These are growing pains
The Carolina Panthers clinched a seventh consecutive losing season last night. We all expected that to happen, possibly even sooner than Week 13, but it hurts all the more because they were, as one former Panthers coach might have said, just a few missed opportunities away from victory against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
A win last night would have been a perfect chapter in Bryce Young’s development over the 2024 season. It would have moved the Panthers to 4-8, tied for third in the NFC South with an outside shot at unseating the Atlanta Falcons, who are currently on their own three-game losing streak, from the division lead come January. That wan hope is now all but gone. That hurts, but we should be happy for it. The last time a Panthers loss hurt because it was close and meaningful was in 2022 and even that was ridiculous. Now we’ve experienced it in consecutive weeks.
Dave Canales and Young are slowly getting fans to care again. These losses are the growing pains of, hopefully, a good team that is being built right now. Talent is missing or developing. Canales and Young are both growing as decision makers. Remember when we thought Matt Rhule was going to be It? His first couple of years in Charlotte were the last time we pretended that fourth down and red zone decisions mattered on a week to week basis.
Now, Canales and Young have gone up against two reasonably good teams in the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers and brought them both down to the wire. The 2024 Panthers are a half baked squad that was made to evaluate Young’s future. The defense is a shambles after an offseason of low investment and a season of devastating injuries, Young has had more ups and downs than almost any starter in the league, and they are coming through down the stretch as a competitive team together.
I’ll gladly watch, and hate to the last second, four more losses just like these last two to close out the season. 2024 is lost, but there is still a lot of quality football left to play that can help sharpen the young talent on this team into a true NFC South contender in 2025.
What I liked
Trevin Wallace
Wallace’s first career sack came at a big moment. He all but forced a driving Bucs offense to take a game-tying field goal attempt instead of making a game-winning touchdown. The ultimate result may have been disappointing, but it was the kind of moment that you want to see from a rookie linebacker when all we have is hope for the future.
Adam Thielen
That catch. Stop the game there, please. Thielen has been great since coming back from injury and has met a particularly sure-handed need with Jalen Coker missing multiple weeks now with a quad injury.
Bryce Young
He still hasn’t fully sold me on being the undisputed future of the Panthers, but he’s getting there. That’s four weeks in a row now of improved quarterbacking. This week wasn’t quite as impressive as last week’s effort against Kansas City, but he kept the team alive and played well against a lot of pressure. There are a lot of factors that led to yesterday’s loss, drops high among them, but Young’s play was once again a reason the team was competitive.
That’s huge compared to how he started the season. He’s got four more games to audition for next season. We’ll see if he can keep it up. It would be a huge boon for the Panthers ability to build a competitive team if he can.
What I didn’t like
Xavier Legette
Legette has been one of Young’s favorite targets over the last few weeks and it hasn’t been entirely a success story. Legette has dropped a handful of balls that he should have caught. Full stop, that’s bad for a receiver. He’s young and has time to both settle into and grow beyond his current role, but we shouldn’t pretend that his rookie year is all sunshine and roses.
Tackling
The defense held up admirably against a top five NFL offense yesterday. That’s no mean feat given how short handed they are and how many new faces are rotating in on a weekly basis. That’s also no excuse for completely forgetting how to tackle on the Bucs game-tying and game-winning scoring drives. Again, yesterday’s game was lost because of multiple things going wrong at once (sound familiar?), but their attempt to turn Bucky Irving into a household name was definitely one of the bigger reasons.
Who I’m not blaming
Chuba Hubbard
Yes, the fumble was part of the sequence that directly led to the loss. It was also an uncommon play for Hubbard and a damn good play by the Bucs linebacker. Sometimes these things happen. Hubbard’s running was not a reason the Panthers lost. In fact, a better balance between the run and the pass might have led to the Panthers being more efficient in the red zone.
Eddie Piñeiro
Piñeiro had one of his worst games as a Panther yesterday. Going three for five on field goal attempts, all under fifty yards, is not the standard of play we have come to expect for the NFL’s former All-Time leader in field goal accuracy.
He has also been kicking through a quad injury for several weeks. Set aside that all of the kickers and punters got a little weird last night, the Panthers were bound to pay a price for relying on an injured kicker. File this one under “stuff happens.”
What’s next
Nothing. The Panthers are all but officially out of the hunt for the NFC South crown. They’ll probably win a couple more games at this rate, but there are no stakes left besides spoiling somebody’s season.
The draft is certainly something to keep an eye on, but wins for this young squad matter far more right now. The Panthers are going to pick somewhere between fifth and 12th overall, a great spot to grab some talent but not necessarily prime trade down real estate. That’s fine. I’ll take a quality starter on defense on a team trending upwards over a couple of lottery tickets on a team that went 2-15 two years in a row. I like where the team is if Young’s development is the real deal. If it’s not then the team has bigger fish to fry than they have a skillet.