Three ways the Carolina Panthers can get back on track

Three ways the Carolina Panthers can get back on track

999 the fan. So, if there’s a uh 24-hour celebration rule in the NFL, there also has to be like a 24-hour disappointment rule in the NFL. You can be mad at yourself, you can pout, but eventually you got to pick yourself up and get ready to play. Carolina Hurricanes probably, sorry, Carolina Panthers, not the Hurricanes. uh Carolina Panthers probably needed the entire 24-hour pouting window after getting beat 40 to9 by Buffalo and and going into that game with such momentum and it just absolutely came to a screeching halt. Um and that’s what a lot of our show was about yesterday, right? That’s what a lot of the uh Monday soundoff was with with callers, a lot of the the conversations around Andy Dalton. It’s just you got to pout a little bit after a game like that. Vent, whatever you want to call it, right? Pout is probably the unhealthy way to describe it. Vent is probably the healthier way to describe it. It’s the same thing. It’s just talk about everything that went bad. Now it’s a Tuesday and it becomes how do you fix it? How do you bounce back? How do you fix it? And how do you make sure you’re better? Because you got a really good team this week, right? You you got the Packers and Jordan Love’s playing well and Josh Jacobs is playing well and I I really like Laflur as a head coach. I think uh Lafleur is a good ceiling for what Dave Canales wants to be as far as uh like a CEO of the team, but really an offensive play caller that meshes minds mind melds with his quarterback. Like like I’m I’m a big fan of what’s going on up there in in in Green Bay. And oh, by the way, they traded for Micah Parsons at the beginning of this year, so they they have some things going for them. Here’s my here’s my response. If the Panthers are a real team, and I’m I’m not convinced, but if they’re like a legit NFL, at least middle-of the road team, I think the bounceback is simple. Matter of fact, could be as simple as one, two, three. That means I have three things that I think would need to be fixed. Uh, and I think if you get more than three things on your to-do list in one week, you you’re biting off more than you can chew. Uh, so let’s start with number one. Get your running back rotation in order. And uh, I don’t think this should take a long time. I think this is like 10, not even 10 minutes, 30 seconds in the running back room. Dave Canales walks in, goes, “Excuse me, coach. I want to talk to the fellas.” Uh, Rico, ball is yours. All right, get back to what you guys are doing. All right, see you later. And you walk out, which by the way, uh, I think many fans got to a bit earlier than Dave Canales, but it did seem like he got there after the game on Sunday. Uh Dave Canales talked about not being able to ignore that Rico D has been pretty special and pretty productive. You know, it’s a fair observation and um you know, Chuba has meant a lot to this organization, certainly to the identity that we wanted to build our team on and um wanted to give Chuba the opportunity to go out there and to continue impact our our team in a positive way. Uh we cannot ignore the fact that Rico has been e exceptional, you know, in a couple of games and then in the opportunities he’s had over the last two weeks. You know, he’s made some some excellent plays. Love the tempo and violence that he’s running with. And these are all things that we’re talking about and working through this week as we look back, you know, on this on these last four games and really taking a snapshot of what’s been successful for us. You know, these are conversations that we do definitely have to have. Listen, Trouba’s been a backup. He knows what it is to be on the sideline ready every single play for when Rico needs to tap his helmet and come out of the game, right? For when Rico needs to to take a breather, do that. And as a coach, if you see Rico being less productive because uh tired, injury, not fitting a play, whatever, then you put Chuba in. But it’s Rico’s backfield. So that’s number one. Get that sorted. Or, hey, it’s third and one. Yes, Chuba. Short yardage situation. I’m okay with that, too. 100%. Or or or now, now I’m seal. Or or or uh or both on the field is an opportunity. Uh we’ve been saying that on Panthers playbook. There’s both on the field. You can have both. And and then even if you want to take hits off of Rico Dowel, uh you can use the fear of Rico Dow to make it easier for Chupa Hubard, right? send Rico a bubble to the left and they’re not going to be able to leave Rico Dattle in space. Guys go and Chuba up the middle, Chuba to the right, whatever it is. There’s a lot of different ways to use Rico Dow. Um, and they need to. So, that’s that’s number one. And I actually don’t think it’s it’s that difficult, right? I think it’s a lot of the same play calls just with Rico Dow in the game, right? I think that’s quick as easy as one, two, three. Number two, figure out how to stop a toss. Uh James Cook had 19 carries, 200 million yards, but 19 carries. 10 of them were toss plays. And a lot of the the counters and things run off that were designed at least through one step to look like a toss play. There was something on film that let Buffalo think a toss was going to work and it did. And then they were prepared with, you know, eight different counters and and variations of that would get the toss, right? The run to the outside. They didn’t think your edge was being set hard enough. Maybe they were looking at some of your young players on the edge and thinking we can bully them. Uh maybe they didn’t they they weren’t terrified of your outside backers. Whatever it is, um figure out how to stop a toss. Ever has a defensive coordinator in the NFL for a while now. uh that entire defensive coaching staff has been around football for a long time. Figure out what you have to do because once you get gashed like that with someone running the I mean not the exact same play but some variation of the same play 10 or 15 times. Trust me, the Packers are smart enough to watch film and go we should have a couple couple toss plays in the uh in the playbook this week because if they don’t figure it out this be our bread and butter and the next team and the next team and the next team. That one’s a little bit more difficult, but you should be able to do it. I mean, there’s a reason why the the toss, right? The pitch is one of like the 10 plays that every I don’t even know if they still play football this young, but when I was in third grade playing football, one of the plays we had toss, right? It was that was our big razledazzle play because the ball wasn’t handed off. It was actually in the air for a little bit. Uh, every team has a toss play. You should as a defense be able to bottle it up. And you know, Matt Laflur in Green Bay is looking at that going, “All right, how can we exploit this? Let’s have 10 different versions of it.” Yeah, Laflur is one of those those play callers, by the way. Sometimes it’s annoying. Who he is much more like run it till it doesn’t work. Uh he’ll he’ll keep doing it over and over and over again. Probably more so even than Buffalo is. So, be ready. By the way, real quick, James Cook, you know what? 214 yards. Yeah, 216, 214, give or take a couple yards. most allowed by a running back in Panthers history. And if we’re being real, the reason it wasn’t 250 is because the Bills didn’t want it to be. Uh could have been more. Mitch Trabiscy was in there at the beginning of the fourth quarter. Could have been more. And then number three, not least important, these were in no particular order. Uh, get Bryce Young back and and make sure you emphasize to him with the utmost importance, right? You can, hey, sit down. I want to look you in the eye when I tell you this. Protect the football at all costs. Protect the football at all costs. Cuz you don’t realize how much those early turnovers are killing us. Maybe that’s a, you know, I talked about Shane Gospear maybe being able to watch the power play when he’s been out the last few games uh for the Canes and and maybe it’s a little different watching it from a different vantage point. Perhaps Bryce Young saw a couple of early turnovers from Andy Dalton and went, “Oh, now I get it.” I mean, I’m I’m making fun of the situation a little bit. Uh, I don’t think Bryce Young doesn’t know how detrimental early turnovers are, but I I just think it’s it’s the one thing that Andy Dalton didn’t do that I thought he would was protect the football. And in the games that Bryce Young has put his team in huge holes, it’s almost always turnovers. I can’t think of a game where I came in here uh yelling and screaming about how bad Bryce was or about how he put his team in a no-win situation and it was because like they had a bunch of three and outs. It it’s it’s almost always because they gave the defense a short field. Uh they they they turned the ball over and and non of the nonforced variety, right? If if you’re going to put it on the hands of Tedo McMillan and he’s going to pop it up in the air for a defend defender to intercept it, I’m I’m not going to put that on Bryce. But at the same time, when Bryce is, you know, just trying to make a guy miss and drops it, that’s that’s the stuff that kills you. And Andy Dalton, I know he didn’t just drop it, but he wasn’t exactly protecting it on that first fumble. Yeah. Uh like just two hands. Two hands in traffic. It would be I don’t even know what the equivalent of it is. I I loved it because uh the defensive coordinator at Penn State last year, who’s now the defensive coordinator at Clemson, I guess he does this. He puts footballs on like big springs all over the defensive meeting rooms and anytime you walk by it, he just wants defensive players smacking at it and punching it just so they know like get the ball out. Uh I don’t I guess maybe give Bryce like the the um what is it? the program is that the the movie where uh the running back fumbles a bunch of times so they have him carry the ball like all throughout campus and everything and the the team knows if they see him to try to punch it out uh and and and get it and then you know what I forget what the exact uh rules of the game are. But I kind of want to do that to Bryce Young. Like you have to carry this football with you all week. If you fumble it, you know, stadium steps uh and if you see a wide receiver, you have to throw it to him and get it back. Like it’s it’s that important. You protect the football, everything changes. So you go bounce back. You want to play well against the Panthers, three things. Simple as that. Get your own running back in order, meaning the rotation. And yes, that means Rico, Rico, Rico, Chuba, Rico, Rico, Rico, Rico, Chuba. Not taking Chuba out completely, but it’s got to be the bulk of Rico. uh figure out how to stop a toss play because now it’s on film and every other offensive coordinator is going to be salivating at the the counters and the play actions and everything else they can run off of it. You know what? I don’t even know if you could find this this uh market out there on a sports book. I might take the over on a running back pass from the the the Packers this week because you just would assume that the Panthers are going to be selling out to stop the pass and and one of the natural counters off of that is to toss it to the running back and then have the running back catch and throw another pass. And we just saw it with uh was it Brace Hall threw a touchdown. Look for a halfback pass this week. If that happens, I’m taking all the credit in the world on that one. Uh and then get Bryce Young back and and make sure he knows to protect the football. Protect the football. Protect the football. even more so than when he was playing earlier. Those three things, you’ll be on the right track. Not saying you’ll beat the Packers cuz they’re good, but you’ll be on the right. You won’t lose 40 to9. I’ll put it that way. The drive with Tim Donnelly 999. A fan.

Tim Donnelly & Dennis Cox discuss how the Carolina Hurricanes and head coach Dave Canales can bounce back from their 40-9 loss to the Buffalo Bills.

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