15, Chris. 15. That’s where Tedderro McMillan ranks in the NFL right now in total receiving guards. 15th in the NFL in receiving guards. Tedro MacMillan. Man, imagine where he’d be if you uh. He had a quarterback. We’re starting on hop. Let’s get this sucker started. Get dialed in Panthers fans. Here comes an in-depth look at your team. Exclusive interviews locker room insight. Let’s huddle up for Panther’s 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 Panther’s Playbook. That’s Chris Lee. Dennis Cox here with you. Make Orthopedics, the sponsor here of Panthers Playbook. And folks, uh, uh, uh, we really do appreciate you all leaving the comments. So make sure you, you, you like, you subscribe, you hit the comments and hit the hype as well. Because here’s something, Chris, that one of our commenters, uh, and I apologize for not bringing up the name, but in our postgame episode on Sunday. One of our commenters actually called back to something that you said about Dave Canales and Bryce Young, which I think is very telling, and I, and I, I guess, actually something that I know I, I respect and appreciate the listeners for doing this. They said, like Chris said, Bryce and Dave are like oil and water. They just don’t mix. They just don’t mix. And we, we heard Dave Canalas on Monday say when asked about the vertical passing downfield or lack thereof, say, I’ll paraphrase that he’ll call more of those if we’re more successful with them. Mhm. I think that early interception on the very first drive that Bryce Young threw that got overturned because of a roughing the passer call. I think Dave Canales because that was down the middle of the field between the hash marks. I think Dave Canalis saw that and went, nope, nope, nope. And we see the results of it. He took the ball out of Bryce’s hands early in that game. Yeah. Uh, we’ve been talking about, uh, Bryce Young not being willing to throw down the field and then, you know, as things kind of keep coming out as we’re reading the tea leaves and reading between these lines, uh, we also realized that Dave Canalis isn’t willing to let Bryce Young throw down the field. So like the truth is somewhere in the middle right there. Maybe there are some plays, maybe there are some instances that Bryce wants to throw it down the field, but then Dave. Uh, remember the Miami game. Mhm. Oh, remember the Jags game. I don’t know, man. I don’t know. Let’s let’s just, let’s just play it safe with with this particular call. And it’s it’s been very interesting just to kind of see everything kind of play out. It’s also interesting to see the NFL catch up to what’s going on here, uh, because, you know, it’s clear, like there’s some things that me and you also missed Sunday because, you know, we’re in the locker room, we spoke to two guys, we go out and we uh record our show, um. I, and, and I personally didn’t hear as we were recording Dave uh uh Derek Brown, I couldn’t hear everything he was saying, um, just because it was so crowded. I also missed when uh Derek Brown and other folks, uh A Kim Akwu, other guys were saying we weren’t focused, we practiced this past week, and I’m thinking, who are they talking about? Who are they talking about? I don’t know. Is this Bryce? You, you, you heard the rookie Nick Squirton say, yeah, some guys got big-headed. I’m like, that’s a rookie saying that. Is it Bryce? I don’t know. I’m not trying to start anything. No, but Who is it? I don’t know. It’s a good question. But the fact that you’re hearing young guys say it, again, I said that the fact that Nick Skorton, who, by the way, had a tremendous game on Sunday. I, I don’t wanna make, I wanna make sure we don’t gloss over that. He was tremendous on Sunday, and he’s saying, yeah, guys got big-headed, you know, forgetting what it takes to win in the NFL. I’m like, dude, that’s a guy that’s played in 10 NFL games. This guy just saying it. Yeah, like he, he turned 21. After the final preseason game. And I’m like, OK, I’m happy, I’m happy that young dude gets it. But if you’re having a bad week of practice or consistently aren’t playing up to your standard, because sometimes, look, you’re gonna struggle at times in practice where you’re like, you’re gonna make a mistake, but at least the effort and stuff is there. As a former coach and athlete, I trust me, I get it. And I question now is, OK, where are the, where are the vet guys, you know, like where are the vet guys that are, you know, obviously Ikeyuanu is in year 4, but, uh, your captains on your team are supposed to be. Your quarterback and JC Horn and Derrick Brown. I feel like Derek Brown brought his A game, so I’m not gonna try and single that dude out because I thought it dude was was tremendous. So again, I question who was it, and that’s also comes from the coaching staff as well. Like it comes from that too. So it’s just. The stuff that we’re hearing, the stuff we’re hearing, I was like, man, you haven’t earned the right. We, they earned the right to be in the playoff conversation. You haven’t earned the right to go into a game lazy. You haven’t earned that right yet as a franchise. Yeah, especially like you can’t do that now, especially now that you followed up a week where you beat one of the best teams in the NFL by losing to one of the worst teams in the NFL. It literally almost kind of erases what happened the week before, and it puts it back. I don’t want to say that the Packers lost the game more than the Panthers wanted, but When you go out there and have that type of performance, that’s what it looks like. I, you know, we’ve questioned Canales, we’ve questioned Bryce, and clearly, um, there’s certain things that individually, I’m not, I don’t quite like that they’re doing, but it also feels like we’re headed towards a collision course and that we’re gonna have to choose. Um, it’s almost kind of like WrestleMania 6 and like, oh my God, I love Hulk Hogan. I also love Ultimate Warrior. This is when I was a kid, not so much right now. You learn things about guys, you know, it was the early 90s, you know. I love Hulk Hogan. I love Ultimate Warrior. Who am I gonna choose? And uh that’s, that’s kind of where I feel like we’re we’re at. Um, I, I do think that I think that Dave Canalis, even with his faults. So far, you know, we still have 7 games left in the season. So far has proven he deserves at least another year, because I would like to see what a Dave Canalis offense looks like. With the quarterback that he wants. Mhm. So it’s almost like, and I hate saying this because Bryce is a good dude. He really has been nothing but but great to the media, you know what I’m saying? It feels like I, I like, I know some of his, his family members, uh, that I’ve met recently, um, you know, it’s, it’s like. You you hear a lot of great things about it. We know, we know somebody, Dennis, who hangs out with his parents in in the uh in the suite every game, you know what I’m saying, like we, we hear nothing but great things about this guy, but also we’ve seen enough to really get a good picture of what he could possibly end up being, and I think we’ve seen it. Yeah. And at this point, what does a Dave Cannell’s offense look like? As a head coach and a play caller with the quarterback that he wants, that’s where I’m at with it. The thing that the, the phrase that Dave kept mentioning on Friday, Dave Canales, I’m sorry, not Friday, on Monday, the phrase that he kept using was the, we got to continue to work on the me to you factor, when again asked about plays downfield. Now, you know, we just gotta keep working on that me to you factor, the me to you factor the me to you factor, the BDU factor, Chris, is. The throw and the catch. That’s the me to you factor, the throw and the catch. I’m like, you’re, we’re not going into week 11. Of the NFL season. You had all summer Since the draft, all OTAs, mini camp, the whole deal, all the off the side throwing sessions that you wanted to do in your own free time, all training camp preseason, and now going into week 11 of the regular season, we’re still like, yeah, the The meat you factor. Either you have it or you don’t. Simple as that. Either you have it or you don’t. Here’s the thing that Bryce, where where Bryce has struggled with. And I, I, let me, I’m gonna actually, I’m gonna, I’m gonna pull up the, uh, the source just so I can make sure I can, I can cite it correctly. So fantasy points data, this is fantasy points data. They’re, if you follow them on X fantasy points data, they do a lot of different things in terms of analytics and predictive stats and things along those lines. Is this what you on Sunday? I think it was, yes. So they went and did a breakdown of catchable pass rate. So how many of the players’ passes between. You know, behind the line of scrimmage or catchable passes from 0 to 9 yards, how catchable are the throws, 10 to 19 yards, and then 20 + yards. Bryce Young. In the NFL ranks 29th overall in catchable pass rate at 71.7%. But you know where he’s actually truly one of the lowest in the NFL. By the way, he’s actually one of the highest in the NFL and 0 to 9 yards, but where he’s one of the worst in the NFL at just, just over 60%, 60.4% is in the 10 to 19 yard range, that intermediate. It only throws a catchable pass 60.4% of the time and passes 10 to 19 yards. When you have a receiver like a Tearoa McMillan, that thrives on like a 14 yard dig route or 15 yard in cut or whatever it might be, or a post down the middle of the field, that, you know, skinny post, whatever it is, that area where you can pick up chunk plays, where you can turn plays into yards after the catch. For example, the longest pass play for the season for the Panthers came in week 2 against Arizona. It was a 40 yard play where it was a catch and run by Tedderrola McMillan. That’s where you start picking up chunk plays, cause then you can start loosening the defense up a little bit cause, hey, they’re killing us in that range, which then will open up the, it just, it helps open the run game and everything up as well. It allows you to eventually take some deep shots down the field, but he has struggled throwing this season in that 10 to 19 yard range. Simple as that. If you even go back to his throw chart against the the Who they play on Sunday? I can’t remember off the top of my head. He gets the Saints, gosh, gets the damn Saints is that he only attempted. 3 passes beyond the 10 yard mark. Only 3. Now, again, that officially doesn’t count the interception going down the middle of the field. So really you can say 4, and he only completed 2 of those 4 passes. Everything else that was completed was Under 10 yards. Well, technically the interception was completed. I mean, well, there’s that too, but the, the interception that actually did count to the right side was 10 yards downfield. So he had 17 completions in the game. 15 of them were actually 8 yards or closer. Speaking of callbacks at the beginning of the show, we talked about Ted Roy McMillan. What could he do with the quarterback that actually can throw the ball and you just pointed out. We’re tired of the no weapons excuse from people. I’m sorry. You pointed out where he is most effective, and he’s not getting the ball where he’s most effective. That’s kind of like when you have a great 7 ft center in basketball and You only have him setting screens and popping uh at the top of the key for threes. How about you put them in a paint? Yeah. Try some lobs. Let’s try some lobs. Let’s try to get some high percentage shots out there, because like you want to use people where they’re they’re most effective. And um going also back to people saying he has no receivers, like we all have criticisms of of X Xavier Liguette, right? He’s open a lot. There’s been some times he’s been open. He’s open a lot, bro. Like if you get a chance to see the all 22, we get, we get a chance to sit in a in the press box. So if you’re just literally just watching from home, it’s kind of hard to see the full play develop who’s open and where and that type of stuff. We get a chance to see that then also if you go back and see the all 22 shot, um, you know, camera shots and like he’s, he’s open and sometimes you just gotta try to hit him. I wanna go do another callback. I was worried with the Adam Thielen trade. And I think that subconsciously, I didn’t have the information in my head now to where I can explain it, the way I can explain it right now. But I think subconsciously back then, I, I guess I kind of knew without having the words that if Adam Thielen wasn’t gonna be on his team, Bryce Young’s gonna have some problems um getting some completions. Because we saw, now, I think now the new Adamheen from this past week was uh Jata and Sanders, on those, you know, really short, you know, routes, the comfortable like, you know, I’m not gonna even try to read the defense. I know where I’m going ahead of time. I’m not gonna even try to, you know, see if I can get something further down the field. He, he pretty much already has his mind made up. This is where I’m going beforehand. Um, and that could have been Adam Thielen, but then that also means that he, we probably would have had more completions earlier in the season, and I know that you said, hey, if we’re worried about a 35 year old wide receiver, we have more problems, boy. And I said it, we got problems. Like, and so if we’re continuing to have these problems, then, you know, as Dave Canalis is saying, he’s trying to be nice, it’s like, well, we’re still working on it trying to improve. 10 weeks into the season, we’re trying to improve. That just means Y’all, it’s hard to say this, we need a new quarterback. At what point, like, I had to learn how to stop banging my head against the wall too. This is not about anything personal. Bryce is a great guy. Great, I would hang out with him any day of the week. I don’t know if he’s right as the starter for my NFL team. I’m not saying he can’t be a starter for somebody else, but I, I think I’ve seen enough. I’ve seen enough to, to, to say it. You know, it it like there’s enough information out there. Mark Schlereth even called it out on a podcast after the game, uh, like from what he saw from the Saints, essentially the Saints are like, we’re gonna take a way to run, we’re gonna dare you to complete some passes down the field. We’re gonna do single high safeties because we were seeing that all game. Hey, we’re not gonna even help our corners out. Complete something down the field. Dare you the box, dare you to do it. Well, guess what the 1 and 8 team did, became 2 and 8. And you know Atlanta wants to get back. You know Atlanta wants to get back this weekend. After the 30-0 loss earlier this year, you know Atlanta wants to get back. And guess what? The schedule ain’t gonna get any easier for this Panthers team. It’s not because then after Atlanta, you still have, I mean, the easy part of the 49ers. Yeah, Atlanta and then New Orleans again, like those are the only two teams that you have left that aren’t in the playoff picture because you, again, you have Atlanta, but then you have the 49ers, you have the Rams, you still have the Bucks twice. You have the Seahawks. All those teams are in playoff spots. It’s not gonna get easier. It’s not gonna get any easier and you it You have to find out something fast, but I think the, the final thing, my final thought on this, Chris, is that after 2.5 years, Fool me one time, shame on you. Fool me twice, can’t put the blame on you. Fool me 3 times, uh, uh. The Bryce, and the end. I, I know it’s the 2nd time I’ve referenced that song, but if you remember the end of his rookie season, he had that big game against Green Bay. We’re all like, oh, OK, there it is. And then we saw the struggles in the first half of last year, the benching, and then some, some good games, some mediocre games, and they finished hot there with the in Atlanta last season, right? I was ready to blame last year on Tyrese Maxey, man, right? OK. That was the 2nd time. And then this year it’s like, no, no, no, I’m not gonna sit there and like drink Kool-Aid if you start having a couple of hot games towards the end of this season. I’m not, I’m not, I’ve seen too much bad, I’ve seen too much inconsistent play, the, the good, nowhere nears outweigh the bad. It just simply doesn’t. The fact that we can actually point to just specific games for Bryce Young 2.5 years in and be like, oh, remember the the Kansas City game, there’s the Green Bay game, there was the, the Philly game he played pretty well. There was the Atlanta game where he played pretty well. And then the Dallas game this year. I thought Dallas game this year was his best game this whole season. I thought he actually played extremely well that game. Let me, let me be a little bit more. I want to be a little bit more nuanced here because um I wanna say this too. Um, I do think that the Carolina Panthers in 2023 failed Bryce Young. Oh yeah, 100%. Specifically, David Tepper. This is the guy he wanted. He was trying to orchestrate this mastermind thing that, you know, and he, he completely failed. He put him on the field with uh an inept coaching staff. He put him on the field with an inept, uh, you know, offensive line. Uh, he had no weapons, and my man, they, they teed off on him. He, he got sacked over 60 times, 61 or 62 times that year. Um. I also want to give him grace with, I don’t know how that can mentally change somebody. If that is your situation, that had to have been a a tough year. So I don’t want to just say that like he’s trash, but also, if we’re 2 years removed from that, and all of that has been fixed, you have a consistent coaching staff with uh a pretty good, you know, up and coming coach, we’ll see how it ends up shaking out. Better receivers, right? You’re not gonna go from, you know, uh having uh Amir Smith, uh, uh, what’s his name? You don’t have Jonathan Bingo out there. You don’t out there. You don’t have Terrence Marshall, you’re not gonna jump from here to, you know, Jamar Chase, right? Um, but it’s it’s a lot better than what it was two years ago, um. You know, it’s, it’s like, where are you, are you gonna try to improve with it? I never hold 2023 against Bright young at all. I’m, I’m basically going off of last year and what I’ve seen this year, and look, like it’s, it’s, you can’t really, you can’t defend going back, but I can also say that, hey, Maybe this guy is is a little messed up from what happened to him mentally. Maybe for him, he could still ball out in a new situation with a fresh start. I’m not saying he’s a complete bust. I’m not saying he can’t be an NFL quarterback. I don’t know if it’s going to work with the Carolina Panthers, and that is the main thing I just want to put out there. So for people who think that I’m being a hater or whatever, I’m being realistic about the situation. Like, you can start off, first impressions are everything. You can start off at a job and think that everything is gonna be great and all of a sudden, you get into arguments with co-workers on the first week, uh, you’re, you’re being, uh, you know, the promises that were given to you in the interview process are being yanked back. All of a sudden, then you get docked pay or whatever, and then 3 years later you think you’re gonna be feeling good about this company. No, you’re just trying to pay your bills. You’re just gonna try to, you know, make sure you you stay open because this might be the only opportunity for the thing that you want to do. That could, a lot of what he went through could still be impacting him. And so, maybe for him, what could be best is a new start. And what could be best for the Carolina Panthers is a new quarterback. And that is OK. There’s plenty of people who have found success after another team with the Carolina Panthers, and plenty of people who have found success after the Carolina Panthers with another team. It’s just what happens. There’s no hard feelings. This is not attacking his character or anything like that. Great guy, not sure it’s gonna work here. I’ll leave it that. I just want to have a more nuanced conversation around it. Terrell McMillan’s on pace for 78 catches and 1050 yards his rookie season. It’s good. That’s awesome. And I hope it gets, I hope it keeps getting better. I hope it keeps getting better. We want you all folks, what if that Drake made? OK. I wanna say this real fast. Drake May Last year, awful situation, right? First year head coach Ger Rob Mayo and just nothing to work with there. He looked like a really damn good quarterback on a really bad team. You look last year, and then now look at him now. But you saw it his rookie season on a bad team. He looked like a damn good quarterback on a bad team. So I know you mentioned the stuff about Bryce’s rookie year, I 100% agree, the situation was awful, but you can still look like a damn good quarterback on a bad team. That was a mic drop moment. We’ll see you on Sunday. Let’s go to ATL. Take me through there, take me through there. Where we going twin?
