BrianS

His coverage on that TD was actually really good man. A couple inches wrong on that throw and it's a PBU. Good start for the rookie.

The numbers aren't terribly concerning to me. 21 carries is ok for him. 9 catches, not too bad. Those won't get him crushed, hopefully. What worries me is that no one else ran the ball. If that trend continues, we have a big problem. Teams will realize that when CMC is out of the game, we're throwing. Chuba needs to get 5-7 carries a game and 3-5 passes a game so he establishes himself as a true threat. If the dude gets his ball security under control, he could be a fantastic player, and we need to use him so the offense truly doesn't change when CMC is getting a rest.

Wilson has the tools man. It's a question of whether he survives. The Jets have a player there, potential franchise QB. But if they let him get abused for 17 games, he may not recover. A lot of talented rookie QB's have gotten shell shocked and never recovered. I wish the guy the best. The league is much more entertaining to watch with QB's like Wilson.

Six sacks. An INT. Surrendered 45 yards rushing (2.6 yards / carry). Pressure all day. This was not on the defense, at all. The defense brought it. If this level of performance continues, we might be worried about losing the wrong coordinator.

When the coach doesn't give you a shot to kick a 50 yarder, you should pack your bags the next day. 50 yards isn't particularly long these days. Think of it like this: What if it was one yard closer, but same down and distance. Do we still punt? Nice knowing you Santoso.

I was gonna say he looked like what we HOPED FunFun would be.

While I don't disagree that a lot of red zone plays died to poor execution, a lot of those instances can be squarely pinned on the OL. If pretty much every Panthers fan under the sun can see the struggles of our OL, surely the coaches can as well. In which case we need to have a coaching plan that hides those flaws in all situations. The fact that we continue to struggle in the red zone is scary. It's only the first game, so I'm willing to give it a bit of time, but we need to improve that - this season. If we don't it's going to be a pretty big red flag for Joe Brady as an OC. Our weapons are just too damn good to be scoring less than 20 points against a poor Jets defense.

Was a great game from him. He needs to string those together to have any hope of collecting that huge salary next year.

As long as his feet are aligned to his reads, moving quickly like that isn't an issue. It's what a west coast like system demands. Quick reads, getting the ball out on time. You should be able to watch the head and the feet and see them aligned as he move through the progression. If that's happening quickly, great. If his feet are moving and his head is not, that's when there's a problem. Quickly moving feet has been incorrectly labeled "happy feet". It *can* be happy feet, but it can also be a QB who is doing exactly what the offense demands. You have to watch the whole picture to know.

Anchor the line, command two blockers every play. Thanks big guy.

I think Chinn will take over when Shaq is cut next offseason. Chinn is everything our staff wanted Shaq to be.

7-9 wins in the second year of a massive rebuild should give all of us hope for the future. I think we can get there. I can even get behind 4-6 wins if it makes the clear case that Darnold is not the answer. My only concern this year is that we get a definitive answer to the question: Is Sam Darnold a franchise QB?

He probably would make a decent FS if he put his mind to it. Probably would have been better if he realized that three or four years ago.

I don't see this as an issue. Chances are he's not going to actually "return" more than one or two. He might catch a few, but most kicks aren't even fielded - let alone returned - these days.

I dunno if the kid's any good, but with our depth and bottom roster quality, it wouldn't kill us to at least take a look. Third round pick from a quality college program who effectively hasn't really played and it costs us nothing.

I look at last year like this: Is CMC worth two wins a year? I believe he is. I may be right or wrong, but I think having CMC in your lineup for 16 games is worth a couple wins. In which case, we see last year as 7-9. Brand new coach and staff comes in. Takes over a very old team that completely gave up. cleans the roster out nearly completely. No offseason to speak of. No preseason. How many games did we lose by one score? 5-11? Without CMC? That's an amazing season. We're going to be even better this season. Yea, we have question marks. So do the other teams. This season was never slated to be a playoff year for us. This is the year we see the foundation of what we're building. That's all. If we win 9 games this year it would be way ahead of schedule. 7 or 8 is probably about right. Relax and enjoy the ride.

Cam is water under the bridge. I want to see Darnold make good decisions. That was always his problem in NY. We can talk about footwork all day - and I agree it's important - but his decision making is what got him in trouble.

Definitely not good company to be in, or something we should be excited about. While we certainly needed to trim the fat, it's sad to say but it looks like the team was mostly fat. Hopefully we've drafted well and can start retaining our talent at reasonable rates. That will help.

That is . . . not a good career from an NFL prospect point of view. The vast majority of college QB's see their completion percentage drop when coming to the NFL, and that guy doesn't have any room to drop. And it's not like he was airing it out. Not sure what we saw here other than a guy who might know the Jets playbook.

Seems like Fitts and Samir have this in hand. Having that kind of money available right now simply gives us a lot of options.

So pretty much our entire team.

Don't we have enough players with injury concerns already?

Actually, it's a legit concern. Prior to today, there were 39 players from Baylor and Temple on NFL rosters. Of those 39, 10 were on the Panthers roster. 25% of the NFL players from those two schools were on our roster. That should be concerning to anyone. It may look very different after today, and I hope it does. However, you cannot dismiss the concerns so easily. It's very clear there is a bias there. It's one thing if that bias was leading us to success, but in this case success is certainly not something we've experienced very much of recently.

If Matt Rhule fails, it will be decisions like this that doom him. I am in no way saying Grier was "good", but he was head and shoulders above PJ based on this preseason. I hope this is just the precursor to us bringing in a vet backup. Someone who can throw the ball to our guys and not beat us if we need a game or two.

Care to explain how that works? PJ 2021 - 16 / 39, 252 Will 2021 - 22 / 31, 222 PJ looked like absolute donkey after that first game. The guy only managed to complete six passes total in the last two games. And he's "by far our best backup"? Set aside the agenda, evaluate what's actually happening. I'm not saying Grier is great. I'm not saying he'll ever be a Derek Anderson level backup. What I am saying however is that objectively speaking, Grier has been better than PJ this preseason, and honestly not all that bad. I'm not sure Grier will ever be a serviceable backup. I'm 100% sure PJ will not. If you can't complete 50% of your passes, you have no place in todays NFL.