The urgent (not desperate) Carolina Panthers have now gone through about a quarter of the season without a win. Their latest defeat came at the hands of the visiting Minnesota Vikings on Sunday, an outing that highlighted a few of the same issues they’ve experienced to start the campaign.
Here are the biggest takeaways from the 21-13 defeat:
Something ain't Reich
Back in June, head coach Frank Reich said creating and controlling his offense was like raising his own baby. But, uh, we might have to call Child Protective Services if this offense doesn’t get any better.
In another uninspiring performance, the Panthers mustered up all of 232 yards while averaging 3.4 yards per play. Heck, the team’s lone touchdown came courtesy of safety Sam Franklin on a 99-yard interception return.
Anyway, that performance was, once again, littered by a few missteps—especially with play-calling. Reich admitted to reporters afterwards that he had to burn a timeout after calling a play for wideout Adam Thielen . . . who wasn’t even on the field at the time.
Clock management was also an issue, at least in one particular mind-numbing instance. The Panthers closed out the first half by burning 22 seconds of valuable game clock in Vikings territory, ticking all the way down to the 12-second mark despite holding on to two timeouts.
Plus, running when there was nowhere to run was another . . . um . . . interesting approach. Reich kept dialing up the ground game despite a stout Minnesota front, which allowed just 83 yards on 31 carries.
A slight improvement for the youngster
Although it ended with another suboptimal result, Sunday brought a few positives for quarterback Bryce Young.
The rookie completed 26 of his 32 throws, giving him a career-high completion rate of 78.1 percent. He also notched bests in passing yards (204), yards per attempt (6.4) and passer rating (93.2).
Unfortunately, those numbers were only relatively positive and not enough to kickstart the offense. Oh, and his fumble that resulted in a 51-yard touchdown return certainly didn’t help either.
Nonetheless, Young—outside of his visible frustration—looked like he had a little more juice and a little more confidence in his third career start.
Keeping it together
Carolina’s defense went into Sunday without a handful of key starters—with cornerback Jaycee Horn, linebacker Shaq Thompson and safety Xavier Woods all sidelined. Nevertheless, they persisted.
The two touchdowns allowed to all-world wideout Justin Jefferson weren’t exactly awesome, but the 85 yards they held him to were quite impressive. Jefferson had gone for games of 150 yards, 159 yards and 149 yards in his three previous outings.
They also created a pair of takeaways. Along with Franklin’s house call, outside linebacker Yetur Gross-Matos was able to disrupt quarterback Kirk Cousins to help get another pick for inside linebacker Kamu Grugier-Hill.
If someone had told you the Panthers would only relinquish 14 points and 130 passing yards to the Vikings offense, you probably would’ve thought these cats were leaving with their first win of the year.
