Turns out the Raiders and bucs are kinda good.

[Mr. Scot]

To be fair, you could also conclude that maybe the Saints just aren't as good as we thought.

Even accepting that we might be better than believed though, we're facing a rough road without McCaffrey.

[Mage]

This coaching staff has done a damn good job this year.  They are out-performing their talent level.  And while it's expected for coaches this inexperienced to struggle, what I'm loving is that they DO know how to make the adjustments in the second half.  

Against the Raiders, we were down 15-27 going into the 4th quarter.  We had a 3 point lead with 5 minutes left.  Against the Bucs, we were down 0-21 and came super close to tying things up until a Teddy B interception.

I've seen some people crap on Snow, but I don't think that's fair.  Now obviously it's only been 2 weeks so this doesn't mean a lot, but the defensive numbers are better right now than they were last year and that's despite being even less talented now than they were in 2019 - we don't have Kuechly, Bradberry, Reid, McCoy, Butler (who finally played decent), Addison, Irvin, or Cockrell.  It says something to me that Snow's been able to (so far) get improvement, even if it's still a bad defense.  It at least tells me we should wait for him to get a starting-level defense talent-wise before we judge him.  So far these guys are playing the best they can be expected to given the lack of good, experienced players.  

I think the future is bright for us, it just isn't going to be this season.  I think the coaches are going to learn a lot from it though.  Rhule, Brady, and Snow are gonna see what players are worth retaining and what kind of players they need to bring in to fit this system.  

[Navy_football]

59 minutes ago, stirs said:

Raiders have a huge, mauling Oline.

Once you have that, then the run game and passing game just seem to fall in place.  Funny how that works

For that reason, they'll ALWAYS be competitive. ALWAYS.

[Sgt Schultz]

I didn't watch most of last night's game, but I did see the last few minutes.  I walked away thinking that the NFC South may not be what everybody thought it was going to be.

[hepcat]

3 hours ago, Ricky Spanish said:

OK so I actually just looked this up:

Under Rivera the Panthers lost 26* games in which they held the lead at any point in the game and only came back to win 17 times:

Blown Leads:

Comebacks:

So there's that.

How on earth the Panthers kept Rivera and his 7 (SEVEN!!!!) blown leads in 2018 is mind boggling. We should be on year 2 of a rebuild right now.

[Teddy Time]

4 hours ago, LinvilleGorge said:

But the Bucs got beaten easily by the Saints. Honestly, I think the Bucs and Saints may have just been massively overrated or the Saints may have just plain had a bad game last night. With Brees and Brady, I get it. Father Time is undefeated. Those guys looking like shadows of their former selves can't be seen as surprising at their age. But it was surprising to see Marshon Lattimore and Malcolm Jenkins out there looking like Dante Jackson and Tre Boston. Then again, Jenkins is a 32 year old DB so Father Time might be nipping at his heels too.

Y'know that was the first game Tom Brady ever played with that team right?  The Bucs u get in Week 1 is going to be quite different from the Bucs you get in December.  And the Saints didn't easily beat them, it was more screw ups by the Bucs in their first outing with their brand new team.  Saints are incredibly overrated, because of their quarterback.  For the past 2-3 years Drew hasn't been able to throw the ball more than 20 yds with any kind of accuracy, which is why Payton changed the offense to eliminate deep passes.  In 2020, that number is dropping to 10-15 yds, and its only going to get worse as the season goes on.  In a few months Drew Brees is going to be 42.  42!!!!  The Saints will not be in the playoffs this year.   Panthers have a good outlook over time, Saints do not, and Bucs will be contenders but have to work out the kinks and chemistry as a new team.  Same thing as any other that brings in a new QB like that.  but the Bucs have a LOT of talent on that team.

[stirs]

1 hour ago, Navy_football said:

For that reason, they'll ALWAYS be competitive. ALWAYS.

Panthers management and certainly the fans, DO NOT understand this.

Every year, without fail, all Panther fans want "playmakers", need weapons they say.  All they look at is the 40 times and dream.

Football is won in the trenches.  Ask Cam how he feels, even though he lost last week.  Probably much more competitive than in the last several years.  And not nearly as sore.  And it did it without the Panther fans versions of playmakers.  When given time, all WR's become playmakers.

[Ricky Spanish]

20 minutes ago, hepcat said:

How on earth the Panthers kept Rivera and his 7 (SEVEN!!!!) blown leads in 2018 is mind boggling. We should be on year 2 of a rebuild right now.

For comparison's sake, the Saints Blew 10 total leads in that timeframe and had 14 comeback wins.

Atlanta Blew 15 and has 8 comebacks

Atlanta is meme'd for being a team that blows leads and we did it way more under Rivera. 

[Carl Spackler]

3 hours ago, t96 said:

I’m fine with seeing 13 more of the same stuff in games 1 and 2. Get outplayed due to talent, make some adjustments and make it close but still lose. Want to win 1 though so we don’t go down in infamy with the Browns and Lions

Meh, once another team did it after the Lions it sort of lost its luster. Now people laugh for a few days and don’t give a poo. 

[MasterAwesome]

3 hours ago, Ricky Spanish said:

OK so I actually just looked this up:

Under Rivera the Panthers lost 26* games in which they held the lead at any point in the game and only came back to win 17 times:

Blown Leads:

Comebacks:

So there's that.

I can appreciate the effort you put into this...but this is pretty wonky criteria for blown leads and comebacks.  Simply being up/down at any point in the game?  I guess we did technically blow our 7-point lead 4 minutes into the 1st quarter against the Steelers back in 2018 lol.  But it was already 21-7 Steelers by the end of the first quarter and it only got worse from there.  On the other end: we gave up the first TD to Baltimore midway into the first quarter in 2018 but took the lead early in the second and were up 24-7 by half-time and were cruising the entire game from there.  This probably needs a bit more of a deep dive if we want to gain valuable insights.

[Proudiddy]

While I'm finding this to be encouraging as well, the defense is still absolute poo outside of Burns, Douglas, Chinn, and maybe Donte.

Also, I know rookie DTs start slow, but I'm now starting to get concerned about Brown as well.  I know he is eating up blocks, but his impact just hasn't been all that evident thus far.

[TheMostInterestingMan]

2 hours ago, panther4life said:

Regularly picking in the top 6 is what Gettleman 2.0 is actually doing. 

Cool. What’s that got to do with Hurney being our GM? 

[bLACKpANTHER]

5 hours ago, Jeremy Igo said:

Raiders and Bucs are kinda good and this young inexperienced team kept it close into the 4th quarter. 

 

cool.

got no time for your bright-side bull-shine, sir

 

j/k.. obviously the sky isn't falling for those of us who had reasonable expectations.. I still had to lower my expectations after Game 2, but not by a ton.. my apathy towards this team keeps me mentally healthy..

[Ricky Spanish]

24 minutes ago, MasterAwesome said:

I can appreciate the effort you put into this...but this is pretty wonky criteria for blown leads and comebacks.  Simply being up/down at any point in the game?  I guess we did technically blow our 7-point lead 4 minutes into the 1st quarter against the Steelers back in 2018 lol.  But it was already 21-7 Steelers by the end of the first quarter and it only got worse from there.  On the other end: we gave up the first TD to Baltimore midway into the first quarter in 2018 but took the lead early in the second and were up 24-7 by half-time and were cruising the entire game from there.  This probably needs a bit more of a deep dive if we want to gain valuable insights.

You know what, you're right. I looked into this and I have not been able to find a game by game, breakdown of scoring for every game, which is kind of a bummer since I'm a huge stat nerd. 

Also I just found out that where I sourced the data was just the top 50 all time for each franchise, which is why we had so many at 7 points compared to other franchises who have been around over twice as long as we have been. 

If anyone can find me a breakdown of game stats by quarter, I'd love to do a deep dive into it.