Carolina Panthers struggle on offense in 20-9 loss to San Francisco 49ers

Carolina Panthers struggle on offense in 20-9 loss to San Francisco 49ers

Chris, three. That’s the number. That’s how many points the Panthers got off of three interceptions by their defense. They only got three points off that. One per interception. Let’s look at the positives. Jazz hands. You like my jazz hands? Yeah, sure. We’ll go with that. You like my jazz hands? You know what? [Music] Let’s get this sucker started. Get dialed in, Panthers fans. Here comes an indepth look at your team. Exclusive interviews, locker room insight. Let’s huddle up for Panthers Playbook presented by Wake Orthopedics, a Wake Med physician practice. Here are your hosts, Dennis Cox and Chris Lee. Welcome back to another episode of Panthers Playbook. That’s Chris Lee, Dennis Cox with you late on a Monday night. Panthers playbook sponsored by Wake Orthopedics. Again, leave your thoughts in the comment section on this 20-9 loss by the Carolina Panthers to the San Francisco 49ers. And Chris, the thing that popped into my head watching this game, looking at this game after the fact, the inconsistencies of this Carolina Panthers team this season showed through massively today. Inconsistencies in terms of their quarterback play, inconsistencies with their play calling and game plan from their head coach, even sometimes the inconsistencies of their defense, but the inconsistency in the good way. But three turnovers by your defense, including a couple that set you up in prime scoring opportunity, and you only got three points out of it. Make it make sense, Chris. I I just the inconsistency of this team is so frustrating this year. First off, let’s talk about uh coaching. Um Dave Canales told us plenty of times, uh this is a team that’s going to run the ball first. They had uh a total of 13 attempts on the ground and four of those are Bryce Young scrambles. So, you called nine running plays and 29 passing plays. Now, some people will say, “But Chris, they were down. They’re trying to come back. You got to pass a little bit more in those situations.” Yeah, but also like at the beginning of like I guess when we texted about this in the first half, it was what, six? And there was only three in the second half after that. So, six in the first half and then three in the second half. like you still could have came out in the the second half as you were only down 10 to three with some runs to help control the game to get back into the game which is what you did versus Miami. Your first play was a 17yd run by Rico Dowel but then you had the scramble by Bryce Young but you also had a 10 yard penalty right after that. So all of a sudden you’re at first and 20 and then you end up punting just a few plays later. So they they there self-inflicted wounds at the you know and then even opportunities where he had to run the ball even like for example when Bryce Young threw the interception he easily had a path to run the ball it you know himself but I mean Dave Canalis said after the game he goes you know yeah it’s a pretty aggressive play call you know I felt like if we didn’t convert there we still have chances to run the ball or just run the ball. Well let me let me finish my point. Go on. Go on. Um, and then you you talked about the inconsistencies from from the quarterback uh side and uh ladies and gentlemen, there’s a reason why that myself nor Dennis Cox jumped out the window along with everybody else when Bryce Young had an amazing day, career day, 448 yards. Will not take that from him. He had a great day, but also uh we said it could potentially be an outlier. What are you going to do to show some consistency? And we saw a regular Bryce Young game. 18 for 29 for 169 yards, 60.8 quarterback rating. It kind of is what it is. It like this is who he’s shown that he he’s been. And you know what? Ted Roy McMillan didn’t help him out a lot. And I will say this, Tedoy McMillan with the drops is really who y’all think Xavier Legette was with the drop drops, but I’m not saying I want Teroy McMillan off my team because he’s young. He’s going to go through it. Jamar Chase went through it his rookie year. Uh he’s going to work through it and all that. I’m I’m cool with him. Like I I expect this guy to be on this team for a long time. I just want people to kind of chill out on XL a little bit. And look what our other number one uh or first round pick is doing. Uh and then just overall on offense, it doesn’t again the defense played so good and there’s nothing that the offense could do to uh to help them out at all. Like there is a chance if you were a good enough offense, there’s a chance that off of these uh turnovers, you could have been up 21 to 10 at half just off the turnovers alone if you just punt it the other couple times. Um and it it was just really unfortunate to see that hard work just go for not. The defense really tried to to keep everybody into it. And even with that, Bryce Young with his two interceptions, one shouldn’t have been and and we can agree to that. Like one should have been pass interference uh because McMillan was was held at the top of the route and so he would have been there to catch that ball. I had a thought on that, but go on. He would have been there to catch that ball. Um but uh other than that, like this is just what happens. I think this was one of those games where you Bryce Young had a really good game the week before, comes back to earth this week. It’s that seems to happen with him. I think Bryce uh uh Dave Canal, excuse me, had a really good game last week, came back to earth this week. The San Francisco 49ers, look at them. Look at what they did. Look at the method uh uh to all their madness on offense. They held the ball for so long. I mean, what what was that? Let me look at it real quick. I’ll pull up here real fast for you. The time of possession of the game was 37 minutes and 42 seconds for the San Francisco 49ers. So 15 and a half minutes more. What the Carolina Panthers say they want to be is what the 49ers are. Yeah, that’s that’s true. That’s exactly and and if we never traded Christian McCaffrey, well that’s that’s a different conversation for another time. That’s a different conversation another time. But I think just going back specifically to this game, the opportunities were there at the beginning of this game for this Panthers team, but you you had a chance to tie the game early on, but you threw an interception on first and goal from the oneyd line. And to me, that was the backbreaker. Even though it was early in the game, it was a backbreaker. But the game was a onepossession game until the middle part of the third quarter. It was a onepossession game the entire time. And then even when you got down 17-3, you come down and you you offense finally gets a little something going. You score, you make it 17-9. And then they have the the penalty against San Francisco on the PAT as opposed to keeping it 17-10. Hey, you got a chance to move the ball to the oneyd line and go for two. So you elect to go for two from the one yard line, but you still call a pass play. you still call a pass play. But here’s the thing that that kind of blows my mind. Again, I’ll put this one on Canales on this situation on that pass play on the two-point conversion. When you are at the two yard line or the one yard line, that pass doesn’t the one yard difference doesn’t really matter in the pass play in that regard. It just doesn’t. So then why didn’t you if that was going to be your play call on a two-point conversion? Why didn’t you just go for it anyway? If that was going to be your play call from the one yard line, like you said, Chris, this team wants to be, hey, we want to run the rock. We want to be a run first heavy football team. Well, then be that. They didn’t show that on a consistent basis tonight. For a defense for the San Francisco 49ers, it’s banged up. How many times we hear tonight know Fred Warner and know Nick Bosa, no Mikeel Williams and other guys got hurt during the course of the game and you didn’t run right at him. You didn’t run right at him on a consistent basis and said you’re running bootlegs. Why weren’t you targeting your tight ends more in the middle of the field? Why weren’t you running the ball between the tackles more on a consistent basis in the beginning of the game? I mean, look at the very first drive of the game for the Carolina Panthers. If you just go right back just straight to the opening drive, which ended up being a threeandout, you had a four-yard run and then you end up getting a offensive holding call. There it was a pass and you had a 10 yard run and you’re sitting there at fourth and three near midfield. That’s where we have seen Dave Canales consistently go for it this season. Go for it. But no, instead you turn things around, but you got an interception on the next drive and then you run the ball a few times and then you finally get first and goal after three runs put you at first and goal at the one yard line. Then let’s try and get cute with this playaction pass with the heavy personnel and it just fell flat right in your face. It’s like if you’re going to be about it, if you’re going to be about that life, go be about that life. And I don’t think we see that from Dave Canales on a consistent basis in terms of running the football. I didn’t think Dave Canal had a great game play calling. I thought last week was fantastic in terms of his play calling. They did not get anywhere near close to replicating what they did last week. And that’s the thing that’s frustrating about this team. It’s the inconsistency from your quarterback, from your coaching, the play design. It’s completely inconsistent on a week in and week out basis. This is the This is now the How many games are they at? They’re six and six. In 11 games, this is the ninth time or sorry, 10 games. 10 games this season, you’ve thrown less than 200 yards passing in 10 games this season. Cuz I’ll include the Andy Dalton start against the Buffalo Bills. In 10 games, you’ve been under 200 yards passing as a team. Those were all Bryce. That’s that’s that’s pathetic. That’s pathetic. You’re you’re not going to play the the Atlanta Falcons every week. Oh, this this was what a potential playoff game would look like. And look, this game was there for the taking. Like the the Carolina Panthers could have absolutely won this game. It was there for the taking. Um, and I I did think that it was uh coached, they were coached out of the game, uh, for sure. I mean, I I’ll put this a little bit more on Canal than Bryce, but Bryce had Bryce definitely has a lot to do with this as well. Oh, yeah. Uh, with the way this looks. Let’s go back to going for two there. You made a great point right there. But then also, my thing has been this. I’ve said this on Twitter. I’ve said this on the show. Your offense hasn’t arrived yet. Your offense is not like that. It’s not automatic. Take the points. Like, yeah, cuz you put yourself in this situation where you had to go for a two-point conversion and and just take the points. Like, you’re not like that right now. Take the points. This this game was was so disappointing from an offensive standpoint. Um uh just all around with just kind of I I want I want this team to truly have uh an identity. Me and you were talking during the game and uh we’re just talking about Shanahan and you’re like, you know, he went heavy Christian McCaffrey early uh in in the first uh in the first drive and it’s all to set up the play action later on and we saw that unfortunately just couldn’t connect because JC Horn and Mike Jack were just so good. Yeah. But if they hadn’t have been there, if they hadn’t even made those plays, which I’ll get to JC Horn in just a second, um, you know, those would have been completions down the field and those would have been chunk plays all set up through the Christian McCaffrey, uh, you know, uh, runs and you could use play action after that. Um, you could see what what Shannon Shanahan was doing and how uh he was really kind of like using the run to set up and as the game went further along, he used his two backs in a great way together. Yeah. Like Chris McAffrey clearly is the guy, but then you have another guy that you can bring in to kind of change the pace a little bit and it can knock the Panthers back on on the heels just just a little bit. Yeah. Brian Robinson came in with fresh legs. Like just defense was worn down. He came in with fresh legs with some strong runs. And then getting to to to JC Horn. Um it’s it’s amazing when you let a star player use their natural god-given talents and abilities to go make plays instead of relegating them to one side of the field. My man, I don’t even know if he’s supposed to do this or not. It’ll be interesting to hear this. Uh and I hope his uh you know, his injury isn’t too serious. He can return soon. um you know, if it’s a concussion, anybody with a concussion, to me, you need to be out at least 2 to 3 weeks. That’s just that’s just kind of how I feel with when it comes to concussions. So, I don’t expect him to come back uh next week. If he does, that’s their decision. And then there’s a buy after that so he can get healthy. But um my man, I don’t even know if he was supposed to do this, was on his side of the field and was like, “You know what? Let me do this.” and goes over there because he knows if if you’re gonna have JC Horn right here on the boundary side, then more than likely the quarterback is going to throw to Mike Jack’s side. And so he went and undercut something on the complete opposite side of the field. There was no one on JC Horn’s side of the field on that route on any of those routes. No one was on his side of the field. Brock Pery uh there’s no way he would have been able to see that. And JC Horn was just able to go and make a play. And to me, it’s just amazing. And again, this is one of those situations. I’ve said before, I feel like sometimes the players have outplayed the coaching and have gotten the Panthers wins in situations where they probably shouldn’t have gotten them because the players just kind of either spoke up or just stepped up. And uh JC Horn almost was able to do that. It’s just that the offense had to do their part and and to help punch it in. Um I I need the coaching staff to get it together. Like I I seriously needed need them to get it together. I I’m not I’m already not a fan of of the defense and the defensive coordinator. It kind of is what it is at this point and and Canal is going to make whatever decision he’s going to make about about that future. And it’s gotten better, but also you’ve gotten better players. But when it comes down to the offensive side, like that is your side, Dave. Like you’re the head coach. This is your side. This is what the Panthers are supposed to be eating off of. This is supposed to be the best part of the team. And it is not. And that is from it. That is very, very telling. You are not going to play the Atlanta Falcons every single week. You got the Rams coming to Bank of America Stadium this coming Sunday. Yeah. Pull off a game like this at home versus the Rams. This will be another blowout. Yeah. Just like the Bills game. Just like the the Patriots game. Rams will eat you alive if you play again like that. Rams, they’ll eat you alive when you play again like that. And this is like I think the a lot of today is again what we’ve seen a lot this season from the Panthers offense and and the in the fact that we have seen this team struggle offensively in a lot of games even in wins like the Jets only putting up 13 points offensively as a outside of Rico’s running game against Green Bay off like the passing game struggled in that game. If it’s not all clicking, not all clicking, but even if you don’t have one aspect of your offense going, I I guess I guess let me rephrase this. We have not seen one aspect of the offense be consistent all year. We haven’t seen the pass game be consistently good all year. We haven’t even seen the run game be consistently good all year. We just haven’t. It’s just fits and starts. There’s too much Dr. Jackekal, Mr. Hyde with this team. That’s the best way I can describe it. That’s basically what I’m trying to say. There’s too much Dr. Jackekal and Mr. Hive when it comes to this Carolina Panthers team. We have seen the run game have absolutely strong efforts. Absolutely. Miami Dolphins, Dallas Cowboys, Green Bay Packers absolutely carried by the run game. We’ve seen a couple strong performances from Bryce Young this season. We have Atlanta last week. I actually thought he was really great again in the Dallas Cowboy game. I thought he was fantastic in that game. But overall, it’s just constantly fits and starts. And that’s why you see this team has a record of six and six. But this team has been dealing with what we call again growing pains. Last week we saw growth. This week we saw the pains. It’s as simple as that. And on Bryce Young, the first interception. You can’t make that throw. There’s too much chaos. There’s too much traffic over there. I understand what you’re trying to do with the play concept from Dave Canal from the play calling standpoint, but to me, too crowded over there. It’s too crowded. It was just too much chaos in that regard. And on the second one, I know that Tener McMillan got held up on his arm on the play, on the route, but to me, it’s the the read in my eyes is still not a good throw because you still have the safety driving down on McMillan. So, even if the hold isn’t there, the safety is still meeting McMillan with the ball right there. Like, so to me, it’s still not a great read, even though the the penalty should have been called. I’ll fully acknowledge more than one thing can be true, but you can’t wait till you’re down 14-3 to get your offense going. You can’t just wait. This that’s the thing about this team that’s so frustrating offensively. It feels like, all right, if we get kind of close, then all right, late in the game, we’ll kind of get our offense going a little bit and we’ll give ourselves a chance late and then we’ll see if we can go win a game. You can’t sustain that. You just can’t. You simply can’t. You had every opportunity in the first half as an offense to potentially bury the 49ers early and you did squat with it. I’m sorry. You didn’t do squat. You didn’t do with it. You didn’t do crap. Three points off three turnovers. That’s it. One point per turnover, though. One point per turnover. Yeah. And that’s garbage. Here, here’s another thing to point out about the running game. Um, 5.3 yards per carry. Rico D had 6.3 yards per carry. Hubard had 5.3 yards per carry. Imagine now I I think that that average obviously will go down if they ran a little bit more, but man, it was it was looking pretty good when they had their opportunities. those guys can’t help that their numbers weren’t called uh when in that regard, right? You know, we saw some passes to uh to Dow uh to uh to Hubard. They both had four catches. I mean, Hubard had more catches than what he had carries like like and a lot of those relate these little checkdowns and stuff like that. But yeah, but still it’s like one of those like come on bro like you know you got to if you’re going to try to use both learn how to use both. And that’s the that’s the other thing like Canales hasn’t learned how to use both. No. If if there’s something that I want him to get from this, I want him to take this tape. I’m about to sneeze, dude. Bless you, sir. Bless you. I want him to take this tape. I want him to go home and study this tape, not just this week, but in also in the off season. What can I do as a play caller? One, to be helpful to my team and to help limit the shortcomings uh of uh the the personnel that I happen to have, my quarterback or whomever else. How can I put them in the best decision in the best situations? Shannon Shanahan, this was a coaching clinic in my in my view because again, even with all of their uh injuries, like this was a very lossable game just because of where Brock Pury was throwing this and you still had the Carolina Panthers on the other end. So, you’re able to still control the game and the Panthers just couldn’t do anything with it right there. Take this tape. Study Shanahan. Study the offense. Study what he did. Study how he used his running back. Christian McCaffrey is great. 3.7 yards per carry. Not necessarily super amazing at all, but at least there was a steady diet of that run game and it didn’t you didn’t go away from it. You gave Brian Robinson seven tries, 5.7 yards per carry. Like, you know, it like you really showed like what you can do. uh when you try to control uh a game with the run and then also use the passing game uh to complement the run but also like get people in space and in positions that they’re going to be um successful. You didn’t do it. You didn’t do it. Oh, another frustrating play call when the Panthers decided to uh I think is actually when they kicked their field goal is that was third and goal from the four yardd line and they try to run that swing pass with Chuba Hubard that went for minus three yards. They’re going to throw the ball. Put it in the end zone. Put it in the end zone. Well, when he tried that Well, there’s that, too. Hey man, shout out to the people that have listened to us, man. Like there there’s more and more people. We love it when you guys uh not only leave comments, but more and more people are walking up to us and talking to us, whether in Charlotte, whether in Raleigh, whether in Durham, whether in Greensboro, like Dennis and I all over the state, man. And and people, you guys talk to us. And thank you for for that. Shout out to my guy Jeremy who uh said hello to me in Durham. We were two fellow vegans together saving the animals. Uh, some people might try and quit Panthers Cold Turkey. Maybe they won’t. I don’t know. But folks, again, leave your thoughts in the comments. Big shout out to Wake Orthopedics, our sponsor here of Panthers Playbook. We will have another episode that will come out for you all on Thanksgiving morning. And we’re going to give thanks to you. We’re going to give thanks to the Panthers at that time. But until then, enjoy your night. You probably be waking up on Tuesday morning after this loss. That’s okay, cuz I’m recording this right now. It’s already after midnight. Let’s get some sleep, Chris. You all get some sleep. Not together, though. No, just we’ll see you all on Thanksgiving. Sorry.

Dennis Cox & Chris Lea discuss Carolina Panthers quarterback Bryce Young and head coach Dave Canales struggling again in the 20-9 loss to the San Francisco 49ers.

Panthers Playbook is sponsored by Wake Orthopedics. 

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