I liked the offense and I'm confident moving forward.

[Awesomeness!!]

I know 7 points isn't a lot to cheer about but Seattle has a decent defense and we did move the ball well on most drives. We made a ton of mistakes that otherwise would have lead to an easy W. Olsen's drop, Cams overthrow of Lafell, D Will's fumble etc. I liked the way the offense moved. It was slow and methodical, similar to what we ran in the Super Bowl year. I understand everybody wants to spread the ball out and throw 60 times but that has never been what we did here, and that high school ish offense is a fad, just like how 5 years ago you needed a feature running back, and how 10 years ago if you didn't have a TE, or running QB you had no shot. That being said if we don't beat the Bills Ron Rivera had better be unemployed after double zero's because there is no reason for losing to them. None, what so ever. There is no excuse.

[cranky]

I doubt your post gets much traction other than people bashing you so I thought I would throw this up just to add a little support to your claim.

 

"Longform

...If anything, Carolina looked better than expected in a few key areas. Cam Newton, a lousy red zone passer in his career, converted a third down inside the 20 and finished the drive with a touchdown pass. And the secondary held up well, save for a pair of back-to-back plays in the second half (Jermaine Kearse’s go-ahead touchdown, and the play right before it when Stephen Williams got open deep but dropped a pass) when Seattle receivers got behind their man down the right sideline. If anything, I’m more convinced now that this team can win the division."

 

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/audibles/2013/audibles-line-week-1

 

[rayzor]

if it doesn't get into the endzone or at least set up a FG, it failed and you didn't move the ball well enough.

 

aside from one drive, this was a failure of an offense.

[PhillyB]

i'd be a lot more worried if we scored seven points because we couldn't move the ball. olsen's dropsies and williams's fumbles can be fixed.

 

i'm an eternal optimist but i think we come out with a smart gameplan next week and look outstanding on offense.

[imminent rogaine]

I agree. The offense was sufficient to win the game. Olsen's drops and Williams' fumble really cost us. The one thing I'd like to see more is dump offs and screens to Tolbert. He is much better in space than he is getting hand offs from the fullback position.  

[Louie]

The problem wasn't Cam Newton. The problem was the play calling and the lack of execution by the WRs (not named Steve Smith), TEs (greg Olsen dropping not one but two balls, and the RBs (Deangelo Williams fumbling the ball on the 6 yard line). Cam was efficent and ran the plays that were given to him. He didn't overthrow receivers, he didn't throw interceptions, and he didn't fumble the ball. Our 2nd and 3rd WRs need to do a better job of getting seperation and catching the balls thrown to them. Also, Shula needs to throw a few deep balls each game. Maybe he didn't against Seattle because of their secondary, but that is Cam's best asset, the deep ball. So, if you eliminate that, you are greatly stifling your offense, imho.

[rayzor]

I agree. The offense was sufficient to win the game. Olsen's drops and Williams' fumble really cost us. The one thing I'd like to see more is dump offs and screens to Tolbert. He is much better in space than he is getting hand offs from the fullback position.  

 

only scored once. that's not sufficient to win the game, apparently.

[Sam Mills Fan]

This isn't 2003 anymore kiddos.

[Awesomeness!!]

It would help if Brandon "Ohh we mayne" Lafell did something other than get paid.

[Awesomeness!!]

only scored once. that's not sufficient to win the game, apparently.

 

We were in position to win though. How many times do you expect us to score? This isn't college. We played well enough on offense and defense to win, but made too many mistakes. It happens.

[Sam Mills Fan]

We were in position to win though. How many times do you expect us to score? This isn't college. We played well enough on offense and defense to win, but made too many mistakes. It happens.

 

Every other team so far this season except for Jacksonville managed to score more than 7 points. Against a defense missing a lot of key players that had to fly across the country, we managed to score a whopping 7 points at home with Cam Newton at quarterback. If you're satisfied with that.....

[rayzor]

We were in position to win though. How many times do you expect us to score? This isn't college. We played well enough on offense and defense to win, but made too many mistakes. It happens.

 

i expected us to score more than one TD. i expected us to not be the second lowest scoring team of the week. 23 teams managed to score enough points for us to have won.

 

let's not play this "it's hard to score enough points to beat a team that was only able to score 12" game. teams apparently do it quite often. it was a very weak offensive outing.

 

[wine-o and cheese-doodle]

I think many here are living in dreamland when they say we would have won that game if Williams had not fumbled.

 

The score would have been 14-12 if we converted the TD and ExP.

 

Look at what happened in reality. 5 minutes left, Seattle with the ball on their on 8 yrd line. We disparately needed the ball back. Seattle, even with the lead, systematically took the ball down the field and could have scored a field goal or TD on that last drive if they had needed to..

 

No way Dwill's fumble lost that game. Playing close to the vest lost that game.

[Awesomeness!!]

Of course we would like to score 555455485742 points every game but thats not going to happen. It was a defensive struggle and even with that being the case I liked what we did. We were in position to win. Thats all you can really ask for. Our players (Dwill) didn't execute, The gameplan was fine though.