Two Situations that will help Bryce Young and the Panthers offense this season

So the Carolina Panthers lost 21-19 preseason game number two. I don't care. They lost to the Giants.

I don't care about the final result of the game. There are two situations that stood out to me. Two situations where a young offense, again, I say young because you have Jonathan Mingo, young guy. Bryce Young, obviously young. Icky, still young. Chandler Zavala, young. Brady Christensen, still young. Still an overall very young team. Two situations stood out offensively for the starters that are gonna pay dividends for them in the long run.

Now I'll explain both of them to you. On the first drive of the game, we saw a 10-play 75-yard drive, went 4 minutes 55 seconds for the New York Giants. Touchdown, seven points. They just moved the ball right down the field against the Panthers defense.

Okay. That next offensive series, you cannot go three and out if you're the Panthers offense for a couple reasons. One, your defense is out there chasing. When you're out there for 10 plays defensively, you are chasing the other team. That wears you out real quick.

Now I understand. Well, some people are like, well their offense was out there for 10 plays. It's different because when you're moving the ball at your tempo, when you're controlling the tempo of the play and you're moving forward, it's not as taxing on you as defensively where you're just chasing guys all over the field because they're just picking you apart passing. It's defensive linemen rushing upfield, then have to sprint back, line up again and go. Defensive backs, having to chase guys throughout the secondary. That wears you down. Okay, so you need to give your defense rest.

How do you do that? Controlling the football. So one, controlling the football gives your defense rest and it also gives your defense a time to adjust. Alright, what are we seeing here? Okay, these are something that we, this is something, hey, we saw this on the scouting report. This is what they're doing. Let's make sure we're doing what we're supposed to do. So the defense has time to make adjustments. Also, going three and out, you put your defense right back there out there on the field and you put an offense that's in a groove right back out on the field as well. So you can go from down 14 nothing to down 10 or even, I'm sorry, down 7 nothing to down 10 nothing or 14 nothing real quick and you as an offense have been out there for three plays. Three plays.

I'll bring up a prime example of this. The Bills and the Steelers played each other in preseason game at Heinz Field this weekend. Steelers go down, they marched down the field, capped it off of their opening drive with a 62-yard touchdown run. You know what the Bills did? They went three and out, punted the ball away, Steelers got a long kick return to the 25-yard line, one play touchdown. For you know, it's 14 nothing and your offense has only been out there for three plays. I get it, it's a preseason game, but the Bills have their starters out there for both those drives.

Same thing with the Steelers, alright? That's, that's the thing I'm trying to bring up is that you have to make sure if your defense gives up a long drive on that first possession, you can't back it up with a three-and-out offensively. Okay. So that's the first situation. That's just, that's just, you have to just be in that situation to learn from it.

You can't really replicate those kinds of things in practice. Second one. Red zone execution. We wanted to see, Victoria, the offense sustain a drive in this game against the Giants. Because against the Jets, they went five plays, three-and-out, then three-and-out. Yeah.

That's all it was. Okay, let's just, let's sustain a drive. 15 total plays ends up in a field goal. But we talk about red zone execution. Last season, the Panthers were 12th in the NFL in terms of red zone touchdown percentage. So the number of times they got inside the 20-yard line, how many of those possessions resulted in a touchdown? It was like 56%, 57%, somewhere in that range, but they're 12th in the NFL. Not bad.

Not bad, actually. I'd be in the top half in the NFL in red zone percentage. But you get first and 10 just inside the 12-yard line. You get a run down to the 10.

Second and nine at the 10-yard line. This is what happens next. Sack.

Icky Kwanu misses an assignment. Kevon Thibodeau, sack of Bryce Young. Then we have a delay of game. Then we have a holding call. Yeah.

Before you know it, you're at the 32. Yeah. Like you went backwards.

You can't do this. 22 yards, you went backwards. Like, you gotta at least give yourself a shot. Yeah. And the thing is, on the holding penalty, we saw a nice deep out route to Hayden Hurst. Beautifully thrown ball. And this was actually right after he got sacked and we had the delay of game. He gets hit again by Thibodeau. And he also got pressure up the middle. The guy that Chandler Zavala was holding still ended up getting to Bryce Young. So he gets hit right as he releases the football. So props to Bryce Young for standing in the pocket and delivering a beautiful out route. Don, I think the five-yard line. Yeah. It was a well-thrown ball.

It was nice to see Hayden Hurst go up there, high point the football, come down with it. You know what? In that situation, if I'm Frank Reich, I'm like, you know what? We're inside the five-yard line. Let's see if we can get a touchdown. Why not? Yeah, why not? That's what season's for.

Exactly. But you denied yourself that opportunity because you went backwards. Now, I do know, okay, third down and 20-something, whatever it was, at the 32-yard line. Third down. Actually, it was actually third and 30, I think, actually, at that point. It was third and 30.

They got the nice completion just on the underneath route to DJ Chark, who picked up a big chunk of yardage after the completion because the Giants are like, sit back. We'll just force a field goal. That's okay. Yeah.

Why not? So yeah, you picked up chunk yardage on that, but you had to settle for a field goal. You got yourself to the 10-yard line and you went backwards, backwards, backwards. It's unacceptable. Those kinds of things. Exactly.

Exactly. It's unacceptable. Those, again, going three and out after giving up a long defensive drive, can't do that.

You get inside the 10 or get to the 10, you got it. You can't have, again, mental mistake, giving up a sack. Hey Carolina Panthers fans, Chris Lee and Dennis Cox here. We're excited to offer you all the inside information on your team with the newest member of the capital broadcasting podcast network Panthers playbook twice a week. We'll keep you updated on your Carolina Panthers.

We're talking about locker room insight, exclusive interviews, and of course, in-depth looks at all of the Panthers wins touchdown Carolina Panthers playbook, download and subscribe today at wrelsportsfan.com or wherever you discover your favorite podcasts. I'm not sure who the delay of game really is on. I don't know if Frank Reich should have called a timeout in that situation. Maybe Bryce Shunk should have called a timeout in that situation. Not entirely sure who necessarily that's on the delay of game. Maybe it's just on the team as a whole. Maybe.

Maybe it's not assigned to one person. Maybe it's Frank Reich also realized like, ah, we just got, took a sack. Let's also not go backwards five more yards. Let's call a timeout and make sure we're all on the same page.

Baby, that's on Frank Reich. But nevertheless, backwards, backwards, backwards. You can't do that. You'll lose games. You don't want to lose games on dumb mistakes either. Because even if you're in that situation where, okay, second down and nine, okay, you went for a pass play. Let's say you get down to the five yard line. All you need to do is get to just inside the two yard line and you're at first and goal to go.

So you didn't have to score necessarily, but you denied yourself that opportunity. You can't do that in the regular season. By the way, Bryce Young, I thought overall in this game looked really, really good.

But this brings up the one big question, Victoria, the question a lot of people are asking, not only before the season, but really are asking right now. Are they good enough around Bryce Young? Like around Bryce Young, are you good enough? Because Bryce Young for what we've seen looks like the real deal. Size, whatever.

The dude's taking some hits and he's bouncing up. I understand there's the long-term play on that. But he looks like the real deal. Yeah. Are they good enough around him? There's some Harry Douglas of ESPN, formerly of the NFL, played for a long time with the Falcons if I remember correctly. Harry Douglas on why he likes Bryce Young, but the confidence around Bryce Young isn't quite there. I'm feeling personally good about Bryce Young.

The surrounding and supporting cast, I don't think I'm feeling good about. One of the things I think that has plagued just about all these rookie quarterbacks is their communication with pass catchers, whether it's their wide receivers, tight ends, running backs, and being on the same page. Also, this offensive line for Carolina, they're going to have to be better. But I think the lack of team speed or I should say a lack of speed that they have on the perimeter is making me a little nervous about Carolina from an offensive standpoint. And the communication and those guys been on the same page.

So I think when it comes to all these rookies, they're going to have to dig deeper with their communication to pass catchers and understand that their voices are going to have to be heard moving forward. Okay. Legit. There's that word. Communication. Communication. Yep. Got to get on the same page. Have to. Hey, talking. It goes a long, long way.

It really does. And then this goes back to, of course, the offensive line. This has been a concern.

Let's solidify a good offensive line so that Bryce can cook and he can see the guys down the field like just broken record. Yeah. Well, this is also sometimes on the staff about how you scheme and game plan to work around that deficiency.

Yeah. You know, if it's play action or sometimes actually it was nice to see them when they actually did spread and go five wide. And this was actually on the third down of fours, the very first drive of the, of the play of the game for the Panthers was third down in four. They actually use their same personnel with three wide receivers, a tight end and running back, but spread them five wide. And the giants actually only rushed three and dropped eight. It was main coverage, but they use their DNS to kind of take away the quick slants. They had a safety high, but Bryce Young was able to sit back there and had time.

Wow. Because, because it was just a three man rush, because again, it was, it was a scheme thing. And this is what Jonathan Mingo just didn't fail to continue to run his route, even though Bryce Young made the right read. So again, those are little mistakes and stuff that go, eventually go a long way. Now there's a lot of correctable mistakes. Sure. And that's what preseason is for. Why it's there. Yes. It's why it's there.