The Carolina Panthers might be the worst decent team in the NFL and they just refuse to die. I will give credit where credit is due I guess because here at the end of the season they are actually playing like a decent team and pulling off wins that nobody expects.
This past weekend they had a near must-win situation against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for the top spot in what is arguably the worse division in the NFL in the NFC South.
This win over Tampa put them at the top of said division, not that any of the good divisions are at all worried about it. Whoever exits from the NFC South to the playoffs will almost certainly get blown away by the other divisions so at this point it is kind of a pissing contest to see who gets to get whooped when it counts.
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What's going on in the picture above? Well that is a good representation of the game: It was sloppy nonsense that kind of looked like "who wants it the least." A lot of the professional pundits out there say that Tampa Bay is to blame more for the loss than the win can be attributed to Carolina... I kind of disagree but then again, I am a massive pessimist when it comes to the Panthers.
This one one of my favorite plays in the game and sums up how I feel about Carolina: Bryce Young takes the snap late in the 1st quarter and trips over his own feet.
Then out of near $20 million a year embarrassment and an act o sheer futility he scrambles back to his feet in a frantic move only to be immediately tackled for a 10-yard loss. You know you are a fantastic QB when it benefits the team more if you just stay down.
The two teams exchanged sloppy field goals and TD's back and forth and the game came down to, as it tends to, the final 2 minutes of the entire game. This screengrab of the last 2 minutes is a great embodyment of what I think of almost all of Carolina's wins this season save 1 or 2.
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Carolina doesn't make plays great so much as the team they are playing against makes a critical mistake and gives away the ball. This has happened time and time again for a few teams in the NFL, most notably Carolina and probably Chicago as well.
To be as fair as a can be to Bryce Young, He didn't do that badly today and the offensive line held up pretty well. He went 21-32 on passes for just under 200 yards and managed to be sacked only twice, one of them was because he tripped over his own feet. Mayfield for Tampa (the QB) was worse with a very terrible interception late in the game that cost the Bucs the game and he was sacked properly twice.
The interception that he threw with around 45 seconds to go was just awful. There wasn't a Buc player anywhere near the ball and there wasn't even anyone headed that way. He basically threw it directly to a Carolina defender. So I guess Bryce Young isn't necessarily the worst although I will not let him forget tripping over his own feet. How many times do we practice snaps in practice?
This takes Carolina to 8-7 which sadly, makes them number one in the NFC South (what a joke) but things could get seriously ugly next week as they play the Seahawks. IMO the Hawks look like they could go all the way this year and will easily dispatch Carolina.
Tampa on the other hand, has to defeat Miami and if they don't win that game I would be very surprised. Tampa is favored by just under a TD at the moment. The bookies are being very friendly to Carolina at the moment by suggesting that they will lose by only 7 points. I'm going to take the bet that Carolina loses by more than that.
Something very interesting could be brewing here though: If Carolina loses to Seattle next week (very likely) and Tampa Bay defeats Miami (also quite likely) then the final NFC South game of the year will have two teams with identical records and therefore that one game would determine who goes to the playoffs. I would call that game the "Stupor Bowl" and it will ironically exciting.