09-09-2024, 02:46 PM -
From Tepper's favorite sportswriter....lol
On Bryce Young’s very first pass of the 2024 season, he threw an interception.
In the second half, Young improved. It took him until his second pass to throw an interception.
After a full offseason, with a vibrant young play caller installed as his head coach and several additional offensive weapons to work with, Young looked exactly the same in the beginning of his second season as he did at the end of his first. Overwhelmed. Undersized. Out of his element.
Yes, the Panthers’ embarrassing 47-10 loss to New Orleans in Week 1 of the 2024 NFL season was only one game. And the Carolina defense was surprisingly just as bad and possibly even worse than Young, as it allowed an astonishing nine scoring drives on the Saints’ first nine possessions. But at the forefront of all this pain inflicted on another black-and-blue Sunday for Carolina was Young, the former Heisman Trophy winner at Alabama who plays the game’s most important position. And although I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, I just don’t know if it’s ever going to work out for him in Charlotte. The Panthers will give it every chance, of course, because they’ve invested the No. 1 selection of the 2023 NFL Draft and so much else in Young. They have earmarked him as the guy from the very first game of his NFL career, making him the starter and a team captain and entrusting much of their future to him. He’s only 23. There’s that. And he looked good in training camp and in his one drive of the preseason. There’s that, too. But wishing Young was the guy and him actually turning into the guy are two very different things.
I’d love to be proven wrong, because it’s not a lot of fun to cover a losing team every single year, and I feel for all the fans who have to watch this mess. But all we saw Sunday was the Panthers threatening numerous team records for futility with this 37-point opening-day loss, which not only took the bloom off the rose, but also took the rose itself and threw it into a wood chipper.
The quarterback numbers: Young was 13 for 30 for 161 yards, with no touchdown passes and two interceptions. He was sacked four times. His QB rating was 32.8. Somehow, it looked even worse.
The game was comical. It was infuriating. It was both believable and unbelievable — believable that the Panthers would lose again, because they went an NFL-worst 2-15 a year ago and haven’t made the playoffs since 2017. This was the 100th game of David Tepper’s tenure as the owner of the Panthers, and the team is 31-69 and has never had a winning record since the billionaire bought it. But it was also unbelievable that the Panthers would be down 30-0 in the second quarter to a Saints team that is, most likely, mediocre.
‘WE GOT OUR ASS KICKED’ Said Robert Hunt, the Panthers’ new offensive guard who is supposed to be part of the offensive retooling: “I just think we got our ass kicked today, you know what I mean? Truth be told, we just got whooped in every phase.”
I’ve covered the Panthers for three decades, and I’m not sure the Panthers have played a worse half of football in their 30 seasons than in the first half of this one.
Read more at: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports...rylink=cpy
On Bryce Young’s very first pass of the 2024 season, he threw an interception.
In the second half, Young improved. It took him until his second pass to throw an interception.
After a full offseason, with a vibrant young play caller installed as his head coach and several additional offensive weapons to work with, Young looked exactly the same in the beginning of his second season as he did at the end of his first. Overwhelmed. Undersized. Out of his element.
Yes, the Panthers’ embarrassing 47-10 loss to New Orleans in Week 1 of the 2024 NFL season was only one game. And the Carolina defense was surprisingly just as bad and possibly even worse than Young, as it allowed an astonishing nine scoring drives on the Saints’ first nine possessions. But at the forefront of all this pain inflicted on another black-and-blue Sunday for Carolina was Young, the former Heisman Trophy winner at Alabama who plays the game’s most important position. And although I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, I just don’t know if it’s ever going to work out for him in Charlotte. The Panthers will give it every chance, of course, because they’ve invested the No. 1 selection of the 2023 NFL Draft and so much else in Young. They have earmarked him as the guy from the very first game of his NFL career, making him the starter and a team captain and entrusting much of their future to him. He’s only 23. There’s that. And he looked good in training camp and in his one drive of the preseason. There’s that, too. But wishing Young was the guy and him actually turning into the guy are two very different things.
I’d love to be proven wrong, because it’s not a lot of fun to cover a losing team every single year, and I feel for all the fans who have to watch this mess. But all we saw Sunday was the Panthers threatening numerous team records for futility with this 37-point opening-day loss, which not only took the bloom off the rose, but also took the rose itself and threw it into a wood chipper.
The quarterback numbers: Young was 13 for 30 for 161 yards, with no touchdown passes and two interceptions. He was sacked four times. His QB rating was 32.8. Somehow, it looked even worse.
The game was comical. It was infuriating. It was both believable and unbelievable — believable that the Panthers would lose again, because they went an NFL-worst 2-15 a year ago and haven’t made the playoffs since 2017. This was the 100th game of David Tepper’s tenure as the owner of the Panthers, and the team is 31-69 and has never had a winning record since the billionaire bought it. But it was also unbelievable that the Panthers would be down 30-0 in the second quarter to a Saints team that is, most likely, mediocre.
‘WE GOT OUR ASS KICKED’ Said Robert Hunt, the Panthers’ new offensive guard who is supposed to be part of the offensive retooling: “I just think we got our ass kicked today, you know what I mean? Truth be told, we just got whooped in every phase.”
I’ve covered the Panthers for three decades, and I’m not sure the Panthers have played a worse half of football in their 30 seasons than in the first half of this one.
Read more at: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports...rylink=cpy