t96

He's been way better at LB too than he was at safety with the 28-3s.

If Darnold continues on this pace, Brady will get credit for his career resurrection and teams will be lining up to poach him and hope he can develop a franchise QB for them too. Steve Wilks was hired as a HC after an extremely underwhelming year as a DC... There is a decent chance we lose Brady to a HC opportunity after this season, as ridiculous as that may sound to many here.

Just absolutely nasty. I can’t imagine getting hit like that. Credit to their young QB taking it

Completely agree, but these are NFL owners we're talking about. They've hired plenty of significantly worse coaches who were further from being ready than Brady.

What is everyone's thoughts on him at this point in his short Panthers career? I think last year and the first couple weeks there have been some clear weaknesses at times but he's overall been solid. Yesterday was very encouraging, red zone play calls were much better and the offense was able to adjust well in the 2nd half without our best weapon, but play calling has still been a concern at times. Play design and overall system seems to be a pretty unanimous strength of his. One of the biggest litmus tests of Brady is how well Darnold develops in his system and so far he is passing that test with flying colors. Of course it's still very early but if Sam continues his resurgence throughout the season I would think teams would be lining up to target this guy as a HC, I mean he already got interviews last year despite the Teddy shitshow. - How concerned are you about losing him after this season (both for Darnold's continued development and for our general offense's success)? - More concerned after developing Darnold than if we had just lost him last year? - Do you think his play calling, especially in red zone and short yardage, can be good enough to actually win games in the playoffs? - How much do you think Rhule factors into this team's success/strengths on offense? - Do you think a revolving door at OC could be fine under Rhule as long as Snow is a constant here and the D side of the ball stays a strength and the new OCs are promoted from within and keep Brady's system/concepts in place? Let's hear it

I know it's Stephen A and it's directly Panthers related but you should know better than to post a Fox News article in this forum! To the tinderbox we go

Yes it's a small sample size, hence the word "trending." He's been the best off ball LB in the league so far.

Yeah and I'm pretty confident even without Horn and McCaffrey that we can at least split those 2 games and get McCaffrey back sitting at 4-1 if not 5-0.

In hindsight with these injuries yes but an earlier bye is even worse now with 17 game schedule

I wouldn't quite go that far, TD in his prime was the best 4-3 OLB in the league. But Shaq is definitely trending towards All-Pro territory and has been an absolute stud through 3 games. Love to see it and we really needed him to step up like this. BTW, outside of Jansen, is Shaq the last player remaining from the Super Bowl team?

Friendly reminder that the IR rules have changed last year and this year, and now you can place as many players on IR as you want and ALL of them are eligible to return after 3 weeks. So basically, if IR is not the plan as of now then the team thinks he's got a shot to play in 3 weeks or less. Otherwise they'd take the roster spot. Definitely encouraging news given the alternatives.

I think there are 3 points to be made here: 1. Horn has been incredible. Exactly as advertised and has pretty much shutdown his receiver consistently. 2. This D's strength is on the pass rush and DL and that is the identity and core of this defense. Having great secondary play absolutely helps free them up even more and lets you be more aggressive with blitzing, etc. so in that aspect Horn is definitely a big loss. However, I don't think it's as big of a loss as Burns, Brown or Reddick would be. Small sample size against a subpar offense but last night our D really did not lose a step at all after Horn went out. This will be an impactful loss for as long as he's out but I also don't think it's a disaster and the D should still continue to be a huge strength for us. 3. Bouye is the real deal and absolutely cushions the loss of Horn quite a bit. Just a bummer we don't get to see both of them with Donte to form an extremely solid CB group, at least not until later in the season/playoffs potentially.

The D has been balling out and should be a big story leaguewide. Dominating in pretty much every aspect so far. Pretty sure we're #1 in almost every defensive category...

We better handle this right though with the surgery decision. Him returning this season pales in comparison to his long term health and career here. Make whatever decision is best for his foot long term, even if that means he's out longer this season.

Not trying to be a jerk or anything but I don't think any injuries "regular folks" suffer, even college football players in the past, can compare at all to these elite athletes with the resources they have available and with how insane their bodies are these days. Definitely true based on what we've seen in the NFL though that any hamstring injury/soft tissue injury will have the potential to linger and reoccur, which sucks.

Not really. Worst case scenario would've been achilles. This is likely only season ending if our season falls apart and we don't want to risk bringing him back. The long end of the recovery is 3 months which puts us in December. He should be back for a few regular season games and playoffs if we're still in that conversation. Pretty good news all things considered. There was never a chance with the way it looked and his reaction that this wasn't going to at least be a few month recovery. Just thrilled it's not a 6-8+ month recovery and potential career altering injury.

If you read back you'll understand. An initial post stated that we've allowed the least points in the league, despite playing 1 more game than 30 of the teams. That isn't true. We have allowed the least points per game and obviously have the best defense in the league so far in pretty much every single metric.

Agreed, was just pointing out the inaccuracy of the statement that we've allowed less points than any other team despite playing 1 more game.

Love me some Kay Adams but yeah she was just flat out wrong then. Bills, Patriots, Eagles have all allowed 23 points.

Such a random stat though since TEs pretty much never run for TDs except Kelce... I can't ever remember Gronk rushing for a TD but apparently he did at least once a long time ago. Just checked, that Gronk rushing TD in 2011 is literally the only carry he has logged in his entire career, and it may have been a pass that was just barely backwards so counted as a carry.

It'll be a bit of a test of how he holds up in a potential shootout but yeah the bigger test is on our D for sure. Really tough not having Horn against their stacked WR group, though their OL has not been good this year so I think we can get enough pressure on Dak to get stops against them.

That's not true, we've allowed 30, 5 teams have allowed less points than us through their 2 games. We're easily #1 in point allowed per game though.

Darnold has more passing yards than opposing teams have total yards including return yardage.

On the note of CB did anyone catch Smitty absolutely roasting Rashaan Melvin after the game yesterday? When talking about Horn's injury and who could step up, Melvin was brought up and Smitty immediately said -- "when you've been on more teams than you've been years in the league, you just ain't any good"

They didn't ask him to do anything really, although he did step up and avoid the pass rush a few times (although that may be partly our pass rush not being the best at getting QBs down once they get there -- we've seen that quite a bit in the first 2 games and even last year from some of the same players, i.e. Burns). He was fine but nothing special. Wilson at least made some things happen in the 2nd half.