The Carolina Panthers look awful this season, even though they have a 5-5 record, which at least going into this past weekend, looked pretty good for them and had a lot of people talking about how this could lead to not just a playoff berth, but also potentially winning their conference. Then again, there were also people that had zero faith in them and thought this was all just a bunch of very lucky bullcrap. One of those people is me.
The Panthers truly showed their backsides when they lost badly, at home, to the New Orleans Saints, a team that had won only a single game this season and racked up 8 losses.
While certainly not the only problem with the Carolina team, Bryce Young is a huge part of the problem. I said it when they drafted him and I said it again when they agreed to pay him nearly $50 million for 4 years: The kid just isn't big enough to excel in the NFL. Being a scrappy 5'10" dude is fine in high school and college, it gets your team worked over in the NFL.
News media outlets are being as pleasant as they can with articles like "Offense struggles to find balance" but no matter how they sugar-coat it the end result of these articles always boils down to "Bryce Young friggin sucks."
Still though, there are several teams in the NFL that have worse records than the Panthers, and one of them is the Atlanta Falcons and that is who Carolina is playing next weekend.
They are currently sitting at 3-6 with a 4-game losing streak but there is a very real difference between them and Carolina in that their losses have mostly been very close and also against some of the better teams in the entire league. Losing to Indianapolis, New England, and San Fran doesn't really surprise anyone and when you are able to keep is really close, like within a single TD, people take notice of more than just the overall record.
The only really embarrassing loss they have this season is when they were completely blown out 30-0 by none other than Carolina. However, I strongly feel that game was a fluke and will not be repeated. I am not the only person that feels this way also as the bookies over in Vegas, who tend to not be in the business of losing money, have the Falcons favored by an average of 3.5 points.
There is only one thing that I think could motivate the Panthers to win this thing and even that, I don't think will be enough. The Panthers are still technically in the playoffs race even though I question why they would even bother since there is absolutely zero chance they would get very far and would only end up in there by a technicality.
Despite Atlanta's woes they actually have, at least on paper, the best secondary in the entire NFL (the guys who defend against passes). Allowing just 160 or so yard per game they are miles ahead of the Panthers who allow over 210. Atlanta's weakness in defense lies against the rushing game, where they are damn near last in the league (29th out of 32 teams).
The bottom line here is that it isn't often that a team with a better record is predicted to lose a game a week before that game is even meant to happen. Such is the lack of faith that the guys who really know the game have in Carolina.
I will be putting a small bet against Carolina because I believe that Atlanta will win this game by more than 3.5. The Falcons will be looking to avenge the freak loss earlier in the season and I believe they are going to run circles around Carolina. This will begin a spiral for Carolina that will likely see them lose all but one of the remaining games in the season and send them packing back to the dressing rooms to lament their very poor decision to bank so much on a tiny QB to build the franchise around.
I just don't see any real good coming from Carolina and they need to have the very necessary talk about how they need to go shopping for a new QB and they need to do it yesterday. The $50 mil is gone. Cut your losses and get back to the drawing board.