How should we be processing the Carolina Panthers 3 game winning streak?

How should we be processing the Carolina Panthers 3 game winning streak?

It’s a three-game winning streak. How are you processing what the Panthers have done over the last three games? I mean, I thought the last one against the Jets was probably more about the Jets than it was about the Panthers. But hey, look, they won it and it was on the road. They hadn’t done that in a minute. Yeah, exactly. They entered that game two and nine during the Dave Canal era on the road. So, anytime this franchise gets a road win, and heck, you go back to when Matt Rule was there, when Frank Reich was there, hasn’t been like they’ve been winning a lot of road games. So, to be able to get a win on the road, and to have three straight wins, even if it was against the drags of the AFC East in Miami and New York, respectively, and I still don’t really know what to think of the Dallas Cowboys, but the defense made the stop when they needed to make the stop late in that game. And Carolina offensively, they kept up and they scored 30 points. They won that game. So, I give him credit and I think people should be excited about what they’ve been able to do here over the last three weeks. Now, how good is this Panthers team? I don’t really know right now. I certainly have some concerns offensively in particular in the past game, but they’re four and three. They have not been in a situation above 500 since October of 2021. So, that was four years ago. A lot of since 2021, we’ve heard over the last couple of weeks. So, yeah, fans be excited. Uh, but we’re gonna find out on Sunday and next Sunday as well just how good this team potentially can be this season. Julian Council locked on Panthers podcast at Julian Council on Twitter. Here’s the thing about um, you know, you said it’s been since 21 since they were over 500. That was after week five, right? Game five, cuz they won their first three and then they just completely uh, went the other way. 2019 going into their eighth game they were 4-3 and they won that game. They at one point were five and three and then of course it went the other way. Uh what Jake Allen and company uh couldn’t sustain things which understandable. Kyle Allen people were telling me back then. Oh yes, I remember that era. They were so they were so happy to move on from uh one of the greatest players in franchise history that they for some reason didn’t like. Um um you you said you had questions about the offense and I do too. And I thought for a team that won 136. I probably had more concerns about Bryce Young and the pass offense coming out of the Jets game. The Jets are not very good defensively. They have some very good defensive players. There is no doubt that they have some excellent defensive players. Um, and they are they’re getting no help from their offense, but they can be thrown on. And I was surprised that Carolina’s pass offense was so ineffective. Although Xavier Leot looked good. Yeah, he did. He had his best game by far as a Panther, which is great to see after the first two games of the season, him missing two weeks and then the way that he’s bounced back. So, that absolutely is a positive looking at the offense on Sunday. I thought the running game wasn’t necessarily as good as it was obviously the previous two weeks and Rico Dowel was the main guy, but getting Chuba Hubard back there, I think that split will eventually work out to be a positive as well for Carolina. But yeah, you’re right. the passing game. That is my main concern when looking at things moving forward. I was looking over at a tweet from our old friend Jonathan Jones of CBS Sports. Talk about Justin Fields having a minus.09 EPA per drop back, which is ranked 28th in the NFL. Um, you know who else has a minus0.9 EPA per drop back? Yeah, Bryce Young. Wow. Bryce Young. Saw that yesterday and I was like, “Oh, that’s that’s not that’s not good.” because he has been better this year, I guess, more consistent than he has been um in the past and certainly has not played, I think, at the level he played at the end of last year, but he’s got off to a better overall start at the beginning of the season than he did, of course, last season and the season prior to that as a rookie, but he has not necessarily been great. And if you look at his games just passing yardage wise, the only game where he’s done over 200 yards passing was that comeback attempt in the desert against Arizona. Outside of that, every single one of his games he has failed to throw for over 200 yards and including the last three weeks where yes, he exited the game there in the third quarter against New York. But even in the wins against Dallas and the wins against Miami, well, he made the plays when you need him to make them in the fourth quarter, which is a great part about him. It is concerning that throughout his career, he really has not had a ton of explosive offensive plays and games. and you look across the NFL at the top quarterbacks in the league, they’re capable of doing that on a pretty semi-regular basis. But for Bryce, like you rarely see that at this point in time, and this is kind of who he’s been. And it’s it can work when you have a solid offensive line, even with the injuries where they have the depth that they have now. And when you have a rushing attack with Tuba Hubard and Rico D in particular, you can win that way. But eventually, I feel like against the top teams that they have remaining, like the Rams, like the Niners, he’s he’s not going to play on Sunday. I don’t care if Dave Canal says he’s dayto-day. We’ll find about next week in Green Bay if he can play in that game. But they have a lot of in Tampa Bay. There’s a lot of good teams left on the schedule. And I just don’t think Carolina can get by if they’re only getting 175 yards every single week out of the passing game. I mean, they they can if they’re getting 230 yards from scrimmage from Rico D. Um, and I want I want to get back to the passing game. And if they’re playing the Jets and they’re playing the Dolphins again, which they’re not playing any team of those calibers. I think New Orleans, as bad as they are, they have at least look more competent than Miami and New York to their credit. Real quick, like they didn’t run the ball all that effectively. Dat was good. Hubard was okay. They didn’t really gash the Jets on the ground. That’s the one thing the Jets can do is stop the run. They certainly did that to Denver uh over in London, a game that we were forced to watch because it was the only one on at 9:00 in the morning. Um the uh but you could throw on the Jets, which is that was really the disturbing part to me. Uh I do like the fact that when uh when the chips are on the table, Young has come up with the goods. You go back to last year, all of his best work was done in critical drives in the fourth quarter. Now, they were out of it in terms of the standings. So, and I’ve been saying all summer, I don’t know what to make of all of that because there really wasn’t pressure, you know, standings pressure, win loss pressure on the team. They’re just playing. You’re ch you’re still trying to win. So, I’m not saying there’s no pressure, but I didn’t know what to make of it. But in those games, he was always at his best late. They could have won a few could have beaten should have beaten Philadelphia if league catches the pass. Could have beaten Kansas City. Of course, Patrick Mullen was always going to score. They had a lot of games like that last year. Um, but I’ve been kind of disappointed in the fact that they they just don’t seem to have a good timing passing game. He was late on so many throws against the Jets. The plays that were there to be made. Yeah. And I want to give him a little bit of grace right now because of the injuries that they have had at receiver. Jaylen Coker made his debut on Sunday. He only was targeted two times in that game. Jimmy Horn Jr. has really been integrated in the offense the last couple of weeks and his role has started to grow. Of course, JT Sanders, the tight end, he had missed three weeks of an ankle injury and he got back back out there. So, it’s still a young receiving core and I think they’re still trying to really get that ingame continuity that they haven’t been able to establish early on this season. So, I want to recognize that while also, yes, sharing in your concern that it all just looks clunky. It looks so hard for them. And aside from Bryce targeting a guy like Tedo McMillan, it doesn’t seem like he has the same kind of trust or at least connection at this point in time in the rest of his receiving room. And I think there are good enough options to where that should not be the case. So when he comes back, we’ll see what it looks like. I’m very interested to see what it looks like on Sunday with Andy Dalton in there against Buffalo. Quite honestly, I don’t think passing the ball is the key to beating the Bills anyways. That’s one of the worst rushing defenses in the league. So it should be a heavy dose of Chuba and Rico throughout that game. So like that’s a game I think they can win just because Buffalo’s been so bad against the run. And hell, the Panthers beat the Brakes off of Atlanta, who beat Buffalo the last time the Bills were out there uh prior to the buy. Won’t be necessarily an easy win obviously, but that’s a game I think they win if they win it by winning on the ground. But um yeah, the passing game’s got to improve. It it just has to. And I just I don’t want to make everything about a referendum on Bryce Young that every game needs to be that, but eventually you’re going to have to get more out of your quarterback. And I just look at a guy like Baker Mayfield and like what he was doing last night even in that loss against Detroit. Like he’s going for it. You just don’t see that. But to Bryce’s credit, he has had I think what five fourth quarter come or gamewinning drives, nine fourth quarter comebacks, whatever it is, he’s had he’s come up in the clutch. I had somebody ask me a couple weeks ago, is Bryce clutch? Well, when you needed him to make plays, he’s been able to make those plays. And you go back to the game against Philadelphia, like you mentioned last year, even the game the week prior to that against Tampa, he had brought them down to field to win that game. defensively just could not get a stop. So, he’s done it in the past. You just would appreciate if it didn’t always have to come down to that if that offensively they could just be ahead and not always having to come back in those games. But, it’s great to have a quarterback who has the ability to do that. It just would be nice to have a quarterback who also has the ability uh to string together more efficient drives through the air on the first three quarters as well. That’s why I mean I’m not absolving Bryce because I think that the mistakes that I pointed out against the Jets to me were more about him than they were about anything else. Just waiting too long, not trusting that your receiver was going to run the right route, things like that. Um, but what you just talked about to me speaks to the head coach in like take the training wheels off. Let’s see what they can do. You can’t you can’t ignore the run game. That’s your bread and butter. You got to do that. But he talks about play action all day long. Uh, and then they just don’t seem to run uh, a really aggressive offense. Let me ask you about the defense before I have to say goodbye. Julian Council Locked on Panthers podcast because last year they had one of the worst defenses we have ever seen. And I was a nonbeliever through the first several games because I thought the defense was better, but I didn’t think it was great. And I still don’t think it is great. the Jets come selfshut down, but the the defense they laid out there on Dallas was still pretty good when they needed to shut the running game down. If they can shut the running game down, they can still lose to the Bills, but if they can at least eliminate that element, make you, you know, make you one-dimensional, I give them a chance. Yeah. It’s almost as if having Derrick Brown makes a huge difference because he’s an incredible player and every single week you see Brian Baldinger of the NFL Network just showing a clip of Derek Brown just throwing another grown man off to the side. It’s just it’s insane stuff and like I’m happy for Derek to come back out there to play the way he’s played so far this season. I think guys like Aan Robinson and Bobby Brown the third and Turk Wharton when he’s been healthy have also aided in that run stopping. I think Trevan Wallace since he’s transitioned into wearing the green dot and the helmet coms and been the guy who’s called up signals that I think he’s done a really good job in that role as well. And then when you have willing tacklers like Tron Merrick there at safety and both your corners and JC Horn and Mike Jackson that helps the run game. Um it’ll be interesting to see just against the pass because you’re going to see some guys like I mean Josh Allen obviously can beat you both ways. Uh Jordan Love can beat you that way. Matthew Stafford certainly. It’ll be interesting to see just how good this defense is and kind of how good this team is once they do start playing the better opponents. I was looking over at our favorite website tankathon.com and they have the Panthers with the fourth toughest remaining strength schedule in the NFL and they’ve so far played the 30th easiest or the the third easiest uh schedule so far this season. And looking at it preseason, you could see these first seven games, that’s really where Carolina need to go out there and win some games that they weren’t going to have a terrible season. And not I’m not saying they’re going to completely fall apart in the final 10 weeks of the year. I just don’t know what to expect, but I think this defense has been good as far as stopping the run. They still can’t really get any pressure. I know they had six sacks on Sunday. The Jets, that’s just what they do. The quarterbacks, whether it be Tyrod or Justin Fields, all to the ball way too long. The offensive line is not good. We’ll see if that can carry over moving forward against some of the better teams and better offensive lines uh in the league. So, I don’t think that’s going to necessarily get much better. I think JC’s obviously outstanding. Mike Jackson had a nice bounceback game. Granted, the Jets don’t have any receivers and Garrett Wilson doesn’t play in that game. So, it’s good that you took care of business against a bad offense because we have seen times where they have not done that. And even against a good offense like the one that they have down there in Dallas, you took away the run game. And certainly George Piggins had a great game in that, but you made the plays when you needed to make them. You found a way to close out that game. You closed out the game against Miami. Same thing on Sunday when the Panthers offense refused to go out there and to stretch the lead. JC had those two interceptions. They found a way to close the game. So, I give them a lot of credit. I think that they are improved. Just how improved, again, we’ll find out over the next 10 weeks. Julian Council, Lockdown Panthers podcast, Julian Counsel on Twitter. Uh, it’s good to catch up, man. I’ll talk to you soon. Yep, absolutely.

Julian Council, Locked On Panthers, joins the Adam Gold Show to discuss the Carolina Panthers getting their, 3rd in a row, 4th win of the season and if their ceiling has moved from the beginning of the season?

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