theinstrumental

I'm weirdly hopeful for this game. Atlanta's defense is getting a lot of credit for beating up on a 22-year old on a short week, three days after the birth of his first child. That game looked a lot more like "McCarthy bad" than "Atlanta good".

Hate to think this way in week 2, but this feels like a game we win in the past and screw up our draft pick. Maybe this is the year the bottom finally falls out and we can add another blue-chipper to Tet?

There's a lot of Bryce and Evero hate today, as always, but I haven't seen the end of the first half mentioned. I want to highlight it because it's really where we lost the game, it's as infuriating as anything else that happened yesterday, and it hasn't gotten enough attention. - Just after the 2-minute warning, Arizona kicks a field goal to make it 3-13. The Cardinals have two timeouts left. On the kickoff: Not one, but two holding penalties. Ball's spotted at the 11. - First play: Inside zone from shotgun, for three yards. Chuba gets up ready to hand the ball immediately to a ref, but nobody else has any urgency. - Second play: Ball doesn't get snapped until 8 seconds left on the play clock. Bryce sprays a pass into the ground in front of Legette. We use 36 seconds of game time, but stop the clock for the opponent. - Third play: Shotgun snap. Bryce throws the ball low to Sanders. Sanders almost reels it in, but can't. Clock stops again. Panthers face 4th and 7. - Fourth down: Punt to Arizona. Dortch returns it 30 yards to the Panthers 45. - Following drive: Arizona uses the short field and both remaining timeouts to score a touchdown as time expires. This is the stuff that doesn't show up in the box score that loses a game, the classic hidden yards: Special teams miscues. Two holding penalties and a long punt return flip the field. Poor time management. Why run the first play if we're not going to run again? Why pass on second down if we're not going to hurry into it? Why not make the opponent use either of their timeouts? Poor QB play. These kinds of throws get lost in the Bryce post-mortems since they only count as two incompletions, but both were makeable throws. Sacks would have been better than incompletions. He just missed the throws. It's an awful mixture of physical failure and mental obliviousness. I generally think Canales is doing a decent job, but we blew a good chance to go into the half with a game in reach despite everything going wrong. Instead, we made it much, much worse. Considering how close the score was in the end, this two-minute stretch of complete ineptitude is going hang over the rest of the season as a giant missed opportunity.

Hendon Hooker played in a Mickey Mouse offense that made him look awesome, but only when he was 25 and playing with two NFL receivers. One of the best-cached teams in the NFL completely gave up on him. We're not that desperate yet.

It's really all on Tepper. He was the engine behind the Bryce trade, which the roster obviously wasn't ready for. We wasted a year proving that the roster wasn't ready to support a young quarterback, and then spent a mandatory offseason using all possible resources to patch up the offensive line and find offensive playmakers. Then the defense was the worst in the league, and we spent an offseason trying to solve that. We've been chasing our tail, dealing with problems that Tepper let stagnate while he chased immediate contention, and then the shiny toy of a young QB. Dan's got a competent contract guy and he's finally hired someone to stop him from wasting draft capital in bad trades. Those two things alone put a functional floor on his performance. I don't think he's got the vision to turn us into the Eagles or the Chiefs, But if the owner's never going to agree to a proper rebuild, it probably doesn't matter.

He was bad again yesterday. It's a little early to declare it completely over, especially if the justification is some armchair psychology--he's still young, and those things can change. But it's not going to happen fast, this is probably going to be a rough year, and he definitely doesn't deserve an extension yet. He's going to have to overcome a lot this year: a deteriorating offensive line, a bad record, and fan/media/contract pressure. I'm rooting for him, but I don't expect it to end well.

lol this team’s so demoralizing we’ve started hating completely unrelated data nerds. Darkest period for the Panthers that I can remember.

I mean, there’s only one other QB his height, so it’s a pretty small sample. He still can’t really access the middle.

I really don't know what Evero's supposed to do about the fact that we haven't hit on a pass rusher since Burns was picked six years ago. All of our resources have gone into the offense for the past few years. The FA money was to fix the run defense. The second-rounders are still rookie second-rounders. Last year's defense was among the worst ever. It's not getting fixed overnight.

Just finished a re-watch of the game, and I can see how they back into "Bryce was fine, actually." You just have to be incredibly charitable to Bryce. The grade basically comes down to how much blame you assign to him for these plays: 1. The goal-line 4th-and-1 where the ball was snapped early. 2. The XL sideline toe-drag failure. 3. The left sideline Renfrow drop. 4. The second left sideline Renfrow missed connection (ugh). 5. The ball going through Dowdle's hands and getting picked. 6. The JT Sanders wheel-route drop. 7. The 4th-and-1 end-zone shot to T-Mac. If you put the drops on the receivers and massage his grade a little due to some quick pressures...sure, you get a passable grade. If you don't, then it looks pretty bad. But the only undeniably, balls-stupid, completely-on-him mistakes I remember right now were the fumble, the pick on the bootleg, and a spray or two. I'll just say that I don't really understand why everyone gets so upset about these grades. We all know they're pretty subjective and should really only be taken seriously over a sample size big enough to even some of these things out. It obviously matters that the offense looked like crap. But that'll all show up in the grades if that remains the case. Maybe they could be better about putting in a range? Like, they could go as low as a 30 or as high as an 80, depending on how you score those things, but they had to settle on something, so here's a 70.

Having Coker get hurt makes the Thielen trade look a lot worse. There were a few plays--the XL sideline non-catch, two near-misses to Renfrow on the sideline--that Coker probably makes if he's in the game instead. Still...yikes.

Let up a totally normal amount of points even though the offense put them in awful positions all game. This really isn’t the problem.

We got a fourth for the oldest receiver in the league. It’s honestly a pretty good return, and everyone’s concern over losing a well-past-his-prime Adam Thielen is just evidence of how far the standards of this franchise have fallen. T-Mac, Coker, and XL can carry the load. Looking forward to seeing the new-look offense.

Coker had ~80% of Thielen’s yardage last year. As a UFA, not the first option. It feels like everyone’s anchoring on that outlier stretch Thielen had two years ago. He hasn’t been in that form since. He should comfortably be behind T-Mac this year, and not such a big focus that it’s worth taking the reps from XL and Coker. And if Renfrow can give us the same vet presence, but is five years younger? Pretty easy to see how AT gets crowded out.

Thielen’s 34 years old and has topped 1,000 yards once since 2018. It’s time to stop treating him like a load-bearing player. If Renfrow can replace him in the slot, we need to trust T-Mac to become the outside player we drafted him to be and see if we can get anything for Thielen.

Linebacker’s bad, and we’re going to keep having surprise weak spots pop up like this until we string a few decent drafts together. Fortunately, I really like this draft, and think Wallace has a chance to come in and keep the ship afloat, which would make last year’s draft a hit as well.

If we’re looking at a vet with a low ceiling AND a low floor, why not just roll with the young guys? We’re not winning a Super Bowl this year. It’s ok to develop some talent.

I definitely wouldn’t want to pay him long-term money with his inability to get on the field. I’m not sure if we’re good enough to start picking up vets on prove-it deals where they have all the upside, but I wouldn’t hate seeing what Evero’s defense looks like with some real players on it. Feels like we’re not going to get that answer again this year given how young the main edge rushers are and how thin we are at corner.

The three-cone doesn't stand out for a pass-rush prospect, but the height/weight/speed is crazy. Could be an awesome special teamer immediately at the very least.

YAC isn't the only way to be a threat. Thielen's ADOT was 11 yards last year. He's stressing a defense beyond its first level. Renfrow's 2023 ADOT was 5.6 yards. He's settling into a soft spot under a zone and the defense bets that they can rally and tackle before he gets to the marker. That kind of popgun slot receiver play is fine, but we should hope to be able to find that ability in someone who can also bring another skill, whether that's a vertical threat, or some jet sweep/screen game YAC ability, or even just being very large and blocking well. Every time we trot Renfrow out there, we limit what the defense has to worry about.

I don’t get it. He doesn’t threaten a defense at this point. He just takes what they want to give him. Maybe we’re playing 4D chess with Tepper’s money and are bringing him in to show the young guys what’s possible with great footwork? Trying him out as a coach-in-waiting? Otherwise…meh.

I think we’ve learned that if we’re relying on David Moore, we’ve got a problem. Youth can be a problem, too, but at least it promises to fix itself with time.

It’s also just possible that someone gets hurt or he’s a priority practice squad guy and we spent the money to make sure we got him in camp and familiar with the offense. We’ve got the wealthy owner, might as well use the money to improve things on the margins.

“Damn, we had no idea we’d crush the draft this hard, you guys want one of our extra edge guys?”

Expensive, though. They're already out next year's first and fifth.