Where are the Panthers after the bye week?

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We can recycle it right here at America's number one battery destination. Restrictions apply. First of all, you have the greatest bedside manner of any human being I know. You and Scott from the mailbag. Scott came at you with both barrels and you let him rant. You edited for brevity because you're the only guy who can ramble on. And then you explained some points. You went back at him for some incorrect statements. I want people to go read it. I'm not even going to tell them what was said.

I thought you handled that beautifully. So as we get into this, he had some valid points about the team. There's a lot of frustrated fans. Where are we after the buy week?

They are 0 and 6 is where they are. This thing has not gone the way anybody expected. And I think, you know, again, it's one thing to be disappointed and frustrated with the thing.

The thing that bugs me is not recognizing that this was always going to be a little bit of a building platform. And I think there's specific things that take you from building and maybe being 2 and 4, 3 and 3 at this point in the season. Because I think regardless how you thought this was going to go, still with the Dolphins and the Lions in that chunk of schedule and a big road trip to Seattle, I think three wins was probably the ceiling.

That was probably the best case scenario, I think, in any fair estimation of what was going on. Schedule eases up considerably after this point. Only three games left of the last 11 against teams that have a winning record right now. So, you know, it's a little more jury of the peers. Second half of the year or second two-thirds of the year. Or the second and third-thirds of the year, I guess that would be.

At any rate, I was never very good at math. That's why I got into journalism. But I think that because you say things in the preseason like, hey, the division's there for the taking, people expect that you're going to take it. When the owner comes out on draft night and talks about Bryce leading a team to multiple Super Bowls, I think people thought he meant soon.

The one thing that I believe, and it's one of those personal value sort of things, Frank Reich talks a lot about diversity of thought. The easy thing to do, if you wanted to put a coherent, together, offensive style for a new quarterback on the field in week one, what Frank would have done is hire a bunch of his buddies that he's known for 20 years. But he went out and deliberately hired a bunch of coaches from different trees, from different systems, because they wanted to grow something around Bryce Young for the long term. So I think it's been a little Tower of Babel here for the last six weeks or so, while Thomas Brown coming out of the Rams, Sean McVeigh's system is trying to build a run game philosophy with Frank's passing game, big no-huddle, big Philly system, moving around quickly kind of background. And you're talking about two pretty opposite ways of doing football. And so getting those two things together and getting everybody on the same page has taken a little bit longer than I think people expected when you had all these big name coaches coming in together from the start. Darren Gantt, panthers.com is joining us.

I'm going to talk about something you just said in just a second, but I want to go back to the schedule and the fact that it eases up some. For a lot of people, there is a lot more riding on this particular game against the Houston Texans than there would otherwise be for a team that is sub 500 coming in to play a team that is winless. And that is, of course, is because the quarterbacks were selected one and two in this draft. So I have told people over and over and over again, it doesn't matter what CJ Stroud does as long as Bryce Young is your quarterback in terms of he is the guy going forward. He is a good quarterback. Doesn't matter what CJ Stroud does.

How do you how do you convey that to people? Because there are people who are making this out to be you failed bowl if CJ Stroud outperforms Bryce Young. Well, I failed as a journalist if I allow my readers to make a single game, a referendum on the next 10 years of any particular franchise's direction. I mean, that's not how it works. I mean, it's how I think the popular culture has taken us. We want our football and tick tock size bites, I guess we want to make decisions.

You know, we want hot takes to declare this is the best ever right now today. And that's not how sports is supposed to work. Thank God some of these people aren't baseball fans because 162 games a year would set them on fire.

I just, I think because of the limited supply, when you get 17 of these things, we tend to overstate each individual one of them. I, you know, again, thank you for making one of next week's points for me in the mailbag win or lose. You know, the result of that football game has no bearing on the future of Bryce Young or the future of CJ Stroud or whether they made the right decision or took the wrong quarterback or any of that kind of stuff. You know, we could get three years down the road and fight decide that CJ Stroud would have been the better choice, but nothing that happens on Sunday at Bank of America Stadium at one o'clock.

Get your ticket to Ticketmaster.com is going to change that. Darren Gantt, Panthers.com is joining us. Just as an aside, it's a good thing that the Panthers didn't choose Anthony Richardson because whenever you take a small quarterback, there is that risk of injury. So you got to take a big guy. So he'll be safe. Like Sam Newton was.

Exactly. It's like, it's unbelievable how people feel horrible for Anthony Richardson. I mean, Adam, we did, we did a podcast at the beginning of the season or when the schedule came out and somebody asked me, you know, Hey, what's the stretch of the schedule you're most excited about.

And I said, are you kidding me? It's, it's weeks eight, nine, 10, where you get to see Bryce play CJ Stroud and Anthony Richardson and Justin Fields because that's, that's how you decide. I mean, that's a barometer for kind of where the progress is. And certainly this thing's gone in a way nobody expected in May with, with Bryce. But, you know, I think, you know, nobody's happy with 0 and 6.

Nobody's, you know, content with where they are as a team, certainly. But I think as you look at this thing, six, six games into the year, it's reasonable enough sample size. Here's what happened on offense.

I don't have enough dudes that can get open and catch balls and make plays. Here's what's happening offensively. They were without their two starting guards, you know, one game into the season for the next six weeks. They went through last year with two combinations of starting offensive linemen in 17 games. They did that in two games this year. Injuries up the middle. You know, teams have been able to pressure Bryce.

Yeah. I think on the other side of the ball being so beat up with so many guys on injury reserve, losing Shaq Thompson in week two and J.C. Horn was a killer. I mean, you can't take your defensive signal caller and your best cornerback off the field in week two and expect the next 16 to go swimmingly. That's just not how football works. So I think the combination, as I mentioned in the mailbag, this is like a game of Jenga.

And it was built on a very shaky, you know, for now platform because there were so many new parts, but so many new people, so much new, new, new that when one thing goes bad, you're not deep enough to be able to withstand some of that stuff. So I think it's probably in hindsight, we should have probably adjusted the expectations down a little bit. But still, obviously, they're not happy about the way this first six weeks went because several of those games were winnable.

I mean, if Bryce hangs on to the ball against Minnesota, they win that game because the Vikings were not scoring that day. I agree. I agree. By the way, I am now understanding just how popular the game Jenga is because yesterday, and I'm failing to remember who brought it up, one of our guests brought up Jenga. This is back to back days where apparently America's party game is like I thought maybe we would be talking more about Connect Four or Pictionary.

But no, it's Jenga. Darrangantpanthers.com is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show. So progress from this segment has become a trivial pursuit. Oh, man. Very good. All right. I can't come up with a suitable response to that. I did it. Oh, you're giving me a headache, Darren. All right.

Let's talk about double trouble here. Thomas Brown's call and plays now, which I find I'm I'm glad for that. I think you wrote about it at Panthers dot com. We asked the old guy that will give maybe Frank a an opportunity to concentrate on managing the entirety of it all without dealing with the minutia. He should trust Thomas Brown.

He hired him as his offensive coordinator. But let's talk about the progress of Bryce, because I think that we have seen more progress from week to week to week to week to week. I think Bryce has demonstrated that they should let him take a couple of more chances down the field because I think he's successful when he pushes the ball down the field a little bit. Yeah, I think so. And I think he's also shown a capacity for being able to move and no huddle to be able to, you know, get in some kind of rhythm.

I mean, that's a little bit of what he did. And I think it's going to be interesting to see everybody's going to listen, man. This game this weekend is going to become a Rorschach test for a lot of things, not just right. But for Thomas Brown as well and what this offense is going to look like. So listen, here's what we know Bryce is good at. He's a good rhythm player. He's good.

He's good anticipating where receivers are going to be in throwing catchable balls and taking run after the catch. You know, we didn't anticipate Adam feeling turning back into Justin Jefferson and all of a sudden. But there's surprises every year. But I think there are things that they can do to maximize what Bryce is good at.

And, you know, working on those things as we speak, you know, in a walkthrough, in a practice today, getting stuff together, you know, putting in a game plan. So I think it'll be curious to see where it goes this week. But Thomas is. Listen, man, Thomas is a bright guy. He has we're going to have a story up on Panthers dot com.

I got the stone a little bit later today or first thing in the morning about Thomas and the teacher preacher background of his parents. So they kind of got him to this place. He commands a room. He knows how to talk to people because he was one of them. And he's got that vibe. I mean, he's got that leadership vibe. If you watch his press conferences, it's easy to see little hints of Mike Tomlin and stuff like that in there.

I mean, and Sean McVeigh as well. He knows how to talk to football players. And I think it's going to be interesting to see how he develops in this role, because he is a super bright guy, exudes leadership. We'll see how it all comes together on the field. But I think, you know, again, for the long term, hiring Thomas Brown as your offensive coordinator when you had no background with him at all was the thing a smart and secure person does. Not a person who was going for immediate gratification. All right.

Final thing for Darren Gantt at Darren Gantt on Elon Musk website, which is still Twitter dot com. It's not X, though. I'm never going to call it. I'm not ever going to call it anything else. Sorry. It's quite it's quite all right.

Health. How close are the Panthers to getting some key players back? I know Austin Corbett has been activated. Can we assume he's going to play on Sunday? Is J.C. Horn somewhere down the road? Hopefully soon going to get on the field. So Panthers fans can see their franchise cornerback at some point. I don't know if it's going to be this week on J.C. will say I would anticipate I think there's a pretty good chance that Austin Corbett makes his debut this week.

I don't think I'm giving anything away. It's been a long journey for him, which we've documented in great detail at Panthers. But Austin is he's ready. And I think, you know, they're going to put him through a couple of days of practice, put him in pads today, obviously, and see how all that stuff goes. But he's checked every box.

He's hit every landmark in the rehab and recovery. And this was always kind of the time they thought. I mean, listen, they've got a lot of dudes, you know, who are going to be on injury reports. You know, if they could get Xavier Woods back, that would be a big benefit. Have it, you know, again, that's the thing with defense. It's not just Shaq and J.C., they've been out there running around without their two starting safety, both of whom are old heads who were brought here because they're so smart and keep everybody in the right place.

And X and Von Bill, I think X is probably closer than Von. Don't know on J.C. whether that's a this week thing or next week thing, but probably sooner rather than later. And and then they'll just, you know, start to become whole again. Hopefully they can keep the guys up front like Derek and Brian healthy and, you know, able, because when the secondary is in the state, it's in.

You need a little more pressure up front. So they're getting there. I don't know that it's going to necessarily be this week for all of them, but they're trending in the right direction, as Frank likes to say. Darren Gantt at Darren Gantt on Twitter. There you go. There you go, my friend. Two teas for extra talent, my friend.

I will talk to you again very soon. You know what? The extra tea is for turnip, because after going to the state fair last weekend and realizing only one person entered premium turnip at the North Carolina State Fair. This is my path to riches. I am now going to become the turnip king of Mecklenburg County. The Abe Frohman, the sausage king of Chicago.

That is Darren Gantt. All right, man. I'll talk to you later.

Take care, buddy. I mean, I had no idea. Only one one person entered a turnip turnip travesty.

What is going on? State Fair. I did see huge pumpkins, though. And I mean, pumpkins. Right.

I'm just going to probably just go to break here before somebody gets in trouble. At Grainger, we're for the ones who specialize in saving the day and for the ones who've mastered the art of keeping business moving. We offer industrial grade supplies for every industry with same day pickup and next day delivery on most orders, all backed by real people ready to help so you can get the right answers and products right when you need them. Call click Grainger dot com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.