If you hold Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens to 13 points, you really should win the football game. All you need is a halfway decent offense to make that happen.
The Carolina Panthers proved again Sunday, however, in a 13-3 road loss to Baltimore that they don’t have one of those — at least not with Baker Mayfield under center.
Which brings us to one of the points of this column: It’s time to see what Sam Darnold can do — again.
Darnold should make his first start of 2022 next Sunday at home vs. Denver for Carolina (3-8), because PJ Walker likely won’t be ready due to his high ankle sprain and Mayfield just can’t get it done on this team. Mayfield is 1-5 as a starter for Carolina, and the team has never scored 25 or more points in any of those six games.
The game was tied at 3-all entering the fourth quarter. But Carolina committed three turnovers in the game’s final nine minutes and scored zero points in that span, and that was that.
“It was a long day for us on offense,” Mayfield said.
The Mayfield trade in July seemed like a good idea at the time. And starting him again, at least once, after he came back from injury also seemed to be a good idea. But this relationship just isn’t working out.
The Panthers wasted a sturdy defensive performance Sunday. They sacked Jackson three times, twice knocking the Ravens out of field-goal range. They allowed Baltimore only one touchdown, and that came after a fumble by wide receiver Shi Smith gave the Ravens possession at the Carolina 31.
So Carolina fans can take solace in that part. After a complete whiff at Cincinnati in a 42-21 loss, the Panthers’ defense has rebounded big-time in the past two weeks. It allowed only 15 points against Atlanta and then just 13 on Sunday.
Safety Jeremy Chinn returned from injury and made his presence felt often, while defensive end Brian Burns was a terror and 330-pound defensive tackle Bravvion Roy made a big-man interception and showed serious hands while doing so. That defense looked like something you can build on, as it has for a large part of the past couple of years.
But the offense was back to its old tricks, and by that I mean its old series of mistakes. Penalties. Receivers who can’t get off the jam or run by anybody (DJ Moore, once again, was a non-factor. In his past three games, he has had 24, 29 and 24 receiving yards). An offensive line that, after several good run-game performances in a row, got manhandled too often by the fierce Ravens’ D-line.
Interim head coach Steve Wilks wanted to see more consistency out of Mayfield, and at least the quarterback didn’t turn the ball over for the first 56 minutes while attempting mostly short, safe passes. But then Mayfield had two interceptions in the last four minutes — the last one on one of his old bugaboos, as the ball got deflected at the line by a defender and then picked off.
“It’s tough,” Mayfield said. “I’ll be honest with you. I put my heart and soul in this. And this? This sucks. I just hope everybody else feels the same way, to be honest with you, because that’s how you get things turned around. You have to care about it.”
Mayfield does care. No one doubts that. And a road assignment against the Ravens, who always play such good defense, is like walking into a Saturday morning SAT after driving all night to get to the test site.
Still, that’s what he’s paid to do, and the offense didn’t have any oomph. The Ravens stacked the box to stop D’Onta Foreman and dared Carolina to beat them with the passing game.
This has been a familiar refrain for Panthers’ teams over the past several years — no one is afraid of Carolina’s receivers and tight ends, and that makes sense. Carolina has thrown some high draft picks at wide receiver through the years, but it’s going to need to throw another one that way in 2023 and make it land, because this team simply needs more weaponry.
The Panthers’ first-round pick, though, in 2023 has to be a quarterback. Which quarterback is as yet uncertain, as they keep either getting hurt or having bad games — although I’ve always been partial to Alabama’s Bryce Young even though he doesn’t have ideal size. The guy just makes so many plays.
That decision won’t come until April, though.
In the meantime, there’s another home game next week, and the Panthers are playing musical chairs at QB again.
This time, take a look at Darnold. At this point, it couldn’t hurt.
