Well, Chris fun while it lasted. It’s fun while it lasted. I, I thought that maybe another streak could have been started today and you can argue that it should have started today. Well, I don’t know, maybe a streak did start today. Maybe another losing streak. Unfortunately, that might happen. I don’t know. It’s a short week, 2713. The final score of this one Colts over the Panthers. Let’s break it all down. Let’s get this. The state of North Carolina covers 53,000 square miles. It is the habitat of the fear. Get dialed in Panthers fans for an in depth. Look at your team exclusive interviews, lock a room insight. Let’s huddle up for Panthers playbook. Here are your hosts, Dennis Cox and Chris Lee. Welcome back to another episode of Panthers Playbook. That’s Chris Lee. Dennis Cox here with you before we get into tonight’s 27 to 13 loss to Indianapolis at home at Bank of America Stadium where Chris Lee is right now. Make sure you leave your thoughts and comments here in the comments section. Let us know your thoughts on this game. Uh A lot of people have thoughts on our last episode that dropped on Thursday, which is great. Not everyone agrees with what Chris and I say, and that’s 100% fine. Let us know your thoughts on this game in the comments section below. But Chris 2713 in this 13 interceptions by Bryce Young, two of which pick six is offense, this, I mean, offense, not only today was just sputtering, but it’s been like that all season. Yeah. And, you know, here’s one thing I thought was very interesting and I don’t know if it came across on television, uh, as people were there but here in live and in person at Bank of America Stadium, I definitely noticed it is that Bryce didn’t look comfortable from the beginning and, uh, you could tell that the hits are starting to mount up. He’s starting to get happy feet. I, I haven’t seen him have happy feet this entire season and there is a, a few plays in the first half where he’s like bouncing around, man, he’s patting that thing, you know, he’s burping it and all that and, and it started to look like, uh, a shorter version of Sam Arnold when Sam D would get the happy feet. You know what I’m saying? And, and you’re, you’re starting to wonder like, at, at what point do all these hits start to add up for Bryce Young? I mean, the Panthers have given up if my count is correct. 29 sacks so far this season, which means that is 246 yards that they have lost on sacks for the Panthers. That is a whole game of offense and you can’t afford to lose an entire game of offense halfway through the season, just on sacks. So, I mean, it’s, uh, there’s so many things and Bryce Young definitely will. Of course, we’re talking about the interceptions and everything but man, like the penalties, the, the sacks, it’s just all bad right now. And, uh, you thought that they would be able to build on what they had last week and they just absolutely just couldn’t do it. All right. So talking about sacks, like you said, 29 sacks on the season. So averaging 3.63 sacks per game, I got a lot of numbers we could throw at you because we’re basically at the mid point II, I, I’ve crunched a lot of numbers this season, uh, so far for the Panthers, the 3.63 sacks per game. Again, there are some games haven’t finished. I know the, the, the Bills and Bengals are playing as we speak right now. Obviously, there’s the Monday night football game 29th in the league in sacks per game, 29th. And I don’t think Bills and Bengals will, will change that. Probably not, probably not. Uh, but also, so there’s also a stat out there in terms of sack percentage. So, obviously, teams that throw the ball a lot more might have a more volume number of sacks. Obviously, the more you drop back, but you look at the, the sack percentage, 8.4% of the time Bryce Young drops back to pass. He’s been sacked 8.4%. That’s 24th in the NFL, 24th in the NFL. And here’s the thing, a lot of people talk about, ok, getting a running game going, right. We actually did see a pretty good run game rush effort overall tonight in Carolina, especially in the game. That’s just the offense. I ain’t gotten to the defensive stats yet. Defensive stats really aren’t that great even though the defense today, Chris defense was good today. I thought defense today was good. You think that last week, last week they only gave up 13 points against Houston. You take away the two pick sixes by the Colts today? Defense only gave up 13 points again and let me add something else in there to add on to that point. Hit me, Michael, the hit on Michael Pittman. That was, I, I don’t think it’s a flag. Some people still say it’s a, it’s a flag. I don’t agree that it was because he didn’t hit him in the head and neck. This is the hit by, by Xavier Woods on Michael Woods on Michael Pittman that kept the drive going because that would have been, uh, third down and that would have been done. So the Colts would have, uh, would have had to punt right there that kept the drive going and then, uh, they end up scoring, the Colts end up scoring their only touchdown of the game right there at that spot. So you can make an argument that the defense without that one penalty. And then also, uh, without, you know, the interceptions, the defense by themselves only gave up six points. You can, you can make that argument for today. Ok? II, I see what you’re arguing. It’s a good showing by the defense. That’s pretty much all I wanna say, overall, good showing by the defense. But you also think there’s the struggles of this team. It seems one and seven so eight games, then I know 17 games on the season. I’m gonna call it the midway point because again, Chicago coming up on Thursday, I’m gonna say the midway point because normally eight games was your midway point. So if you take away the, uh defensive and special team scores for both Carolina and opponents, so you take away, for example, like the pick six that Sam Franklin had earlier in the season or the Troy Hill pick six or the fumble recovery by Minnesota, uh off a strip sack of Bryce Young. You take those plays away, you take the two pick sixes away today looking at strictly just offense and defense for the Carolina Panthers. The offense is scoring 15.75 points per game. That’s it 15.75 points per game. The defense allowing 25.6 points per game. So even even if you take away the defensive scores, the defense is still having its struggles. The defense this season again, take it away defensive and special team scores. The defense this season has given up less than 20 points only three times this season. They gave up 14 points defensively against Minnesota. Again, you take away that defensive score for, for the Vikings in that game, Houston only 13 points and then the Colts this week, 13 points is what they have given up. Whereas on offense for the Carolina Panthers, they’ve only scored more than 20 points as an offensive unit twice this season. 27 points against Seattle and 24 points against Detroit. That’s it, Miami. You’re, you’re taking away that pick six from Troy Hill. I’m taking away the pick six from Troy Hill as well, but also you go into the turnovers again. The Carolina Panthers have turned the ball over 11 times now, this season, seven interceptions by Bryce Young, four fumbles given up as a unit, uh, as a whole this year, two of them by Miles Sanders. I know one was, um, uh, one of them was a, uh, Bryce Young or a couple, I think by Bryce Young now, uh, but nonetheless, 11 turnovers by the Carolina Panthers opponents have scored 59 points off of those 11 turnovers. That includes actually like, for example, like the two pick sixes or like we saw against Atlanta where Atlanta’s offense scored 17 points as a result of those turnovers. So points off turnovers, 59 off 11, that’s 5.36 points per turnover. 5.3. Defensively, your goal on a sudden change situation is three points or less. Now again, there’s pick Sixes and all that kind of stuff included as well. The Panthers have forced seven turnovers this season seven and only have 23 points. It’s 3.29 points per game off turnovers. So that’s the thing it’s like is, this is a, this is not just like an offense is doing bad and the defense is doing ok, this is a cumulative team thing. It’s big and I even get into the red zone numbers, Chris, well, I don’t, I don’t even know if we have to even get into that right there because it’s just, it’s not that much better. It, it’s, it’s not, and, and just the, the overall output just, uh, isn’t good. This team isn’t good enough to overcome mistakes like that, right? Like if you, people will look at this score, they’ll say 27 and it’ll be like, dang Colts killed him. And honestly, Cole’s offense looked worse than a panthers’ offense today. They keep it real, they didn’t, they didn’t get over 200 yards, you know what I’m saying? So, it’s, it’s so their offense really just didn’t look good. So it’s, it is, you’re right. It’s that cumulative effect of defense, special teams offense. It’s all not clicking right now. And last week we gave a shout out to the, to the coaching staff because it, there has to be great coaching involved in a, a six minute, you know, drive to end the game to go win it. Now you have all these penalties. You had three in the last game, three in the game before that against the Dolphins. So, 66 total 10 in this game. And then you have, uh, the mistakes that you’ve had right there, uh, in this game, the three turnovers and all that. A lot of this is going to come down to coaching the sacks giving up a lot of it’s coming down to coaching and just, it just doesn’t seem to be a very disciplined well coached team. You see the differences every week with other teams. Um, the Colts are probably the worst team that I’ve seen. The Carolina Panthers play in person and they have four wins. They have forwards, boy, but they are so, but they look so much better just, oh, as a unit. Mhm. Than what the Carolina Panthers do. And that’s a first year head coach too. I was Shane Ste and over there, uh, so again, this is, again, it’s not a cumulative thing, uh, before we get into, I wanna get into some of the other numbers and some of the other guys we’ve talked about, a lot of people are gonna just strictly gonna put this on Bryce Young and Bryce Young today was just not good. It was probably actually one of his worst games that he had. Especially because the last couple of weeks we saw that steady improvement, improvement. Getting better, getting better. Look at, hey, this is a good quarterback that’s just on a bad team. But today, like you mentioned, it was right from the get go. Kid had happy feet, man, kid had happy, let’s, let’s talk about this a little bit more with Bryce because, um, one of the things that Panthers fans are going to do is they’re gonna look at CJ Strout and who had 470 yards, which is a rookie record and five touchdowns for today. And so just naturally fans are gonna look at it and say, and I’ve seen it already on social media, Bryce is a bust. This is just a bad game. He’s a rookie. Go back and, and look at any amazing quarterback that we think of in NFL Peyton Manning, uh Tom Brady, just anybody, they’ve all had bad rookie games, they all had bad and, and this and yeah, that’s true. And so that’s, this is just something that ends up happening, but here’s the thing that I think I need, I need Panthers fans to really think about and understand me. You’re not mad at Bryce Young. You’re not mad at Bryce. That’s displaced anger who you’re mad at is the Panthers front office because Bryce Young is the representation of all the bad moves. This Panthers front office has made over the last 3 to 4 seasons and because they got to a level, they, they mishandled the quarterback situation so they had to trade away your number one wide receiver to get up to get this guy. That’s what you’re mad at. You’re not mad at Bryce Young, he’s gonna, he’s gonna have these rookie struggles. So remember not to displace your anger. You’re really mad at David Tepper and Scott Fitterer. Mhm. That’s who you’re upset with. 0 100% I’ve heard. So on our Thursday episode of Panthers playbook, I mentioned about like, guys, you and I disagreed about maybe guys that they could have traded, even gotten some low round picks and a lot of people in the comments section would be like, yeah, like why would you make that move for 1/7 rounder? But it was like, are you mad at the fact that they, I want the team to get draft capital or are you upset about the people making the selection is like, no, I don’t trust Federer. I don’t trust the front office to make those moves like, ah, bingo. So you’re not upset at me for the one Panthers wanted to get draft picks. You’re upset about the guys making the picks because they’ve wasted so many. They don’t trust like 100% with you on this Chris 11 draft picks and DJ Moore to fill one spot, one spot on your roster. So yeah, the reason why everything around Bryce stinks is because the front, front office put crap around Bryce Young. That’s 100%. The reason CJ Henderson goes out with, uh, an injury today, he’s gonna be in a concussion protocol. Remember how they got CJ Henderson and traded away Dan Arnold in some pick in a pick and like a third round pick I think. Uh and then you have, uh D DJ Johnson, uh, of course, you know, there’s no, um Justin Houston today, so he’s the guy filling in and it was very quiet on that other side, opposite of Brian Burns today. Very quiet. They used the fourth round pick, they used 1/4 round pick to trade up to get him. So in general, just look at the wasted draft capital. We talked about the quarterback position in general. There’s a lot of wasted draft capital that’s come from this franchise in the last four seasons. Yeah, Bryce is just one of the representations of that. That’s what you’re mad at Panthers fans. You’re not mad at Bryce Young 100% with you 100% with you. All right. Speaking of Bryce Young, let’s go to the locker room. You were in the locker room talking to Ikey Kwan DJ Chark. Let’s go to the, uh DJ Chark first. Here’s DJ Chark talking about still having a faith in Bryce Young. But also he was asked about Trevor Lawrence, a guy he actually played with for a little bit in Jacksonville. Number, former, number one overall pick. So him, here’s DJ Shark talking about his faith in young. And also that comparison with Trevor Lawrence, I played with Trevor and our first, our first year together. I didn’t, unfortunately, I didn’t get to play the whole season, but he had struggles and people was down in him and now people love him. You know, uh, Bryce is talented. He’s a rookie. He’s a rookie who’s got, you know, put in the saddle early and, you know, he’s taking control of his offense and he’s only going to get better. You see the flash, you see the games where he does well and, you know, we like to pat him on the back but then whenever things don’t go as well, you know, we kinda get on him and question them and things like that, but he’s gonna be good. He’s a competitor. He’s sticking in there running the ball. He’s, he’s not necessarily coming out there wanting to run, but he’s doing it. He’s evading defenders trying to make the most of it, make throws up, he’s gonna be fine. All right, Chris, the offense overall again has been a struggle. I mean, in fact, the DJ Chark, who, who we just heard from. I actually pulled down like just the stats, just the overall reception numbers this season for the Carolina Panthers. Adam Thin 62 like that dude’s playing above and beyond like all levels of what we expect right now. Adam Thin is right now. I mean, I expected it but, you know, well, I mean, not many people expected 62 receptions through eight games. Like not many. I mean, that’s, that’s top like five in the NFL or so right now. Um Next on the list, Jonathan bingo with 20 receptions. 20 your rookie who missed a game this season? 20 receptions after that Miles Sanders third with 18 receptions DJ shark who we just heard from 17, you know, who else has 17 receptions this season? Who is Terrace Marshall Junior actually has 17 receptions this season. The quietest receptions in heaven. No, you ain’t kidding about that. Uh, and 16 receptions for Hayden Hurst. Like that’s it like that, that’s, that’s your top six right there in terms of receptions. I have a funny moment to share. Uh So in the press box, I normally sit in the area close to all the other Panthers beat reporters and people who are basically here to cover the Panthers this week. They had me on the other side next to the Indianapolis beat report. And when Hayden Hurst caught that 48 yarder, I just, I didn’t remember what the longest was for Bryce, but I just literally blurted out. Wow, that’s his longest completion of the season. And they all turned and looked at me like, really? It was like everything is underneath. That’s the most explosive play from Bryce Young because everything else is underneath. It was weird seeing somebody that wide open and the Panthers couldn’t even handle that because the pick six, the second pick six came right after that. Yep. Um, So, uh, it, it’s just showing that the Panthers just can’t have nice things this year. No, they can’t have nice things including a rush defense that’s giving up just under 100 and 32 yards a game in the NFL about 29th in the league. Uh, the rush defenses for the Carolina Panthers, by the way, here’s actually probably something that’s actually most concerning for me when it comes about, uh, eo this new defense and the defense as a whole moving forward, not just this season, but what are they doing down the line in the future? This is red zone touchdown percentage. So when opponents get into the red zone, this is the, the percentage of time that the opponent scores. The opponents are 21 of 28 in the red zone scoring touchdown this season, 75% 31st in the NFL. So when teams get in the red zone, they’re scoring touchdowns. Simple as that. The Panthers offensively 52% about 16th, middle of the road 16th. Ok. 52%. But they don’t get to the red zone very often. You, you know what? I have to pull out the stat because it was a stat. That was um let me pull out my nice people. So by the way, so as you’re pulling up this stat, a lot of people sometimes will say like, oh, you guys are just hating on the team, hating on the team. You’re just saying a bunch of a bunch of stuff to hating on the team like, no, we got numbers to back this stuff up, numbers to back this stuff up also. OK, go, I got one more stat for you but go on Chris. OK. This is to buffer the point that you just gave right. This is, this is a, this is a note that they gave us before the game. Carolina is tied for eighth in the NFL with 20.6 1st downs per game eighth in the NFL. The Panthers have registered 21st downs in five consecutive games. The second longest active active streak behind the Philadelphia Eagles who had seven in a row, I guess before today’s game. The Panthers haven’t had a longer streak since doing so in six straight games in uh 2014. And I, I read this and I was puzzled, I was like, wait a minute. That sounds like a, an, a good offensive team. But then I started thinking about it if all you can do is move the ball between the twenties and once you get inside the red zone, you can’t do anything. I guess that’s what it is. Yeah. Well, guess what, guess what this is as well. You know why you get, you get a lot of first downs because you can’t pick up explosive plays. You know why? Because all, all your scoring play, like all your scoring drives are like 1213, 14 plays. Like, because you can’t go six plays 75 yards. It just happen. That’s exactly. So they might have Thomas Brown. Thomas Brown didn’t have a good game today. I mean, game two, game two for that guy, game two for it was not good. Overall. It’s just, uh yeah, Chris, it’s just not good overall, it’s just not good overall, by the way. Speaking of stats, I’m, I’m surprised they didn’t throw this one in there. Uh Up until today, the Panthers had seven straight games this season, seven straight games to start the season where they gave him 100 plus yards rushing if you actually go back to the end, like the last game of the season last year, eight straight games in the NFL, which was the longest streak in the league until today. They broke that today. Congrats you gave up less than 100 yards for the first time since last season. The only game that didn’t happen in was the Falcons game. Right. Well, no, I’m talking defensively. No, they, I’m saying where the defense didn’t give up 100 yards rushing. No, they gave up 100 against Atlanta. Are you sure? You said it was, no, it was eight straight games up until today that they had given up 100 plus games. Ok. I’m sorry, I thought you said seven. No, no, I mean, seven to start the year until today. Got you. Ok. I thought you were including today in that because I was gonna say, um, this game felt a lot like the Atlanta Falcons game, honestly, like it just a very winnable game where mistakes and, um, mistakes, penalties, turnovers is what cost you the game, nothing more to say. And we didn’t mention the fact that Brian Burns won with an injury and the Panthers got to play on Thursday against the Chicago Bears. So who’s gonna be available? So, I, I mean, I don’t, I don’t expect Brian Burns to be available and, and here’s another thing, the, the Panthers are 29th and giving up sex. Uh, this season, the Bears are a spot ahead of them and they’re 28th. So you’re talking about a team where you, they can be had by sacking them and your best pass rusher probably is not gonna play. Yeah. And the Panthers, even with Brian Burns averaged about 2.1 sacks per game coming into today about 21st in the NFL 21st. And you talk about sack percentage. The sad I mentioned earlier they get a sack about 7.6% of opponents drop backs 16th in the NFL. So you have a bottom, bring in the NFL rush defense and you get to the NF, you get to the quarterback in the middle of the bottom half of the league as I’m still searching to find what this team like. Like what’s the one thing this team does? Well, I still don’t know what it is, but, hey, that’s Decker though, I’ll give him that. That’s something that Frank Reich said. Um, after the game, I mean, he, he did say that we’re still searching to find our identity. We don’t know what the panthers’ identity is right now. They don’t know if they want to run the ball, they want to pass the ball. Just don’t know. I do know that we’re going to have another episode of Panthers playbook for you all this coming Thursday after the Bears game, Chris, you’re gonna be there at Bank of America Stadium once again. I know it’s late drive. It’s an away game. Oh, that’s right. It’s right. It’s away. It’s still gonna be a late night. You know what you might as well be at Bank of America Stadium because who cares, who cares at this point? I forgot it’s on the road. Good for us. Good for us. Ok. Make sure you smash the subscribe button. Let us know your thoughts and comments on this Panthers loss here today, Chris. I’ll talk to you on Thursday.

Source: wralsportsfan.com