The Carolina Panthers somehow figured out a way to be more offensively inept than they were last week, a game in which their quarterback tossed two pick-sixes to the same player. So, head coach Frank Reich was pretty, well, frank about it.
“Tough loss,” he said to reporters following his team’s 16-13 defeat to the Chicago Bears. “Credit to the Bears. Hard-fought game—we knew it would be. Defense continues to play great football, special teams played great, offensively—we were poor. Today was not a question of beating ourselves. We just didn’t execute as well as we needed to execute to win a football game.”
Since handing off play-calling duties to coordinator Thomas Brown, Reich’s Panthers have scored just two offensive touchdowns over three games—none of which were scored on Thursday night. Carolina amassed all of 213 yards, averaged 3.7 yards per play and converted on three of their 15 third-down tries.
Reich was then asked why there doesn’t appear to be any progress for the group.
“All I would say is, we’re not scoring points on offense. We gotta be better,” he replied. “I believe we will be better. Yeah, I mean, that’s how I feel.
“I don’t think we have any unrealistic expectations. It’s not like we’re sayin’ . . . we’ve talked about this before—scoring’s down, we just gotta figure out to play well enough to win football games. That’s really what I’m concerned about is winning. I’m not worried about how many yards or what the stats are. I’m concerned about playing winning football. And I don’t wanna get caught up in the stats. I wanna get caught up in winning.”
Unfortunately, there aren’t many yards, stats or wins for this team to get caught up in right now.
