What can the Carolina Panthers do to stand a chance against the Miami Dolphins?

Alright, let's talk about the Panthers. What about... Speaking of making you cry.

Oh my gosh, well done. What about the way Frank Reich has approached Bryce Young kind of bothers you? I feel like he doesn't trust Bryce Young and that is in, like, in and of itself is the problem. Every time something goes wrong they want to take something off his plate. They want to make it easier for him. They want to add more training wheels.

When I believe, you know, the best way to learn how to stay on your bike is to fall and skin your knee and then you're not gonna do that again. Right. It just, it seems like the, you know, the way I describe it is there's four people in every franchise that need to be in alignment.

The owner, the GM, the head coach, and the quarterback. Right. And there's a discrepancy between all levels with the Panthers right now that you can almost cite just by looking at it. Like, Bryce Young and Frank Reich are not on the same page. There are moves that the GM could make or couldn't make to help Frank Reich and he's not making them. Like, you know, I think you either have to play Jeremy Chin or you have to trade Jeremy Chin. Right. So if the GM's not trading him and the coach isn't playing him, somebody needs to... Yeah, what happened there?

18 snaps last week doesn't make any sense to me, especially with injuries in the secondary. And then obviously the owner, the meddling has been been talked about a ton. So the alignment is out of order. They need to go to the mechanic shop. I've been...

Very good. Or the chiropractor. I have been of the mind, and I said this last year at the time, when they traded Christian McCaffrey, which I advocated for. I mean, Brian Burns should be going next. As it turns out, they were offered two ones and a three by the Rams. Now the one wouldn't have been last year's draft. It would have been this year and next year's draft, because the Rams don't have any more. But the Rams offered 2024, 2025 first rounders and I think a third rounder last year for Brian Burns. I mean, I like Brian Burns, but Brian Burns and let's just say Micah Parsons.

For a different stratosphere. Yes. Well, the thing that bothers me about that is that there's clips of Tepper and again, going back to the misalignment, there's clips of Tepper this offseason saying we don't have to spend as much on wide receiver because Bryce Young is such a distributor. He can get the ball to a bunch of different guys so we can spend on defense.

That's fine. If that's your strategy, we'll buy into it. But then you have Brian Burns and you don't get the contract done. So that's the owner saying we need to spend on defense and the GM saying we don't have the defense to spend on. It's another one of those disconnects. Either Brian Burns is a guy that you protect, you turn down that Rams deal you just brought up and you pay him, or he's a guy who you accept the Rams deal on.

They're right in the middle. You can't be turning down big deals and then not willing to pay him. He's either worth it or he's not. I don't think he's worth it. I wouldn't pay him 30 million dollars. Just like if you're the Giants paid Daniel Jones 40 million dollars. I could, if I were whoever was making the decisions for the Giants now, I don't even remember. Shane.

Yeah, yes. The old Bills assistant GM. If I were that guy, I would have spent 40 million dollars any other way than giving it to Daniel Jones. I think Daniel Jones is okay. And that's it. I ain't spending 40 million dollars on.

Okay. That's I mean, the market for quarterbacks is bananas, but I think we knew and they knew that Daniel Jones is what I call situational, which means he's he's as good as what you put around him. So do you pay 40 plus million dollars a year to then have to surround him with good?

Or do you pay 20 million dollars a year and then use that extra to go? You can't surround him with enough good. If you're giving him 40 million dollars, he needs to he needs to be the last piece of your puzzle. If Daniel Jones is on a rookie deal, that's good. See, this is where the Panthers blew it. And I do want to talk about the actual game and Panthers playbook. We'll talk about the game.

I know that. But this is where when they made the trade, when they traded up from nine to one, my like, is this the time to do it? That was my feeling is that if you're trading up from nine to one, then you are trying to add the quarterback piece to what you've got. And what they did was they got the quarterback piece first. And now they don't have the capital to get everything else they need, because I think they probably need a minimum of seven pieces on offense to make this whole thing work. It's and if you're doing the quarterback first, which is what they maybe not first, but, you know, top half of the priority list. I think it's first on the offensive side.

What do they have? Well, you'd like to think they believed in Niki Iquanu at the time because it was sixth overall pick. Right. So let's say they got the quarterback second. They got the left tackle first, quarterback second.

You need to bring a quarterback that's an offense in and of himself. That's where you get the Anthony Richardson's, the players with a little bit more of their own ability. Bryce Young is a guy that, you know, in the best world, takes all the point, the players around him and levels them up. Yeah. Going from, you know, a three out of 10 to a four out of 10.

You level them up technically, but you're still four out of 10. You know what I mean? So he becomes special, at least you're hoping he becomes special when you surround him with, you know, seven eights and nines and he turns them into eights, nines and tens or even above. Right. The problem is he's he's he's not an offense in and of himself like some of the other guys we've seen. And obviously the mobile quarterbacks, the Lamar Jacksons and guys like that. I asked this question of a couple of people a few weeks ago. Adam Thielen is going to go to the Pro Bowl, but we don't have a Pro Bowl anymore, right?

He's going to go play dodgeball. Exactly. Adam Thielen is wherever they're going to do it, Vegas or wherever, he's going to be there because he has been unbelievable. Other than Adam Thielen, how many of Carolina's wide receivers would any team in the league who was competing for the playoffs, legitimately competing for the playoffs, how many other than Adam Thielen receivers or tight end, how many of those players would be attractive to a good team?

It's. I mean, even Adam Thielen, like he's not putting up those numbers in another where there's more competition for targets. His Pro Bowl is going to be partially by default. I think Hayden Hurst has has some some attractiveness.

Obviously, he was on the Bengals, so they were pretty darn good. I think if you want to get real picky, Laviska Chenault may intrigue someone as a gadget player. Right. You know, if you need someone to back up, Deebo Samuel and Brandon Naiuk that has that weird skill set of being able to run the ball a bit. But stuff in there.

That's the problem. I mean, there's some good players, good teams that had DJ Chark or at least one of them, the Detroit Lions, they moved on from them. A good team had Hayden Hurst. They moved on from them. Good team had Miles Sanders.

They moved on from him. So, you know, you're getting the sloppy seconds a little bit. And that's the problem with this team is that the more I watch Miles Sanders and by the way, ball security has been a problem for him already. And that was out of the injuries. But availability has been a problem for him. So I actually think Chuba has played better.

Agreed. I think one of the bigger, simpler or more simple adjustments they can make is simply get Chuba the ball more than Miles. I think Miles Sanders is the luxury.

He's in space. He's catching passes. He might have a few more big plays. Hubbard's more likely to get you a four. And right now they can't pass on four.

Like if there's a four available, you take it and you say thank you for that offense. What is success? I mean, it's professional sports. So success is winning at Miami. But what are you expecting from Carolina this weekend? The most important thing for the rest of this season is Bryce Young's development.

And the thing that I want to see develop the most is pushing the ball downfield. Adam Thielen's awesome. Adam Thielen's going to have 11 catches to get to 100 yards. That's not the best. We might need 14.

Exactly. Right now, Bryce Young's averaging like 5.2 yards per attempt, which is tied with, ironically, Joe Burrow for dead last among starters. I want him pushing the ball downfield. And even more, a stat that encapsulates this, the longest completion of his season is 30 yards. That is the shortest, longest, it's kind of an oxymoron, the shortest, longest completion of any starter in the league is 30 yards. Success for me is if he protects the ball first, because you turn it over a lot.

But that's every quarterback. If you protect the football and have two completions of more than 30 yards, I'm not asking for much here. If you have two completions of more than 30 yards and you protect the football, I'll be happy with Bryce Young on Monday.

And that's the most important thing. Your defense might give up 60, but if you can do that, I'll be pleased. I don't think they'll give up 60.

I actually think that this, I think they'll be more competitive in this game than I think a lot of people believe. I was with you until I saw some of these injuries coming down. Safety's injured against the Dolphins, scares the heck out of you. That's true.

That's bad. I said this a couple of weeks ago, the Panthers can learn something from the Jets. Against the Chiefs, they let Zach Wilson throw the ball down the field. So the worst thing you can do, because we started off with how Frank Reich doesn't trust Bryce Young. Certainly seems that way.

Right. And I personally think he doesn't trust the offensive line, which therefore he doesn't trust Bryce Young to deal with that. He was okay with letting Andy Dalton throw the ball down the field. Now Seattle isn't as good as some of the other defenses they play, but you have to let him throw. And when the Jets decided to say, you know what, Zach, we're going to stink if we don't let you try to play. So we're going to let you try to play.

You're going to make some mistakes, but maybe you'll make some plays. They look totally different offensively when they let Zach throw. And the only reason I don't care, I keep saying this, I used to be a Jets fan, but the game against the Chiefs was interesting. We watched that game. I didn't see their game against Denver, but I do know that they let Zach do some things.

They have to let Bryce play because he's never going to learn. The gaming in Seattle was appalling to me because I think they set the league record for wide receiver screens in a game. I don't know what it is, but I'll bet you they threw 20.

I mean, you can go look at the pass chart, the little next gen stats. You could tell anytime that he was reading blitz, their default was checked to the wide receiver screen to the right. It wasn't even just a wide receiver screen. It was a wide receiver screen to the right. So the little green circles for catches, red X's, there was just a mass of green circles to the right slot receiver.

So there's obviously a check there. But I agree with you. The thing that I keep saying about Bryce Young is if you're worried that struggling for a month is going to ruin him, he's never going to make it anyway. Because at some point in time, every quarterback is going to struggle for a month for two months. And if that's going to ruin him mentally, which is what everyone keeps saying, oh, he's going to get David Card or, oh, this is going to ruin his development.

I hope you didn't draft a guy number one overall who doesn't have a little mental fortitude and toughness to say, hey, I can struggle for a week or a month or two months, and I'm still going to be confident in myself. It's like, if you struggle for six weeks, do you forget you on the Heisman? They should put it on the front of his car like a hood ornament.

So when he's driving in, he sees the Heisman. He's like, oh yeah, I'm pretty good at this game. He'll be fine if he struggles a little bit. Just trust him and maybe he won't. Maybe he won't struggle. Maybe he'll level up or maybe he will struggle and then he'll learn.

You got to let him sink or swim. Well, even last week, I mean, they lost the game, but I thought Bryce did a bunch of good things. On my show, we do something called the Bryce-O-meter, which is our confidence. After last week, it had been going slowly down in the wrong direction. After last week was the first time it moved in the right direction. Yeah, we've seen some positive signs. 41 attempts.

You have to learn by doing. They finally let him do something. So now I feel validated. I mean, you're more of a football guy than I am. I'm a dope. I'm a hockey guy.

I get excited when you agree with my cane stake. That is Tim Donnelly. You can listen to him on the radio in Raleigh coming up right after us. He will physically throw me out of the studio. We need a video of that. All right, we'll do it. We'll make it happen. We'll have to do that. Thank you very much.