What is our biggest concern about the Panthers so far this year?

Travis Hancock, T-Bone, WFNZ in Charlotte, back in Bone in the morning. Hey, are we ordering you lunch? I know you were potentially going through a drive-through. I was preparing to order you lunch and pay for it, by the way. No, no, we had this whole beautiful radio plan. I was going to pull up at a certain time.

You would call, you'd give me an order, hilarity would ensue. Yeah. But Charlotte, Charlotte traffic 77 got me and I handed the sky. Nothing sums up more what we're going through as Charlotte sports fans in the preseason than me getting stuck in traffic and staring at the backside of a horse for 30 minutes. A horse?

Yes. Did you get lost? No, it's like in the trailer and I see the tail on the, in the backside. And then I was going to take a picture for you of the horse's backside and then the horse and the whole thing moved over. So I've even lost that whole thing. There's no Arby's.

There's no horse's ass. There's really nothing I'm providing you right now that's of substance. All right. Well, I had the whole order planned. So next time we do this, we'll try to coordinate it with you at the drive-through and I will order for you. You will not know what I'm going to order for you and I will order for you. And then I will, I will send you the money to cover it.

So that I only go through, I only go through drive-throughs about six days a week. So hopefully we could work it out on the schedule that way. Perfect. Absolutely. Perfect. All right. The first thing I wrote down as I was watching the game on Friday night was Ken Icky Aquano pass protect.

So I'll just start there. Can he? He can now, are we disappointed by what we've seen so far? Certainly, because when you look at the Panthers and the overall team, almost everything is new, but the offensive line. So we didn't have any, there was no discussions about the worries of the offensive line outside of right guard because he's coming off an ACL and he's not back yet. But besides that, left tackle, left guard, center, right tackle, we had no discussion.

All our discussions were about the weapons and Bryce Young and the staff. We had no discussions on the offensive line. So the fact that they struggled at this point, it's not, I wouldn't ring alarm bells. It's worth noting that it's not good, but Icky last year had one of the past, the best path block rate grades in the past decade for rookie left tackles. And we've seen a lot of left tackles come in and struggle and then get good. He came in pretty good. And now he seems to have a little bit of a preseason form, but I trust that when it gets real, I think Icky is going to be fine. I don't know exactly what transpired, but I wouldn't freak out about it just yet.

Now when the regular season starts and it happens, then we can have that discussion probably at a drive-through line again. But right now I think there's reasons for concern, but I don't have him way high up on my list. Uh, but just, just so people understand, I have, I have a curiosity about the, the hush puppy breaded, uh, fish strips at Arby's. I don't, I just, I'm not sure that's good or not. I'm not sure that, that it's a P anything a hush puppy is definitely appealing.

Uh, real quick, a bit, make this a thing. When you, when you spot something that you say, I don't know how that would taste to send me and I'll go order it and I'll let you know how it is. That's a perfect system. That sounds awful. That sounds awful, but it's a delightful way. Like, I'll try it. Yeah.

Hush puppy is great. The whole fish, I don't know. There's a lot going on there.

There is a lot going on there and not all of it. Good. I admit, um, my, my only caveat to, uh, what Icky wanted to do last year, we're talking with Travis Hancock of WFNZ in Charlotte. The only thing that, uh, again, I'll, I'll draw this caveat to what the stat you brought out is that they were almost exclusively a running team last year. So the, the, it's not that they were, that passing was an element of surprise.

Uh, but it became a little bit easier to pass protect when you were, you were so run heavy. Cause that's the only way they were ever going to be good last year. Uh, and I'll just leave it at that. I hope that what we have seen from what we saw Friday, uh, is just a blip. Here's your worry, Adam, about the offensive line. And it goes through the entire team. It's not just the offensive line. And we have to remember, and a lot of our listeners, you know, it's still, it's still in a rebuild.

It's still all new and they weren't going to come out looking at the 89 Niners. But as far as the offensive line goes, the biggest concern with them and the whole team is the depth of the team, right? They, they, you know, some teams you could say that for a lot of teams, but for this team right here in Charlotte, the Carolina Panthers, they really can't afford to lose anybody anywhere.

The only real deep position, as weird as that sounds, would probably be quarterback because Andy Dalton will be considered a really good operational on backup quarterback, but everywhere else, whether it's wide out back, the offensive line, the defensive line, the linebackers, the secondary there, they, they, if a rash of injuries happens anywhere, man, that's, that's my biggest worry. And he thought when the twos played the giant twos last week, the twos, that's, that's a big concern. Let me get, let me get to the defense since you, uh, I don't know if you were talking about that, but I was concerned about the ones on defense. And now I know that defensive, the defensive line was basically not there, but it was pretty, pretty easy for Daniel Jones and company to go straight down the field. The, you know, two times early against Carolina's defense, the coverage was just, I don't know, maybe they was, it was extra vanilla, but the coverage was not great. Receivers were wide open. I was concerned about that too.

Yeah. You just have to hope, you know, people will say, Oh, it's an excuse, but I do believe that Brian burns, Derek Brown, and Justin Houston, not being in there. It does impact a lot. Now the secondary, you know, Dante Jackson gets hurt in the game. And that goes back to the depth where he's coming off the Achilles and the secondary. And we know how gruesome of an injury that is to come back from Japan, but are you ever quite the same? Some guys are, and he leaves every game injured now credit to Dante. He comes back in most of the time, but there's always something he's dealing with. And even he at his spot, then you move up CJ Anderson up a level, and that's not where he is at his death.

He's belongs more in the rotation of guys. So yeah, that was not good from the secondary, but for that, if they get carved up early with Brown and burns in there, then we got a massive problem. But for right now, I also felt like the giants came out almost like they script the whole thing.

They had a plan. They knew what first 10 plays they're going to run. And the Panthers are kind of like, yeah, whatever.

I'm not saying that's good per se. That felt like the Giants were going through that. Like they were in the regular season almost with Daniel Jones and those weapons. Like they, they went through their best plays that they had for right now. And the Panthers, I don't think ever really even planned for what they were going to do for Freaky. Yeah, there, there was a little bit more misdirection from the Giants than I anticipated, but I also don't know that that's their entire offense anyway. So it's like, I don't think they have a lot of, yeah, they don't have a lot of just off tackle to the left. It seems like they've always got something a little bit different plan, such as the kind of, I guess the game plan of Brian Dable.

The other thing is, and I use the Bill Belichick test here. How many players on offense to, if you are a, an opposing defensive coordinator. So if you're, if you're running Atlanta's defense on the 10th, who do you have to shut down? Yeah, that's been the big question all off season. And I kind of liked the setup of the wideout. I think they did the best they could with getting Bryce young. They had to give up something and it was DJ Moore.

Every, every, and it goes, again, it's a depth thing. Every guy that they have in there feeling, um, DJ shark, Harris Marshall, when he's in there, uh, Mingo, who I think is going to get better and better as it goes along. They all do. They all have their unique traits that fits something, feeling possession first, that tight end. We know he can do DJ chart down the field, Mingo and, and Marshall Jr. Kind of catch the ball and run through you type guys.

They all do something a little different. Miles Sanders out of the backfield, I think catching the football is going to be a big deal. He had 50 catches as a rookie in Philadelphia. They have so many dudes there.

They went away from that. He could be another safety valve, which should not back there out of the backfield. They all do something a little different. Now again, Marshall hurt. And when you take one guy out of that equation, it's the best thing about the receiving group is it's all of them that are there. But when you start to take a couple of guys away or one guy always got a concussion. There's not a lot of guys after that, that can do different stuff.

You don't want it to just be feeling and shark and away we go. You have to have four or five guys in the mix there. And Bryce Young will go through his reads. We see that he will go one, two, three, four, and find those guys. But when you start an eight, when you start to take guys away from that, there's not that one, a there's not that Jefferson, there's not that digs.

And that's, that's the next step. I think in their offense is eventually finding a guy that can be that big game breaker guy. All right, before we let Travis Hancock go at T bone, W F and Z on X.

Again, I always sound kind of weird saying it that way, but that's what it is what it is now. Do you expect Miles Sanders? We mean, Frank Reich's already said the starters are going to play some during the final preseason game on Friday at home against the lions.

Do you expect Miles Sanders to be among them? Yeah, that's a great question. That was one of our topics today. You can go.

Yeah, you can go either way on it because I'm one of the belief at this point. Hey, man, just when you're running back now that the lifespan is so short. He's so valuable. Just, you know, whatever.

Don't don't worry about it. But the offense has been so bad for this particular game. Some fans think it's a must win game here in Charlotte, believe it or not. Oh, my gosh.

A must win game? Yeah. NFL media analyst Mike Lombardi is already talking about Frank Reich getting fired in the preseason.

That that's the whole thing. No, he's not. Yeah, he yeah, he's gone after David Tepper for the higher. Why isn't David Tepper under fire? Oh, Michael Lombardi has gone completely off the rails. Is he auditioning for a job? Well, his son was on the previous staff.

So we wonder, there's been a little bit of everybody is he back? But the point of that is, I would normally say don't play Miles Sanders. But for this game, they need to show something on offense. And if they have to put him out there, even for a drive, I'm not opposed to adjust. They have to come away feeling good about themselves as a first team offense, not a field goal.

We don't need to see him go Kurt Warner 99. But they need to, they need to go into the next couple weeks feeling good about themselves. And if that involves Miles Sanders for a drive, then I think we kind of may have to see that.

Yeah, I mean, I can see a drive. But I also think the most important thing is getting Miles Sanders to September 10, 100% healthy. And practice is a little bit different than even a preseason game, a friendly. But I do think we're going to see the first half starters play for pretty much most, if not all, the first half, which I think they probably need to establish something. And I think the running back position, the two guys they have back there could probably, the other guys could probably be okay. And maybe we see a little bit more of Laviska Chennault in that role, if he's healthy.

But at this point, you're just trying to get to the opener healthy. Travis Hancock, next time. We have, we have Michael Lombardi ripping Frank Reich into preseason. And Chris Sims went off the other day on his podcast.

What up? Albright Young should have been the number. I mean, what are we, what month are we in? It wasn't, it wasn't just Chris Sims going off. It was, was it Johnny Muscles?

Johnny Muscles was talking to Chris Sims. We were actually going to play that on the other side of the break. I cannot wait for people. If people haven't heard that, man, it is the greatest, dumbest thing that I have heard in the month of August. At this pace, we may have you talking hurricanes by about September 10th at this point.

That's where we're trending right now. Jacob Slavin on the program tomorrow, Travis. So I'm all set. All right. Next time we're going through an RB drive-through. You got it, man.

Take care. Travis Hancock, WFNZ in Charlotte at T-Bone, WFNZ from Mac and Bone in the morning. Yes. If you haven't heard Chris Sims and Johnny Muscles and Chris Sims' wife questioning Bryce Young. No kidding.