DPardue

Miles Sanders has improved his trade value a wee bit with this game. Bryce? Not so much.

Classless move by Peyton.

Young now 13-30. His rating is about 110 points lower than Carr's.

It's like the Panthers offense never practiced blitz recognition.

Blocked punt... Honestly, what have these guys and the staff been doing for the last month?

I really don't want to hear Canales try to put lipstick on a pig after this one. He and the team need to own this disastrous start. Clearly, despite all the positive talk before this one, this team was totally unprepared. They need to admit it.

Canales isn't going to bench Young after just one game as a head coach. It's certainly looking like Young is not the answer, but Canales needs to see more from Young over the course of the season with his own eyes before he decides to replace him.

Absolutely nothing positive you can take away from this one. Canales may be in over his head as a head coach. It's like this game took him and his team totally off guard.

Mingo with as many fumbles as targets in this one.

The question is not whether Tepper would go after Harbaugh, but whether Harbaugh would be interested. Right now, if you are Harbaugh and you are looking to get back to the NFL, Carolina is down near the bottom of your list on possible landing spots. He could make a lot better career decisions than to come to Carolina.

That just wreaks of desperation.

So the WRs are gaining enough separation, huh, Frank? And Frank continues to laud Bryce. And then Thomas Brown said this week he is "not concerned at all" about protection, especially on third down. So where does the blame lie, Frank, for a team that ranks 30th in total offense, 26th in yards passing and 30th in allowed sacks?

The mismanagement of those last three plays was almost high schoolish. You would certainly expect more from a supposed experienced staff. It's like fourth down sneaked up on the staff. How can you not plan ahead? You have a poor OL, WRs that struggle to gain separation, and an inexperienced rookie QB who has not played well. Down by three, it's 1st and 10 on the 41. The first priority is to get yourself into a position where you can at least feel pretty good about tying it. Then you work your way toward a TD from there. Three straight pass plays later (one deep and one ill advised) and you are spotting up for a 59 yarder. All they needed was about five yards to have a realistic shot of a successful FG. Five yards in three plays is not much to ask, particularly when you blow a timeout to try to make sure you have your ducks in a row.

I don't know if Fitterer will be the first one out the door, but he should be. He's been here long enough to show positive results for his decisions. Optically, it is better to fire a GM who is almost three years in than a head coach who is just nine games in. Tepper desperately needs Reich to right this ship. To fire Reich before the end of season one would once again show that Tepper failed to bring in the right guy; it further paints him as an very impatient and incompetent owner. Tepper's meddling is going to work against him on the next hire anyway, but he is really going to eliminate the candidate pool if he pulls the trigger on a firing before the end of the season for a staff that he heralded from day one as being top notch. It's going to be very difficult to bring in a staff with a meddling impatient owner for a team that has quite a few holes and not enough draft capital to fill those holes in the short term. Now if the team finishes the season at 1-16, well...

I didn't think we could look much worse than we did in the first quarter against the Browns to start the season. I missed that assumption by a mile. On an unrelated note, I am not sure how this notion started that the Panthers have a solid defense, but it simply isn't true and has not been true for most of the season. The national media folks like to throw that statement around, perhaps as a result of group think, but they clearly have not dug into the numbers. After Sunday there should be little question that this defense needs a lot of work...a lot.