The Carolina Panthers offense only mustered 10 points against the Browns last week, but that doesn\u2019t really matter. Bryce Young only played two series, and one of them resulted in a touchdown pass to Jalen Coker. That\u2019s a win for the offense as they get their rhythm down throughout camp and the preseason.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll probably play more against the Texans this week. With the three game preseason schedule, teams that actually play their players tend to use the second week as their heaviest week of key player usage. The Texans didn\u2019t use many starters in their opener against the Vikings. Hopefully they\u2019ll give them some burn this week so we can see what the Panthers offense looks like against a Texans defense that is supposed to be pretty good.<\/p>\n
Since the result of the game doesn\u2019t matter, we have to pick out some other interesting things to watch. Here are a few of those things.<\/p>\n
Can Bryce Young and Tetairoa McMillan continue to improve their chemistry?<\/p>\n
Young found McMillan deep down the right sideline to get the ball rolling on the scoring drive. McMillan expertly tracked the ball in the air and made the over the shoulder catch with a defender bearing down. It was a kind of play that\u2019s been very rare for the Panthers in recent seasons. The duo had a chance to cap off the drive with a touchdown, but Young delivered a pass before McMillan came out of his break, and the rookie receiver couldn\u2019t get his hands up in time to reel it in. That rep and another week of practice should help the pair dial in their timing. Hopefully they\u2019ll go back to that well a few times this weekend.<\/p>\n
How does the offensive line look without Damien Lewis?<\/p>\n
The Panthers have done a good job of building enough offensive line depth to withstand some injuries, and they\u2019re getting an early test of that depth. Starting guard Damien Lewis has been out with a shoulder injury, and one of his backups Chandler Zavala has been out nursing a knee injury. The Texans have a very good pass rushing front four that can provide some stress on the front line. The interior isn\u2019t quite as strong as the edge rushers, but it\u2019s still a test. We\u2019ll want to see the offensive line keep Bryce Young clean to let the offense keep up the rhythm it started last week against the Browns.<\/p>\n
How do the running back carries get divided up?<\/p>\n
In the first week, there was a pretty clear delineation between Chuba Hubbard getting the first carries and Rico Dowdle coming in as the seconds started to come in. With Week 2 likely featuring more extended time for the starters, I want to see how the carries get split between Hubbard and Dowdle. Is this going to be a backfield by committee or is it going to still be the Chuba Hubbard show with some cameos by Dowdle?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Carolina Panthers offense only mustered 10 points against the Browns last week, but that doesn\u2019t really matter.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2056],"tags":[52792,52049,7,221,253,2368,6,222],"class_list":{"0":"post-289632","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-texans","8":"tag-carolina-panthers-game-information","9":"tag-carolina-panthers-preseason","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-houston","12":"tag-houston-texans","13":"tag-houstontexans","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-texans"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115031841485496263","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}