Nic Scourton comments reveal Carolina Panthers’ potential culture shortcomings

Nic Scourton comments reveal Carolina Panthers’ potential culture shortcomings

There is a prevailing message coming out of the Panthers this week that practice last week wasn’t good enough, which is wild to me. Right. The the fact that everybody at Panthers practice in the facility wasn’t flying around with their hair on fire is absolutely outlandish to me. the the the there was a a lot of talk before the Bills game that it was the biggest game at Bank of America Stadium in years, right? They’re above 500. They’re playing against another team that’s really good. This, that, the other. Whoa, whoa, whoa. And and they went out and laid an egg. Got smoked. And granted, you know, Josh Allen’s pretty good and James Cook’s pretty good, so you know, it wasn’t as ridiculous as the the Saints lost, but it was a bad loss. They lost by a billion. They go on the road to Lambo, they win. And now it’s very similar talk. You have a division game. You’re above 500. You’re going into your 10th game of the year. Like it it should be like that’s the reason you play football to play in a game like that. Go bury the Saints. Move on to the Falcons. You win that, you’re like not only in the playoff picture, depending on what’s going on with Tampa, you’re probably moving pretty clearly into the playoff picture. And by the way, Tampa can’t get out of their own way with injuries. So, and you play him twice right at the end of the year post by like everything is in front of you and then we hear things like this from Nick Scoron about practice being lacadasical. Yeah. I mean, you know, just getting our bodies back. Um, I can’t agree though. I mean, I did feel a little laxidasical like energy, you know, around but you know, I mean, that’s just, you know, how it is when you play 10 NFL games, I thought. But, you know, I I just felt the energy before the game was was kind of how first and and side note, I don’t know if I’m wildly impressed or a sign of a horrendous thing that the 21-year-old rookie is the one saying that. Um, but he wasn’t the only one. Ianu talked about how wasn’t a good week of practice. Uh, Javian Sanders, the the tight end, talked about how the mistakes they made in practice were the same mistakes they made in the game. there are an insane amount of of I don’t like like just a willingness to say that. So then uh Dave Canales today speaking with the media uh addressed it yet again, right? The the what he it was uh Monday he addressed it where he said, “Yeah, you know, it wasn’t up to our standards and I told everybody that as the practices were going on, they weren’t up to our standards.” today. He addressed it again on Nick Scortton’s comments, uh, his play and and the comments after the game. Here’s Canales. We really want the guys to earn respect. And the way you earn respect in this league is by how you play, how you prepare, and the hard work that you put in. I believe Nick has done those things um, early on, you know, in his career here is to show consistency and how he practices, how he prepares and watches film. Um, he’s taken coaching. Um, AC Carter’s done a great job with Nick just bringing him along. He seems to add things every week and play with technique and um a lot of stuff he can clean up, you know, from the game. Certainly, you know, that’s every week. Um but just like his mentality, I like the way that he’s just attacks it and you know, the juice that he brings on game day, chasing things down. So, I’m really proud of the way he’s played, you know, just about the comments and all that stuff. I think it’s a it’s an opportunity. It’s a learning opportunity to say, okay, you know, for us, for our guys, like, you know, speak for your own performance. um if you want to make a general comment, you know, about hey, when we lose, we’re upset, we’re disappointed, you know, but the specific part of it like that, we can do a better job of just keeping those things with within us, you know, and the stuff that we talk about after the game on Monday and all those things. I have questions and the question is very simple. Is he right? Is he right? Is he correct? Were they lacadasical? Were Were they not ready to play? Were their practices below where they should be? Because if he’s right, the lesson shouldn’t be him keeping it in. The lesson should be don’t give him the ammunition to say it. Yeah. Well, it depends how much of that do you consider to be on the coaches and and on the players. And obviously we weren’t at these practices so we can’t speak to that’s why exactly what was going on but uh if you’re the players and you know like it’s not enough effort in the practices and you know you’re kind of goofing around and not getting locked in. I mean, you somebody has to step up in that scenario and be like, “Hey, like we’re we’re well, first of all, you should never overlook anybody, but if you’re the car, especially if you’re the Carolina Panthers, you can’t be overlooking anybody on your schedule.” I don’t care if you’re playing uh Rollsville High School JV. The Panthers can’t can’t overlook anybody. Exactly. So, that’s it’s a it’s disappointing that they’re all able to acknowledge that after the game, like they’ve clearly known that it wasn’t up to the standard the whole time. Is that on canals or is that on the players? It’s obviously it’s hard to say because it’s all just uh you know their kind of recollections of it, but like it’s clearly like something is missing. There’s something is not connecting here that needs to be for them to be able to make a step to being a a a truly competitive football team. The answer is it’s on everybody. And and there’s a saying, and this goes back a long time. I’m sure it was one of my high school coaches that that gave it to me, but I don’t think he was creative enough to come up with it on his own. Uh he used to say, “Are you thank you or or bleep you or f you? Are you a thank you guy or are you a bleep you guy?” And what he meant by that was uh we all have days where we don’t want to work as hard as we possibly can. Right? At this point it was like I lived at the beach, right? I was going to I was going to high school in Ocean City, Maryland. And we used to have workouts at 7:30 in the morning in the summertime. There were days you woke up and you just didn’t want to be there, right? You’d be in the weight room 7:45, beautiful day. People are getting ready to go. So, there going to be days where you don’t want to be there and maybe you’re not grinding. Somebody should come up to you and say, “Hey, man, lock in. You’re you’re being a real bleep bleep now.” Right? And you have two options. You can either say thank you or you can say bleep you. If Thank you, man. You’re right. I need to lock in. Appreciate it. You’re right. Or bleep you, man. Worry about yourself. You can try to silence that person so they’re less likely to say it to the next person and less likely to say it to the next person cuz they said it to you and they got cussed out. So now, oh, I’m not going to go say it to somebody else. And that can end it right there. Nick Scorton, if he’s right, which is a big if, right? cuz I wasn’t there. Like like Max said, we weren’t at the practice. May maybe it was a 99 out of 100 and Nick Scorton has ridiculous expectations. I don’t know. But if Nick Scorton is correct and they had laxidasical practices and and and low uh focus, whatever he was saying, going into an NFL football game and he says it publicly, and your response is it’s a lesson for him not to say it publicly rather than it’s a lesson for us to understand that if we don’t do our business, Nick Scorton isn’t going to let us get through scott-free, right? He’s not going to ignore it. He’s not going to say let’s keep it to ourselves. There has to be consequences. We lost a game. It’s embarrassing. Our rookie is telling us we weren’t ready. If you weren’t ready, that’s not the rookie’s fault. Now, what I will say to Nick Scorton is this. Can’t throw stones if you live in a glass house. You better be there first, leave last. You better work hard as all get out from this point forward. Well, I mean, he was probably one of the few bright spots in the game, though. But but not just not just play, right? He, by the way, he’s played well the last four games. Really, really well. Uh but not just play, right? Cuz he didn’t call anybody out for how they played on Sunday. He called them out for how they prepared Monday through Saturday. I think if again, and it’s a big if, if he’s right, it’s awesome of him to do. And everybody else better understand that if he’s at practice and you’re not going hard, he’s noticing. And it should be everybody notices, right? It should be Taylor Motton notices and uh I mean go all the way down all Christian Roseboom notices and this guy notices and that guy notices and they’re all calling you out if you’re being laxidasical and you should all say, “Thank you. You’re right. Let me lock in.” I can’t imagine a scenario where this Panther team can overlook not I don’t even I don’t care if it was the Saints. I don’t care if they were playing the Chiefs or who’s like tops or the the Seahawks. I don’t care who they’re playing, right? This team has to be their absolute A+ very best, most prepared, most ready every game to have a shot to beat anybody. the fact that anybody could go into practice and and not give their absolute all. And I’m not saying like you don’t make mistakes in practice. You’re supposed to make mistakes in practice. But but locked in whatever the best way you learn, you have to. You have to. It can be uncomfortable to say what Nick Scornton said. And I’m sure he walked in the locker room and some people were not happy with what he said, but if he’s correct, say it again next week. Don’t learn the lesson to keep it. You know, we could keep that inside. There’s no real consequences to saying it in a team only meeting. So, okay, we unless you’re calling out one dude cuz that’s embarrassing. If somebody wasn’t working hard enough, you call them out in a team meeting room or a position group room, that’s brutal. But if you’re calling out the team like we didn’t do well enough and it’s in a team meeting room where we are all there, it’s like, okay, thanks. Doing it publicly, you know, ups the stakes. It’s like talking trash. If I say you’re not going to score on me publicly, it’s going to be embarrassing if you score on me, so I better make sure it doesn’t happen. Nick Scorton better be out there early working on the bags late.

Tim Donnelly & Max Goren discuss edge rusher Nic Scourton’s comments about the Carolina Panthers’ lackluster preparation ahead of their loss to the New Orleans Saints, and what coach Dave Canales’ response says about the team’s locker room culture.

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