If you follow my blog you know that I am a Carolina Panthers fan but have absolutely zero optimism towards the program and honestly expect them to always make the worst possible decisions both on the field and in the management offices.
This season was looking good on paper as they had a winning record for a while there but it was me and many others who have been fans for a while that were saying that this is not going to stick and they were just getting very lucky with the W's that they had up to this point. I was stunned when they defeated Green Bay last week and thought to myself "maybe these guys are ok?" only to have them roll into this week and lose quite badly to a team that only had 1 win on the season going into this game.
Basically, everything that could possibly go wrong in this game, did. Between teeny tiny Bryce Young getting sacked time and time again, to a really horrible interception thrown nowhere near the intended receiver, to a botched hand-off (pictured above) which is something that even kids in pee-wee league don't eff up. The Panthers' defense was abysmal as well and this is evidenced by the fact that the New Orleans Saints are 30th out of 32 teams in points per game and are in the bottom 25% of basically every other metric as well.
I really thought that in this game the Panthers were going to get one of their only deserved victories of the year but just as it seems is always the case, they managed to let me down yet again. Perhaps there was some arrogance on the part of the Panthers seeing as how they were just coming off a road win that was one of the biggest upsets of recent years and the team though that New Orleans would just be a pushover victory that they wouldn't even need to try very hard for.
New Orleans is so bad that I started to suspect that several games ago that they were intentionally losing games in order to get better draft picks for next year and hell, they very well might be doing exactly that, but you have to be really really bad to lose to the Panthers, apparently.
A huge (or I suppose in this case, very small) part of the problem is that Bryce Young is TOO SMALL to be in the NFL and is so easy to sack. I'm not saying the Carolina offensive line is good because they definitely are not, but I'm bigger than Bryce Young is and I think it is about time that Carolina started to look at the very real possibility that a 5'10", 190lb guy just simply can't hack it in a league where the people chasing him outweigh him by 50-60 lbs and if they so much as get a hand on his foot, he goes down. It would be forgivable if he had a cannon for an arm but he simply doesn't.
Excuse the blurry shot but it's just a screengrab from the game. The point can still be made. This is a Bryce Young pass early in the 4th quarter where Carolina still had a chance to turn it around to at least tie the game at 10-10. Look at the ball in the top left now look where the Panthers in black are... there is no Panther receiver anywhere near that ball. That was quite simply, an absolutely horrible pass and if Bryce is already the most sack-able QB in the league, he better be doing better than this or why is he even there?
Carolina is in a bad place as far as QB's are concerned because they already tried subbing in veteran QB Andy Dalton but he's washed up. They have no other alternatives and they have basically gone all-in on Bryce Young. It will take years to recover from this.
Carolina is now 5-5 which if I am being honest, is about 3 more wins than they actually should have. Looking at the rest of their season purely from a statistical standpoint, they are quite likely to lose all but one of their remaining games. Finishing the season at 6-11 is still a lot better than they deserve and I honestly don't have any armchair quarterback suggestions for where the team could possibly go from here. They have literally zero weapons in their arsenal and there are so many holes where they are completely lacking in talent. Getting good draft picks for next year is not going to change this very much.
The only thing I would suggest would be to take the $10 million a year that Bryce is getting paid and go ahead and plan on releasing him when his contract expires in 2028. No other team is going to buy out his contract because he is too small, doesn't have a good arm, and isn't even very good on the scramble. Dude got a $25 million signing bonus as well and for what? Sheesh it is so frustrating.
New Orleans was dead last in a lot of power rankings and for one of the only times this season, Carolina was actually favored by 5.5 points in this game. As is so often the case, they let everyone down.
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From a gambling perspective, 95% of all bets, nearly 96%, were placed on Carolina to win this game lol. Last year I decided to bet against Carolina on every game and ended up winning money with my pessimism over the season. It's shame I neglected to do that this year.