Bright spots from the Atlanta game

[Sloth]

Despite the loss, I felt there were quite a few bright spots from the Atlanta game:

Captain Munnerlyn

Continues to play well in the nickle spot and was steady and safe doing PR duty.

Kealoha Pilares

Limited involvement, but continues to show good hands and speed.

Armanti Edwards

Looked faster than I have ever seen him. Very nice catch, very nice run, very nice throw.

Josh Norman

I want to put him here even though he's had two relatively bad games. He's a fifth round, small school rookie and he's getting picked on. That's not his fault and I think that he'll keep improving. The fact that he actually seems to want to play puts him above Hogan. I also love the fact that he's a hitter and a poo talker. We need more of that on defense.

Frank Alexander

I could write paragraphs on how much I love him. Motor, long arms, bats down passes, generating a lot of pressure, etc. I'll just say that he continues to justify the picks we gave up and the fact that he pushes Hardy already is fantastic.

Luke Kuechly

Slow start, gets better every game. Was our best LB on the field against ATL. No idea why the coaches pull him on passing downs but if he continues doing his thing, I don't think they'll be able to keep him off the field.

Brad Nortman

Looking so far like a really good pick. Nice leg, nice hangtime, and a perfect punt at the end of the ATL game.

Justin Medlock

Seems to be improving on kickoff distance. He still drops them a little short, but nothing as bad as during preseason.

Charles Johnson

I was trying to find a word other than "beast" for a few minutes and gave up. Straight beast last game and seems to be starting to benefit from Alexander on the other side.

Amini Silatolu

Getting better every game. Started the season somewhat of a liability and is playing very solid 4 games into his rookie season.

Byron Bell

Good. Just a good player at RT and only his second season. Has gone from struggling UDFA to making people forget first rounder Jeff Otah in one season. The neat thing is that, barring injuries, he's going to get better.

Cam Newton

A 23 year old second year player with an entire franchise placed on his back. Bounced back from a horrible Giants game and week of criticism and played very well.. minus one play.

Greg Olsen

With everything going on in his personal life, showed up and was our best receiving option for the day.

Chris Gamble

Quietly having a very good season, as usual. He's never going to get as much recognition as he deserves, but just an all around good CB and continues to show it this season.

What say you?

[Rubi]

Then why the hell are we 1-3?

Oh ya...coaching...personnel...and coaching

[Cary Kollins]

I dont know about the Armanti throw. I remember thinking if he had led Smith it would have been a TD. But his speed was very surprising.

[Kurb]

FIRE EVERYTHING

CUT ALL THE PLAYERS

1-15!!!

NO SUNSHINE WHEN SHE IS GONE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good post.

Some good things happened.

Still trending up.

[mwright350]

Honestly most of the Atlanta game was a bright spot.

After the Giants game we looked like nothing worked at all. What cost us this game is our secondary and poor coaching decisions more than anything else. Not only did we lead them with one minute left but we fought back from being down earlier to lead them which we usually can't manage to do and our defense put of a halfway decent performance vs one of the best teams in the league.

I despise losing but I came away from the Atlanta feeling a lot better than I have after most other losses. The shorter list here would be the things that sucked.

[Zod]

I could have done without Captain's god awful last second PI penalty.

[Dunn]

Armanti Edwards

Looked faster than I have ever seen him. Very nice catch, very nice run, very nice throw.

Im sure this has been posted before, but seeing him throw the ball in Atl, shows you he still has the touch from college and could be ANOTHER versitile weapon in this offense. Why not throw him in wild cat as a runner but also can double as the passer?

Would be even scarier if we could get Newton to go deep and have armanti hook up on a bomb (obviously nothing over the middle for fear of injury), no more 11 v 10 on the wild cat, eliminating the QB. Yes, I know this isn't college anymore but hey anything to look forward to would be pretty damn cool.

[rayzor]

good stuff and totally agreed. if you can get your head around that loss, it's hard to see that there wasn't a drastic improvement in the way the team played and was coached between this game and the previous 3.

if these improvements are sustainable (and i'm not going to doubt that they are, atm) then we should be looking at the remaining schedule a little more favorably. we didn't get whooped from start to finish. we were really just one mistake away from winning. of course there were several people who made those mistakes, but if any one of them didn't happen, we'd have won. i think these guys know that and i have a strong feeling that they are all going to be owning up to their mistakes and working hard to make sure they don't happen again. we'll be seeing a bit of extra effort from all of them.

i hope they also still feel bad about the poo they left on the field at the last home game and come in sunday ready to dominate right away.

[therealmjl]

Quietly, this draft could end up being the best we have had in a long, long time.

[rayzor]

btw...just noticing greg olsen's stats. 20 catches for 256 yards. only 1 TD, but his catches makes him 5th out of TEs in the league so far and his yardage puts him at 4th. olsen's on pace for 80 receptions and 1000 yards. i'd be surprised if that will be continued, but it's still good to see him living up to that potential. still like to see him get in the endzone more.

[Sloth]

Quietly, this draft could end up being the best we have had in a long, long time.

Man, I truly hope so. We've had a string of horrible ones that are hurting us.

[davos]

As a team: Minus a few secondary hiccups, fumbling at inopportune times, and our two minute offense...the ATL game was exactly what I wanted out of this team of course minus the most important thing: wins.

And about our draftees: I haven't seen this much solid rookie contribution (minus Joe) in a long while and bottom line is we were miles better than the Giants game. As long as we keep improving, these guys are gonna no doubt start cranking out wins. The Panthers remind me a lot (A LOT) of how the Pack and Saints were before they got their sh*t all together.

[rayzor]

Quietly, this draft could end up being the best we have had in a long, long time.

i agree, but it still bugs me that we were in a position that 4 rookies could be starters. last year with all of the injuries i could understand that more, but to have 4?

i think the team is building into something special and i would love to see us have a draft that brings in just as much talent next year. i don't necessarily want so many starting right away, but i'm not going to complain about the number of quality players esp. compared to what we've brought in the past few years.

[mwright350]

Im sure this has been posted before, but seeing him throw the ball in Atl, shows you he still has the touch from college and could be ANOTHER versitile weapon in this offense. Why not throw him in wild cat as a runner but also can double as the passer?

Would be even scarier if we could get Newton to go deep and have armanti hook up on a bomb (obviously nothing over the middle for fear of injury), no more 11 v 10 on the wild cat, eliminating the QB. Yes, I know this isn't college anymore but hey anything to look forward to would be pretty damn cool.

Honestly I'd like to see them take that stupid wildcat / mountaineer / whateverthefug section out of the play book. Cam is one of the most dynamic weapons in the league when he's taking the snap - I don't see any upside to snapping to another QB to do...basically the same thing we want Cam to do but not as well.

I'm glad AE showed some burst on that reception and I really do hope he can pick his game up enough to hang around (for a lot of reasons) but this just feels like a terrible terrible idea.