We went back, huh? Yeah, that sucked. Starting to feel like week two.? That sucked. That was, oh Who? Hey, man, at least, at least, at least we didn’t have to go to Charlotte today. Thank God for moving on my part. Let’s get the fuck dialed in. Panthers fans. Here comes in in depth. Look at your team exclusive interviews, locker 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 the Panthers Playbook. That’s Chris Lee. Dennis Cox here with you. Just go ahead. Leave your thoughts in the comments section on this 30 to 14. Uh You know, I almost said something I can’t say on air. So you know what? But leave your sure. We’ll go with that one but leave your thoughts in the comment section as you’re doing that. By the way, folks, Carolina Ford Dealers, our sponsor of Panthers Playbook with a Ford F 150 on your team. It’s game on to Carolina Ford Dealers today, man. Chris, I’m not gonna lie the opening drive for the Panthers the way they were moving the ball. I was like, ok, methodical drive marching right down the field. And then once Bryce had the turnover, the offense just fell apart, everything just fell apart offensively. It felt like for them. And then the defense obviously just couldn’t stop the run. That’s just, you know, copy paste from week to week. I feel like, but once that, that first turnover took place the offense just like what happened, guys, you guys were moving the ball perfectly on that first drive that you had. I’ve been, uh saying it, I tweeted it a couple of times today. Um The Carolina Panthers are not good enough to overcome turnovers, right? So to, to win any games and we thought that they would win this game. We need to stop, you know, going with the Panthers when we think they’re gonna win, I’m done for the season when it comes to that. Um But even with, with that, like it was more so based off of, of how they have taken care of the ball and how they’ve ran the ball and how the defense has stepped up in certain situations and you have a Dallas team that basically was reeling, um, before coming into this and this was kind of like how a lot of people treat their games at Bank of America Stadium. It was a get right game for them. And, uh, you have four turnovers for the Carolina Panthers uh, one for the Dallas Cowboys. And as you said, it started off looking like it was gonna be really good. Keep the ball in your hands, keep the ball out of the hands of the Cowboys. Keep your defense fresh. It felt like that was gonna be the game plan. Uh, running the ball was heavy and then of course, after the one turnover, Dave Canals goes away from the run, um, the offense doesn’t do well, the offense really only moved the ball on that drive. The first drive of the game, the 83 yard touchdown drive a little bit at the end, uh, as it was garbage time. Uh, but other than that, really, the bulk of their yards, what it was 83 then 72. So quick math, that’s, uh, 155 out of the 135. So, um, that was on two drives, the first drive and the touchdown drive the rest of the game, there’s 80 yards, it’s just not good enough and, and it regressed back to, um, to, you know, bad price. So, yeah, if you look after the first drive, three place, punt, five plays, interception, three place punt, you had the one touchdown to 83 yards to Jalen Coker, which you actually took advantage of the Dallas turnover that they had. That was like the one saving grace for the offense in the first half. Was that one play? But then in the second half you start very first play fumble when Bryce Young gets sacked just didn’t hold on to the football, three place punt, three place punt. And then you had that 12 place, 70 yard touchdown drive and then you had a bad interception to end things off as well. I mean, it’s just, I, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to say. You just when we thought this team was making progress, right? Making progress and moving. I don’t know this, this team as a whole because it was like, oh, well, they, they played the, the Chiefs close. Hey, they, they actually played the Bucks close teams that are looking to go to the playoffs in this case. Obviously, the Chiefs are gonna go, Bucks are probably gonna win the, uh, NFC South and then last week, another close game against the Eagles and then all of a sudden this pops up, it’s like, yo you can’t be close against good teams and then look terrible against a not very good one like that. You can’t play to the level of your competition if that makes sense. Like you have to continue to play at that high level every single week. And that’s like the growing pains of a young team, I guess. I don’t know. But man, it was just, it was frustrating to watch all the penalties. The offensive line was not good today either. It was just bad and they got gashed over 200 yards on the, on the ground defensively. Like, what, what are we doing here? Um, you know, just like us, I guess, like we drink the Kool Aid a little bit, maybe the team is drinking their own Kool Aid, maybe they, they felt a certain type of way about themselves going in. So, um, you know, and they still have to really work for it. Like this is a team that can just kind of roll out there and, uh, come from, you know, a week of preparation and just, you know, just do whatever, just kind of roll out there and win. No, like you, you really have to work for your wins. This roster, this team isn’t there yet, uh, to where anything is a given for them. And I wouldn’t say that anything in the NFL is a given. Um, but it’s just, you’re not one of those top tier teams going against the bottom, uh, rung team that you can just do your normal thing and kind of go out there like, no, you really have to make sure everything is perfect. That starts with taking care of the ball. And that’s one of the reasons why even though Bryce Young has looked amazing over the last few weeks, I haven’t gone out there to just jump out and say I was wrong about what I said earlier this year because we knew that there are certain things we hadn’t seen yet at least for me, I needed to see him under duress a little bit more, you know, like, you know, and look, I’m gonna say this, I think Bryce Young is the quarterback of the future. I think he proves me wrong on that part of it. Right. But the future, meaning next year, the fourth year maybe pick up 1/5 year option and then we’ll see, you know, I, I’m not ready to say that this is what the Panthers are gonna be doing for the next 10 years. I’m just not ready to do that yet, but I think he’s shown us enough to show that like, ok, you can give him some time if you put some pieces around him, everything around him has to be perfect for him to be that guy for you. And so until the Panthers have it perfect around him, we got to expect a few of these games, uh, to come up and, and these games are gonna rear the ugly head every once in a while. Yeah, that’s a conversation, you know, we can have at a later time about, ok, is he gonna be a starter next year or franchise guy? Like those are two different things. Um, because you look at what’s available for you even next year at quarterback, if you decide to go away from Bryce Young again, that’s a separate conversation for another time. But I, I, to me it was just the, the response or the lack of response after the initial turnover on that first drive by Carolina, it’s just, I mean, Bryce put a heck of a spin move on like you just put a spin move on Micah Parsons. I was like, ok, like you are feeling it right now, in fact that you put a spin move on Micah Parsons like that, but he didn’t protect the football going down to the ground and then, then the fumble goes away. And then again, it’s the response after that, not just by him, but the team as a whole again, it just fell apart on that second drive. You had third and five and then you have Cade Mays kind of like half going backwards with the false start as the center. I thought he had a rough day today to Cade Mays but the whole offensive line and then all of a sudden now you’re at 3rd and 10. So like you put yourself in a disadvantageous position when you’re at third and five and then sure enough, you don’t pick up the first down, you got a punt. Um Just, you can see sometimes like where this team has, they use as a crutch like, hey, you know what, third and gotta have it or fourth and gotta have it. Where’s Bryce Young go? He goes to Adam Thalen. Sure enough on that first interception that he threw, he was like locked on third and gotta have it locked on, on Adam Thalen defense knew it. Ball pops up, Greg Olson did a great job on the broadcast pointing it out. He’s like this guy’s covered, this guy’s covered Javi and Sanders is open right here. You have to hit that guy. You can’t lock in on one dude. Other teams pick up on that too. You can’t just continue to use one person as a crutch. You know, it’s just, it’s like, all right, safety valve and is automatically gonna go there that reared its ugly head. I thought today as well, especially on that last, that last interception that he threw. I mean, pretty much everything, everything that we’ve said has been bad about the team. Uh, the run defense is just not there and, you know what I felt like, you know, we’re not there to talk to guys in the locker room and a lot of times you’ll, you’ll hear, uh, you know, people have to do their assignments to fill their gaps or whatever. I felt like there was a lot of, there was a lot of great gap integrity, just bad tackling. Like it just felt like guys were like, you could see it clearly to me on television where guys were hitting their gaps, but they would just fall off of Rick Od Dowdle and he just will keep going and, um, and, and, and that was a problem honestly. And, you know, it’s, you ha it’s one thing to fill the gap is another thing to, to complete the tackle or at least, you know, uh, make it easy for somebody else to get the tackle if you can’t. And none of that happened on defense. I felt like after the first, um, um, uh, turnover of the game, you know, Dave Canalis went away from the run and then the game kind of became what the game was and then all of a sudden now you’re chasing. Uh And that’s another thing. Uh And by the way, uh for the couple of carries, Mike Boone had, I thought he looked pretty good, probably get a couple more carries than what he had. Um And then, you know, just uh what you, what you mentioned about Bryce Young and now I’m starting to wonder like, how often are we going to have to talk about Bryce Young’s confidence? And when does it, when does that rear its ugly head? Because late in the game, I felt like he was starting to miss guys who were wide open like uh like uh he had uh jam and Sanders um out maybe um I think it was only like five yards away or something that he like just overthrows him. Nobody’s around him, he just sails it over his head um or where, you know, just other like parts of the game where you had guys where, you know, you could have hit him, but you’re just throwing it way too, way too high and that’s not the Bryce Young that we’ve seen over the last few weeks when we talked about that swagger and that confidence that Ba Bama Bryce, this is, you know, last season, early 2024 season Bryce now. And so now, like you gotta look at Patterns to me. I’m II, I like to look at Patterns and if he’s gonna, if he’s gonna turn the ball over early, like he did against the Saints first play of the year, if he’s gonna turn the ball over early, like he did at the end of the first drive today. Um If he’s going, if you’re gonna get, give him pressure and he’s gonna get hit and doesn’t complete a pass off of it, get sacked or whatever ends up happening. Bryce then has a hard time focusing in on what he needs to do and he starts panicking and so listen again, I think he’s the, the starter for next year. Don’t go after another quarterback in the, in the draft, uh, you know, do something else in the first round, you know, don’t go after somebody in, in free agency or anything like that. However, we need to pay attention to these patterns because these patterns are there and you know, his great play over the last few weeks doesn’t just erase the things that we saw earlier this season. Can’t forget it, can’t forget it. Just my final point on this one. When it pertains to Bryce. It just felt like a lot of, a lot of the, the balls when they’re coming out of his hands, like, were fishtailing at the very, you know, like there wasn’t like a clean spiral. I don’t know if it was just because of the weather. I know it was a little moisture out there in Charlotte. And I don, I don’t know if it was exactly that, but it wasn’t raining hard or anything. But I, I don’t know, it just, it felt like the ball just didn’t have any sort of pop. I mean, I’ll go to that final interception that he threw if he had, if he puts it out in front of the, and that’s probably a touchdown, it’s probably a touchdown and it is well under thrown and it was an easy interception. And Greg Olson also pointed out it was late, it was late coming out, it was under thrown. It was just, I don’t know, it was just, it was just a bad day, but again, it’s, he didn’t respond. Well, he and the team didn’t respond well to the early turnover. Let’s see how he responds next week and the week after, that’s the key thing for me going forward. How do you respond next, coming up? And now of the Panthers is a team respond. That’s, that’s, that’s on individual players, but also on the head coach, Dave Canalis as well. Gotta figure this stuff out. II I think, um, the next thing that is just glaring and so obvious, um, like I, I think that I can give the offensive line a little bit of a pass in this game. Right. Like, this is the worst. I think we’ve seen them play all year, whatever they need to clean up, they’ll, they can get it cleaned up. We’ve seen them play excellent football almost. I would even call it elite. Um, you know, pass blocking for most of the season. The defense needs serious work in the off-season, you know, I mean, and look, I, I don’t think we’ve quite come out and said it, we’ve kind of hindered around it. I, I think there needs to be a new scheme, um, which means a new defensive coordinator. There’s a few things that just don’t make sense to me when you have somebody like AJ C Horn and he has to be locked to one side. So all the, all the Cowboys have to do is just move CD lamb to another side and all of a sudden like, hey, you know what I’m saying? Like it’s, it’s just, it doesn’t, it doesn’t make sense when you don’t scheme your defense in a way to where your best players are going to defend against their offensive, best players. You know, that’s just one thing that I noticed, um, that I think should, um, should definitely change and it’s just, I, I don’t, I just don’t, I just don’t get it like it’s, it’s, I don’t know, you know, it’s, it’s amazing how we’ve seen, we saw Mike Evans, we saw CD Lamb do it. Let’s put our best wide receiver in the slot because we know the corners aren’t gonna cover them. Like, for example, CD Lamb, let’s get guarded by Jordan Fuller, who’s his safety. Let’s have one of the elite wide receivers in the NFL being covered by a safety, bro. It’s crazy like there’s, there’s no, there’s no adjustment, there’s no response. I mean, we’ve seen over the last few weeks that we’ve just started to add uh some, some, you know, corner blitzes and some safety blitzes and things like that. But also, and here’s another thing too, man, there’s a scary moment in the game first half where um uh you have Josie Jewel being checked in the blue tent, Claude and Shali has to come out and then all of a sudden you have John Ratigan coming in and here’s, and this is one of the things I don’t like about, uh the, the, the 5234 defense. Um, in that situation, you really only have two linebackers. So when one comes out, there was a couple of plays, if you go back and look at it, they were bringing in extra D BS just so they can have enough guys on the field once, uh Shali and Josey Jewel went down and so that’s also a good time to run because we’re gonna block it up front like we normally have. Now we’ve got big bodies to, against, you know, smaller bodies and we can just, you know, keep it going in that direction and just kind of block these guys out of the way. I kind of like a defense though. I have three of those guys, three linebackers on, on the field just roaming, you know, instead of just two. And in, in that situation when you had, uh, two of the guys hurt and you had one guy in there and you had to fill out the rest with D BS. It just puts you in a bad situation, man. And, and I, I just, I, I don’t, I don’t know if I like it. So I just wanted to put that out there. There’s a, there’s a lot that needs to change with defense over this off season. A lot. Carolina Ford Dealer, your sponsor for Panthers Playbook with the Ford F one F one. But easy for me to say with the Ford F 150 on your team. It’s game monster. You Carolina Ford Dealer today. Did I mention there’s a lot that needs to change with the defense? I don’t think it, it can’t be stated enough. Uh, we’ll see you all on Thursday. There is a lot that needs to change with this defense and like I can, I can, I did, I say that before. I think you did did I mention this? I think you did the defense needs.

Source: wralsportsfan.com