Five things from the Carolina Panthers training camp, college realignment, and USWNT not getting the win.

We are family! A new set of horns here, I guess for us here, Victoria, that does not sound familiar.

It doesn't, but that's totally fine. But you know what? You know, it does sound familiar. What's that? The popping of pads at training camp. Popping pad time. Exactly.

Popping pad time. All right. Carolina Panthers are getting ready for their first preseason game this week. That game is on Saturday. I will be there. I'm very much looking forward to being there. So, five things for the Carolina Panthers as we head into joint practices on Wednesday and Thursday against the New York Jets and the preseason game on Saturday.

All right. Five things, observations and stuff from camp so far and just really from the weekend. Hot down in Spartanburg this weekend, by the way. Hot everywhere and it sucks.

It does. But you know what doesn't stink right now? The Panthers defense. And this is to be expected. So first thing here are these five things. The defense is ahead of the offense and that's to be expected because base defense is so much easier to install than any sort of base things from your playbook offensively. Just having played football collegiately, defense is easy to install. For example, all right, base formation. This is where you line up when we call this formation. Okay. Alignment. The second thing is assignment. Okay. If there's a run, I'm in charge of this gap.

If it's a pass, I'm either covering this person or covering this zone. That's it. Alignment, assignment. And then the third thing is pursue the football. That's it. It's that basic. It's those three concepts when it comes to me, that's dummying it down to an extent, but those are the three things.

That's it. Alignment, assignment, pursue the football. Now you can get into some more intricate stuff in terms of, okay, we have sub packages. If a guy goes in motion, some things along those lines, but once again, you always have your base concepts where offensively it's like, all right, formations, cadence motions, timing of routes, not just timing of routes being run, but the timing of running backs, trying to find the hole, set up their blocks, things along those lines. There's a lot more moving pieces and a lot more parts that go into an offense than it does a defense. Now I know there are the OTAs and stuff during the off-season.

You're kind of able to get a lot of that base install stuff done during that time. But once again, now that you're full 11 on 11, as opposed to just 77 in helmets, yeah, there's things are a lot harder for an offense and that's okay. So right now, by all observations, at least we saw over the weekend, there are some struggles offensively. We're going to get to that here in a little bit, some drop passes on Saturday and some frustration again, we'll dive into that here in a second, but the defense is going to be ahead of the offense and that's okay. You know why that excites me, Victoria? I think the defense is going to be really good this season.

I'm down. I think it's gonna be really good. Now there's a lot of contingencies in that. I think health at corner with Donte Jackson and JC Horn is paramount for this defense because once you get up to that, there's question marks with CJ Henderson and others, but you never know new coaching staff, who knows what the next level that these guys take, but also the versatility at safety for them with Von Bell coming in, still have Xavier Woods and then also Jeremy chin as well. So a lot of versatility there in their, in their defensive backfield. So yeah, defense has had the offense, which leads me to my second thing defensively.

The big question up front for the Carolina Panthers on defense was all right. Who's going to step up as an edge rusher, opposite of Brian burns, right? Brian burns is one of the best in the league.

Simply put, I'm not going to sit there and rank dudes. I'm not going to do that, but he's one of the best. He's just awesome. He's just awesome.

Exactly. I'm not going to lie him wearing that zero. I know it's sharp. I'm not going to lie.

It's pretty intimidating. Like, Oh, who's this guy? Right? So the question is opposite of Brian burns. Who's going to step up to be that guy. Now Marquis scenes has been dealing with an injury. They traded up in the third round to draft DJ Johnson out of Oregon. They've got each or gross motto, Susie in his fourth year, kind of playing a different position as opposed to defensive end. Now playing outside linebacker Amari Barna, who they drafted in the sixth round last year.

Okay. It's this hodgepodge of guys. Who's going to step up. Well, there's a couple of veterans that were floating around out there. One of them being Justin Houston, who the Carolina Panthers just signed over the weekend. Justin Houston played with Baltimore last season, played with Frank Reich for a couple of seasons in Indianapolis. So there is a familiarity there between head coach and player, but he signed with the Panthers this weekend as an edge, as an edge rusher.

He's not going to be in every down player. And that's okay. This is a guy who had nine and a half sacks last season for the Baltimore Ravens did have three straight games where we have multiple sacks.

Okay. So there's still the burst in the level of production. That's still there. If you look at some of the advanced numbers in terms of like the timing on average time to get off the line of scrimmage, when the ball is snapped, he was like fourth best in the league behind like Nick Bosa Hassan Reddick. And I think it was Brandon Graham. We all know who's Nick Bosa is one of the best edge rushers in the entire NFL pick Carolina Panthers fans should know who Hassan Reddick is pretty good. That one year he was here in Carolina. So yeah, he's up there in terms of that, but he's not going to be an every down player and that's fine.

And guess what, if it doesn't work out, you still have all those other guys that I had mentioned, but this gives you a little bit of veteran insurance. All right, let's get to the third thing. Bryce Young showed some frustration on Saturday.

Oh no. So Bryce and you know, that's okay. That's okay. So during a drill on 11 on 11 on Saturday, there was a time where there's some stuff happening pre snap that didn't quite go the way the offense expected it to. And Frank bright blew the whistle a little bit early because he was afraid there might have been a collision in the end zone. So he blew the whistle early. Bryce was kind of frustrated because he didn't quite go exactly the way they had wanted to go.

And that's okay. Just work the kicks out, but it's okay that he shows a little emotion. It's okay to be frustrated, but when frustration really hurts you is when you let one negative play lead you to another negative play. I say this oftentimes when I, when I coach lacrosse, when I talk to goal tenders, they look, don't let one goal turn into two. I don't let the thought of like, ah, I should have had that save lead you to thinking about it too much where you let in another goal.

Then it starts to snowball and spiral. If he's not doing that, then that's okay. It's okay to show frustration.

That's totally fine. Now some people will throw out his stats stats. I put air quotes stats from Saturday. It's like, this wasn't a game folks. It's practice, but he went seven to 15 completing passes.

Now we got to add context to that though. Bryce young on Saturday. Yes. Seven to 15. You're like, Oh, that's below 50%. I thought this guy was supposed to be great. Three drop passes seven to 15 goes to 10 and 15.

All of a sudden like, wait a second. That's 66.7%. That's much better. Two of those drops are also in the end zone. Okay.

So receiver step it up. Which leads me to the third thing. Oh, sorry. The fourth thing. So third thing, Bryce young got frustrated a little bit on Saturday and that's okay.

They said, you know what? Defense one, defense one on Saturday. That's fine. I think the Carolina Panthers actually are off today because again, they joined practices with the jets starting on Wednesday, but that kind of ties into my first point.

Defense is ahead of the offense right now. And that's fine. That's okay as well. All right.

Fourth thing, Victoria. Yes. Bryce. Young's going to start the preseason game on Saturday. The big open secret.

I'm sorry. He's QB one. Of course he's going to start now. There's going to be, they have a plan.

Frank. Right. Did say over the weekend that there is a plan on number of snaps and number of series at Bryce jungle will take, but a lot of that's going to be determined on kind of the flow of the game, kind of feeling things out. So for example, if they go out there and he has two drives where they put together like eight, 10 plays and they look really good. So it's about 20 offensive snaps in. Maybe you call it after that.

Yeah. Or maybe, you know what they go three and out and they go three and out. You put them out there for a third series. I'm not entirely sure what the plan is for him. Maybe he plays the whole first half. We'll see, but the guy needs live reps and a live game, but you also have to balance it out of this is your franchise quarterback. You don't want this dude getting hurt. I don't want him out there playing with third team, offensive line. Yeah.

That's the thing I don't want him to see, to have. Now it would not surprise me that the jets with a lot of the veterans on the, on defense that are coming back. What surprised me? They don't play a lot of guys in the preseason game. It also wouldn't surprise me for the Carolina Panthers that guys like Shaq Thompson, Brian Burns, Derek Brown don't play in the preseason game either because we had the joint practices on Wednesday and Thursday.

So that can determine a lot of the reps that he's going to see in preseason game. Number one on Saturday against the jets at bank of America stadium. That's a four o'clock kickoff. I will be there.

I'm very excited for it. Let's leave it to my fifth and final thing. Okay. Something we've seen for the Carolina Panthers as a whole stay in healthy, please stay in healthy. That's it.

You said it please. And thank you. Just stay healthy. That's all we ask to stay healthy now by all accounts right now. Yeah. There's there's guys are a little bit nicked up things along those lines.

Awesome. Corbett still recovering from the knee injury, the ACL that he suffered back in January at seasons. And last year, Chandler Zavala with the pectoral injury. So you're going to have injuries. Those things are going to happen. Marquis Haynes when mentioned earlier, also dealing with injury as well, but nothing major, right? Knock on wood knocking on wood right now. So nothing major right now.

That's the thing. You want to be as healthy as possible going into the season, not just healthy. There's one thing like, all right, if a guy gets injured in camp and then they rehab when they're ready for game one, that's different than actually training and preparing for game one. This is the thing a lot of people sometimes confuse when it comes to guys being healthy. When a guy is coming off injury, for example, Austin Corbett at right guard started all all season last year on the offensive line. He's rehabbing and recovering from a major injury. Rehab and recovery is different than training for a season. You're like, Oh yeah, he rehabbed and he's now he's ready to play, but you're not actually fully trained to get yourself to where you need it to be to actually be at your top four.

If that makes sense, there's a different level back up to where you were. Yeah. And that takes time. This is so that's why sometimes it's not just the first year after the injury, it's the next year where you actually see guys actually truly at the top form because again, training and rehab are two totally different things. You want to make sure that you guys are training during the preseason, not have to worry about like, Oh, okay. I sprained an ankle. Okay. Well, that's fine. You can just miss a few weeks and be ready for the season.

It still slits you back a little bit. And once you're injured during the season, you never fully recovered. So yeah, health going into the season is a major, major thing. All right.

So those are five things in the Carolina Panthers that we've seen so far that I'm also looking forward to this week. We'll definitely dive more into the Panthers and Bryce young coming up at 1245, but Victoria, yes, the ACC is still intact. Oh yeah. We are. Okay. We are. Oh, okay. Well, Hey, for now, everything's going to be just fine.

Victoria peaches and cream for all of us. Now we saw on Friday. I know a lot of this stuff happened after the show ended on Friday, but we see a lot of realignment expansion in some conferences. Now, expansion for some conferences, what we're seeing in the big 10 and the big 12 means retraction for others. The number of schools that are playing college football or in college sports isn't growing. It's not all of a sudden we just went from like a hundred FBS schools or whatever it is right now. I know it's like one 30, whatever it is.

So like one 75, I just didn't magically happen overnight. So that means one conference or in this case, two conferences growing one subtracting that one is the PAC 12 Oregon and Washington. They're going to join USC and UCLA to go to the big 10 starting in the fall of 2024. So a year from now, Arizona, Arizona state and Utah are going to join Colorado exiting the big 12 are exiting the PAC 12 to go to the big 12. Also starting a year from now in the fall of 2024, we'll get more into this at 1230, by the way, there's a lot of different, there's a lot of different angles and going in on this. Yes.

Okay. Why did this happen? PAC 12 failed itself when the ACC network, the big 10 network, SCC network were all created years ago, the PAC 12 decided to create its own network. The PAC 12 network, I guess it was the PAC 10, maybe at the time it was PAC 12 network, right?

But instead of joining like a television network, for example, ACC networks, part of ESPN, SCC network, part of ESPN, big 10 network was part of Fox, right? Instead of joining with another network for distribution of the product, they say, Hey, you know what? We're going to keep all this for ourselves. We're going to run everything ourselves. We're going to keep everything for ourselves. And you know what? We're just going to have people pay us directly and said, no one bought it. Yeah. That's the thing. It's like, Hey, I got this nice shiny product, but no one's buying it. No one will watch it.

No one could watch it. And instead of having a steady stream of revenue coming from that and expanding, there's actually the talk of the PAC 12 years ago, actually expanding and adding schools like Texas, but they actually decided like, no, what we're good where we are now, two thirds of your leagues leaving. Yeah. They're walking away. And now you've left Stanford, Cal, Oregon state, Washington state, just stuck there with just staring at each other and being like, well, what do we do now? So I don't know what's next, but again, no one's left the ACC. That's good. No one's left the ACC as much as Florida state's whining, chirping about it. Yeah.

Barking is barking as he likes. Yes. Now here's something that also happens in 2024, the college football playoff expands.

Okay. So Heather Dennis of ESPN, she got on ESPN radio this morning was discussing different things regarding college football playoff and expansion and things along those lines. So what does this mean for the college football playoff? The consideration is going to be, I think a tweak, not necessarily an overhaul to the proposed 12 team model, because they don't have time for that.

It starts in 2024. So the most logical consideration would be to have five conference champions and the next seven highest ranked teams, as opposed to the six and six model. Cause then you still have conference champions from the sec, the big 10, the big 12 and the ACC. Then you get another FBS conference champion. There's your five and then the next seven highest ranked teams.

All right, so let's break this down. So the way the college football playoff was set to be in 2024 was four teams. What it is now to 12 teams, six at large bids of six at large bids, six automatic qualifiers, right?

Kind of like you see in the NCAA tournament. So the five power five conferences with all like their champion, you're in the CFP ACC big 10, big 12 sec pack 12, all five of them automatic bid and whomever the highest ranked group of five conference champion is, whether it's for example, ECU out of the American, if you're the highest ranked group of five conference out there. So we're talking like the American, the Sunbelt, the Mac things along those, like those conferences. If you're the highest ranked you're in, and then it's six at large, whoever the six other highest ranked college football programs, you're in the CFP. If you want your conference, guess what? You get at minimum a home game, if not an automatic, a buy to the second round. If you're one of the top four, if you're a conference champion, you know, home game, which is great.

Would you imagine like Dowdy thick one with a whole game and college football playoff would be awesome. So now what the pack 12 is basically done. So this is where a tweak has to come into the college football playoff. Okay. Just completely eliminate their automatic bid because they don't exist basically.

And then do you let in again, one more at large. So there's a lot of things that have to be figured out with the college football playoff when it comes to that. But in 10 minutes, I'm going to tell you who actually runs college sports right now.

But before we get into that, let's get into this. Yesterday morning, I watched it. My girlfriend and I saw the U S women's national team fall to Sweden in penalty kicks, five, four, and PK. So you woke up for it. What time was this?

Not 3 a.m. Was it? Oh, no, we actually watched. It was a 5 a.m. game and we actually just woke up like YouTube TV. Just I had it recorded. So we just watched it that way.

Just turned off any notifications and all those regards. So I didn't see the score until it actually happened. I actually saw it happen. Yeah. The game kind of reminded me a lot of a Carolina hurricanes game at times. Oh, dominating possession. Tell me if it sounds familiar. Victoria dominating possession, great scoring opportunities, high danger scoring chances, right?

Not giving up many scoring chances yourself, but goaltending there when you need it to be. Does it sound familiar? Sounds very familiar. Is there a siren too? There should be. But the U S women's national team did run into a hot goalie. Like Sweden's goalie was fantastic yesterday, but they didn't get the production from the veterans offensively that they needed. Not just yesterday, but from the whole tournament.

Now, U S I will say this real quick. Yesterday was their best game of the tournament, their best game. And they, for the most part of 120 plus minutes controlled that game. Now Sweden had their chances.

Sweden's the third ranked nation in the world. So it's not like they got beat. It's, it's not like when app went up to the big house, right?

That's not what we're talking about here. This is a major upset. I mean, heck Germany, the number two ranked team didn't even get to the knockouts. They didn't get past group stage, but they didn't get the offensive production for the veterans that they needed. Alex Morgan had some good chances yesterday in this game, created more, but mostly it was ineffective throughout the whole tournament, right? Megan Rapinoe bad.

I'm sorry. She was bad. Didn't even play in the game against the Netherlands. She honestly, she provided nothing. And again, yesterday, her strength is like set pieces and service under the box.

Right? I remember one that she had a corner kick. Julia made a run, headed it just why we got deflected. Another corner kick. Again, she just puts it in the side of the net. It's like wasted scoring opportunity right there. That's your thing. That doesn't even count the missed PK that she had.

They could have put the U S up four to two in that time. Kelly O'Hara. She was subbed late in yesterday to be used in PKs along with the, along with Sam, you as his younger sister, Christie from her correctly.

That's dumb. You has nailed her PK, but Kelly O'Hara was subbed in late yesterday. She was needed in PKs when they got past the fifth round and she missed.

She hit the frame as well. So yeah, some of these veteran players that were expected to step up did also, here's the thing with PKs put PKs all goal, make the goalies stop it. We saw the U S after drilling the first three in the back of the net, they missed three straight or three of the last four. I should say a listen there, the goalie for the U S and a PK actually ended up scoring on a PK herself. Now Sweden's goalie was great, but she never had to make one save during PKs because the U S missed the net three times. She didn't have to make a safe, but the U S had the ball late. They had the ball and a chance to win.

And they did. It's like you have the ball like on the one yard line. All you got to get the ball across the line and you win the game, right?

It's there for you. Yeah. You had the ball. Sophia Smith, who's a young player, 23 years old. She missed the net wide. She had the goalie beat, goalie guessed wrong, hit the net. Completely different conversation as well. Also people say that the world has caught up to the U S women's national team.

I'll point this out. World's been there. The U S has just won the games.

World's been there. The U S women's national team hasn't won the Olympics since 2012, since 2012. And it's the same players and women's soccer and the world cup as it is for the Olympics. Now the roster size is slightly smaller because the Olympics has different restrictions, but whereas like men's soccer and the Olympics has like, has age restrictions as well.

Like you can only have like two players over the age of like 23. It's weird, but Germany won in 2016 Canada won. I guess it was technically the 2020 Olympics, but it was played two years ago in Tokyo. So this isn't surprising.

Yes. The women's national team has won two straight world cups, but the world has been there. Just the U S has just been better than what they were this year. So it isn't four years from now for the U S women's national team to turn things around. It's next year in 2024 in Paris.

That's how quickly this program has to turn around. They retain their manager. I don't know. That's a major question, but Julie Ernst announced that she's retiring Megan Rapinoe, that we know that she's gone.

Okay. Can this young group of players that did play Trinity Robin, who's 20, 21 years old, Sophia Smith, who 23 years old, do you get a Mallory Pew back? Sam Lewis was also missing Becky Sauerbron who was a staple that on that back line as a center back, she was missing as well, which calls Julie Ernst to not play in the midfield. So some injuries and stuff before the actual world cup played a factor into this. But like I said earlier, the U S had the ball with the chance to win and they missed. It's really it's very disappointing. They've never lost at this stage in the world cup. So yeah, it's extremely disappointing. It's a bummer because I enjoy watching the U S woman's national team play.