Preseason struggles

[musicman]

This is good. I want their confidence to be a little lower. They're young. They need to buy into "they have to work harder" to have a good season. With scheme and time it will be better but just straight up with no game planning, there were good things to build on (not great) and there were things that need work (a lot of work). This year will be a grind to get to 9 or 10 wins (which I think they can do). The young players are learning what grinding really means when you have tough days like yesterday. It's good. 

As bad as Grier has been, I would like to see him get a series or 2 with the 1's just to see. Kinda final closure before you slam the door on him. He's not had good players around him when he plays, so I feel like Darnold in NY with him. Walker is the #2 but we will need a 3rd with Covid still out there. 

[LinvilleGorge]

I think yesterday confirmed a lot of what we already knew. OL depth is bad. DL depth is strong. The WR corps has the potential to be great. Secondary depth is still a huge question mark. 

[WarPanthers89]

1 minute ago, LinvilleGorge said:

I think yesterday confirmed a lot of what we already knew. OL depth is bad. DL depth is strong. The WR corps has the potential to be great. Secondary depth is still a huge question mark. 

Secondary is a question mark but I will say that I am much more confident in our depth if we have someone go down compared to last year. Troy Pride looked like someone who is at the bottom of our depth chart yesterday before injury, and last season he was our starter/main backup.

[45catfan]

QB, OL and depth on defense were the question marks heading into camp.  Nothing has changed.

[LinvilleGorge]

At the end of the day though, their backup QBs who they are reportedly quite concerned about combined to go 25/36 for 310 yards albeit with 0 TDs and 1 INT. Letting bad QBs complete nearly 70% of their passes for 300+ yards doesn't provide me much confidence in our depth back there.

[Ricky Spanish]

2 minutes ago, LinvilleGorge said:

At the end of the day though, their backup QBs who they are reportedly quite concerned about combined to go 25/36 for 310 yards albeit with 0 TDs and 1 INT. Letting bad QBs complete nearly 70% of their passes for 300+ yards doesn't provide me much confidence in our depth back there.

Vanilla defensive scheme. I'd be more concerned for the QBs that don't look marginally average in these situations... (Grier)

[frankw]

5 minutes ago, Ricky Spanish said:

Vanilla defensive scheme.

I totally hear you. It was a preseason game. But Carolina also has a penchant for letting random quarterbacks dump all over their secondary. In the regular season. I want to see our 8th overall pick get some solid reps before the season starts.

[45catfan]

4 minutes ago, Ricky Spanish said:

Vanilla defensive scheme. I'd be more concerned for the QBs that don't look marginally average in these situations... (Grier)

To me it was crystal clear what the staff was attempting to do with Grier.  That was run the ball on early downs to get in 3rd and manageable to keep him out of 3rd and long situations.  It worked to some extent, but even the short passes on 3rd down weren't connecting.  Granted the OL penalties didn't help, but Grier couldn't even get the underneath stuff completed. 

My dread is next week he'll play just well enough to keep lingering around, to warrant one more look from the coaching staff.  Come final cuts, Grier does not need to be on this roster.

[panthers55]

11 minutes ago, LinvilleGorge said:

At the end of the day though, their backup QBs who they are reportedly quite concerned about combined to go 25/36 for 310 yards albeit with 0 TDs and 1 INT. Letting bad QBs complete nearly 70% of their passes for 300+ yards doesn't provide me much confidence in our depth back there.

It wasn't depth it was scheme. We played a lot of cover 2 prevent and only rushed 4 most of the game. I don't think we dialed up many blitzes. Expected during preseason though. 

[panthers55]

2 minutes ago, frankw said:

I totally hear you. It was a preseason game. But Carolina also has a penchant for letting random quarterbacks dump all over their secondary. In the regular season. I want to see our 8th overall pick get some solid reps before the season starts.

Hopefully we come out more aggressively this year. The excuse was Snow didn't have the personnel to run an aggressive scheme. He doesn't have that excuse this year.

[LinvilleGorge]

Just now, panthers55 said:

Hopefully we come out more aggressively this year. The excuse was Snow didn't have the personnel to run an aggressive scheme. He doesn't have that excuse this year.

Agreed. I think Snow did a helluva job last year working with what he had, but we've invested heavily in the D now. We spent our 1st eight draft picks of the Rhule era including two top 10 overall picks on defense. We're still inexperienced, but the talent is no longer lacking.

[saX man]

24 minutes ago, LinvilleGorge said:

I think yesterday confirmed a lot of what we already knew. OL depth is bad. DL depth is strong. The WR corps has the potential to be great. Secondary depth is still a huge question mark. 

I would say it more being a bad second team than OL depth.  I.E., we have swing linemen that back up so we're not going to be seeing the Matt Kaskeys, Sam Tecklenbergs start or backup during the season.  This is why I'm not overly concerned.  We didn't see any of our starting linemen but we saw potential in our two rookies which is good.  Daley didn't travel (family thing right?) So I'm still optimistic we'll be just as slightly below average as we were last season with maybe some better spurts with a young active crew.

Current Starters: Erving-Elflein-Paradis-Miller-Moton

Current Depth: Daley T/G, Christensen T/G, Brown G, Scott T/G

Scott did himself no favors after looking alright last season.

But if the trend continues and Brady keeps pushing, could be looking at this week 1 with Erving's iffiness:

Moton-Elflein-Paradis-Miller-Christensen

[BlackPanther21_]

I want to see this, but with Brown at LG. Doubt that happens though. My main question is who the hell the backup center will be. They are clearly high on that Tecklenberg kid, he played every snap yesterday, and I think Elflein also has experience at center. (But wasn’t good there) 

[shaqattaq]

2 hours ago, saX man said:

Moton-Elflein-Paradis-Miller-Christensen

I'd like to see this option, even if we start with Current Starters: Erving-Elflein-Paradis-Miller-Moton. I have major concerns about Erving lasting all season, and think that Moton-Elflein-Paradis-Miller-Christensen is more of a when it happens instead of an if it happens. Christensen impressed enough yesterday for me to want to see him vs the starters.