, some people are. But once we see Bryce do this on a consistent basis, then like, you know, all right, then you and I will say, hey, you know what? We were wrong, we were wrong and we’ve done that before on the show. We have and remember, remember our prediction for the Bears game, remember our prediction for the Bears. I mean, I even had it in my name. I had, you know, Chris, I was wrong, Lee. Yeah, it’s funny because we went on there saying we were wrong and then people in the comment section, you guys were wrong. Like, yeah, we just said that we were wrong, just said it. We’re saying that I’m, I’m, I’m hoping that things turn out well for Bryce, I really do. I genuinely do because I think this franchise needs it. This fan base needs it and this fan base deserves it. They need to have someone that they can count in or count on week in and week out that, you know, when he steps out there on the field, we’re good. We’re good. That’s what we want. Absolutely. Um, time, time is gonna tell and, you know, the thing that I want to see from them this week one, uh going against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, it’s, it’s a division rival, right? So, like to me those games, you kind of have to show up a little extra hard on that because that’s, that’s pride. Those are teams that you’re gonna see twice every single year. Those are teams that if you’ve been with, uh, the Panthers for a while, you know what they’re gonna do, you know them inside and out. Right. Um, a lot of times and Alice does and a lot of times in divisional games, like the, the, um, the records don’t matter. I mean, we’ve seen that in, uh, with the AFC North, we’ve seen that in the NFC East, right. Dallas beating Washington and Washington is definitely the better team this season. However, you know, Dallas just kind of steps up, they play a different game when they’re going against their rivals. Um, you know, that’s what I, that’s what I want to see from the Carolina Panthers. Um, I, I haven’t seen, I haven’t watched a, you know, a lot of full games from Tampa Bay, but I’ve seen enough to know that they can get got and, and the Carolina Panthers, uh, have the ability to part of me and this is, I don’t know if this is a conspiracy theory or whatever, but part of me makes me kind of wonder like, I wonder if Dave Canal has saved all the good, uh, Jonathan Brooks stuff for his old team. So he can kind of just like get my old team. We’re go, we’re gonna get him on this. They’re not gonna really expect Jonathan Brooks. We’re gonna give him two runs, you know, just kind of hold him back a little bit. But man, at Bank of America Stadium at 405 on December 1st, we’re really gonna put it out there and I, I hope that that’s, I hope that’s the case. Uh, but I, I’m looking forward to see what they do to take the next steps and I’m also looking forward to, to what the defense does to step up. It, it felt like they got their swagger in the fourth quarter once they started getting stops and sacks and, and now, and after having a five sack game, I mean, when’s the last time the Panthers had a five sack game? It’s been a minute. I mean, I don’t, I don’t think it’s been, it’s probably been at least, you know, two seasons since that, uh, since we’ve had that, I, I think now the defense is rolling on a different level now. Um, they still need to tackle Dane Jackson. Mhm. And cover Dane Jackson. Xavier Woods. Yeah, you guys need to tackle, ok. Um, you know, Xavier Liga, you took responsibility, you need to catch some balls. Um You know, Tommy Trimble, you took responsibility, you need to catch some balls, but I want to see everybody step up. It’s not just on Bryce. I need to see everybody step up for sure. And you know what? I know we’ll kind of wrap up on this. I know Dave Canalis on Sunday said after the game, hey, the reason why we didn’t run as much in the first half is because of the way Kansas City was playing us. So we had to throw it back in the box. Yeah. And, but here’s the thing, Bryce was executing. So it was like it was fine. Like, all right, didn’t get the red zone conversions that we needed to. But Tampa Bay is one of the worst teams in the NFL at top of the run. They’re literally 25th in the NFL in yards per carry defensively at 4.7. Uh lean on number 30 tuba hub for sure. And, and some uh extra dose of uh number 24. There’s something that we didn’t bring up before that uh that we probably should have talked about uh Kansas City blitzes a lot and they blitzed a lot this past Sunday and Bryce Young, um traditionally Hatton uh done well against the blitz boy. Yo, like that. I, I can’t remember uh which quarter it was, but he made, I, I wanna say maybe it’s the third or fourth quarter where he made uh this big time pass to, uh David Moore and, um, Chuba Hubbard picked up, uh, a blitz and there was other guys coming from another side. Everybody else on the offensive line did their job. But it’s just like if you’ve, if you’ve got seven versus six, somebody is gonna leak open, right? Um, and Bryce Young got hit and he stepped up and made that throw and boy, like, you know, that’s the stuff that we’re talking about. It’s not just that he had a better game. He improved in situations that we saw him Wilton before before. He would have either tried to, he probably would have just tucked in and gotten hit, he wouldn’t have stepped up or he probably would have tried to scramble around a little bit or drop the ball on the ground and it would be, you know, he just would have panicked, he stepped up and made a big time throw and moved the chains. Um, so, you know, we gotta give him props and stuff for that for doing so well against the blitz. And so, and, and, you know, that Tampa’s defense is gonna come with it. I want to see him do that against another NFL defense now, uh, and, and see how that goes. But, um, yeah, I’m, I’m looking forward to a steady diet of the run. Dave Canalis more than 3.5, probably need to have more than three and a quarter for sure. Yeah. Against this Tampa team for sure. 100% with you on that. But you and I are going to be there at Bank of America on Sunday. We’ll get that locker room sound once again. So we’re actually go into the locker room and talk to these guys and these guys that we’re critical about, we gotta see those guys in the locker room. And that’s the other thing, that’s the other thing too. The people from the Panthers organization come up to us, ok? And say we enjoy your podcast. So they’re watching. So these are what we’re saying y’all. Yeah, this is probably why I never say anything negative about ASHA Robinson. That’s a scary dude. That is the one scary dude. I talked to him a little bit in the locker room on Sunday and went like, I’m on his side. I don’t care what’s happening. I’m on his side. He could have murdered somebody like I’m with him, boy, boy, scary dude. Boy, there’s some, there’s some other scary specimens in that locker room too, man. Yeah, that’s some scary dude. Like, hey, listen, if we ever need security, if any of these guys are retiring, I’m calling a Sean, I’m calling uh Ian Thomas. Like these are some big dude. I mean, even Jalen Jalen Coker, by the way, young people don’t realize how big that dude is. They don’t really like he is a linebacker who catches passes and run routes like, like that, I mean, or I wouldn’t even say a linebacker, he’s probably an outside linebacker, probably an edge rusher. Yeah, he’s, he’s a big guy. He’s a big boy. Yeah, he’s not that much smaller, like, walking by, like, he’s not that much smaller than to tremble, to be honest. Like, he’s not that he is a legit, almost like. Yeah, dude, you’re actually like bigger than, yeah. Yeah, he’s, he’s actually a legit, big dude. He really is. Um But you know what? We’re gonna have a episode for you on Sunday. Make sure you understand that Carolina Pan uh sorry, Carolina Ford Dealers is your sponsor, sponsor of Panthers Playbook. Easy for me to say with the Ford F 150 on your team. It’s game monster, your Carolina Ford Dealer today. I hope everyone is enjoying their Thanksgiving, everyone. Stay safe out there. Everyone enjoy your time with your family. We’ll see you Sunday at Bank of America. Hey, don’t eat a lot of meat this week. I was, I made that example earlier, but I was kidding on that, right? Like have a lot of vegetables. Let’s save the earth.

Source: wralsportsfan.com