Panthers lost to the Bears 16-13…

Dig the vibe on a Friday. Everybody feelin' good? Yeah! Everybody feelin' great. Oh yeah, we're feelin' awesome.

You know what did help though? There was free fried dough in the kitchen this morning. Oh was there? Because it's Friday donut day. Is it?

I did not know that. That's good. Every now and again they bring in these delicious donuts and that always makes a panther loss that much better. Does the donut include bourbon? Because I get the feeling that Panthers fans kinda need it. We do. Is there anything stronger than bourbon? Let's try that.

I'm sure. Grain uh, we have grain donuts. Uh huh. Exactly.

Whole grain donuts. Don't light any cigars around it though. It might be a little dangerous. Uh man, yes last night and today are, I mean they're breeding, they're a petri dish for stupidity.

A petri dish for stupidity. Because I know, I don't even have to listen to what's going on on uh TV and in some circles on radio this morning. I know cause it's predictable.

Because for some reason, even people who should know better apparently don't want to. Yeah. We all know what we're gonna talk about here. And this is going to be the lion's share of today's show. What are the top, Duke plays a good basketball game tonight against Arizona.

That might be mentioned at some point today. Because hey, it's the first week of college basketball, Duke's gonna play a good game. It'll be fun to see Caleb Love coming back.

Yeah, look at that. Over under 30 points for Caleb Love. Actually, not 30 points, 30 shots. Over under 30 shots for Caleb Love.

Which Caleb are we gonna get with this one? I wish him the best man. It didn't work out.

It worked out for a couple years, didn't work out. Obviously last year. Um, the, so we have that. State plays a game tonight too. Carolina plays this weekend.

Again, these are not great games. But the Duke-Arizona game's at least worth saying. Hey, Duke plays Arizona. Um, we're gonna find out about Michigan today. We'll get the notice of whether or not Jim Harbaugh should board the plane to Happy Valley.

Michigan is playing at Penn State. The prevailing thought is that the Big Ten is going to suspend him. I am curious what Michigan and Jim Harbaugh will do in response to that because they have essentially threatened legal action immediately. If he's suspended for two games, is Michigan going to wear that, just say, all right, I'll just take the suspension?

Or are they going to do what they have threatened to do, which is fight this legally? Don't know. We'll find out all of these things hopefully within our three-hour block today. And after that, ACC football. We have Duke-Carolina tomorrow, right? State Wake Forest, good rivalry weekend here. Also Florida State, Miami. I remember when that was the game of the year every year.

Yep, it's good matchups. And we're going to talk to Roddy Jones today. So I'm not going to ask Roddy to explain why the Panthers are maybe the worst offensive football team I have ever, ever, ever, ever seen.

Garbage. The Jets are embarrassed watching the Panthers. The current Jets are embarrassed watching the Panthers. We know what the Jets' problem is. The Jets' problem is they have no quarterback.

That is, I know people don't understand this, but some people, not all people. Bryce Young is not Carolina's problem. He is not their problem. Even though he looked ugly yesterday, he's not the problem. We'll explain why he has looked so bad. And he was bad last week. This week was not his.

This is not on Bryce Young. He's going to feel it because we all saw what happened, right? So there's college football. There's a college basketball game. We have another week of the NFL. And boy, Sundays will be even brighter, sunnier, because we have options of other games. Yeah, once we get past last night.

Right? But we all know where we're starting, so. Let's get it started. Let's get it started.

Let's get it started. Panthers lost to the Bears. 16-13. They did not score an offensive touchdown. It was the punt return. Smith-Marsett bringing it back.

I don't know. Lots of yards. Touchdown. Yay. It was 7-0. Yeah, Panthers love doing that. Hey.

Come out hot early. Well, I don't, did they come ahead to return the punt? They did last week, too. They returned a punt. Right. And they scored a field goal after, they punted also, but then they kicked a field goal.

They led 10-3. Yeah. Into the second quarter.

Exactly. They said, all right, not bad. Not bad. Eddie Pinero missed a 59-yard field goal that would have tied the game with about minute 50 left.

Not shocked. Yeah, I mean, it's a 59-yard field goal. Yeah. Right?

It was probably, it probably was about five yards short. Yeah. And it's also Eddie Pinero. Right. It's Eddie, but it's fine. Eddie Pinero. He missed a 59-yard field goal.

You're not necessarily supposed to make those. Nights like that, I miss Graham Genno. Let me just say it. Yeah. Well, meanwhile, Graham Genno for the Giants missed a 30-some-odd-yard field goal that would have not iced the game against the Jets, but forced the Jets to score a touchdown with no time in the clock. So he missed an easy one. And look, guys miss field goals. Kickers. Panthers defense played very well last night. I would point out that the Bears also stink. Still, as injured as Carolina is on defense, key players, no Brian Burns, right?

Nope. I thought they were very good on that side of the ball. They should be proud of their, of their effort.

But it was a 16-13 loss and we all saw the ugliness of it. Here's Frank Reich on why it feels that there's been no, no progress. All I would say is we're not, you know, we're not scoring points on offense. We got to be better. I believe we will be better.

Yeah. I mean, that's, that's how I feel. And listen, this is when we say, I don't think we have any unrealistic expectations that, you know, it's not like we're saying, we talked about this before, scoring is down. We just got to figure out how to play well enough to win football games. That's really what I'm concerned about is winning. I'm not worried about how many yards or what the stats are concerned about playing winning football. And I don't want to get caught up in the stats. I want to get caught up in winning. And, you know, we've had too many close games where if we play a little bit better on offense, we win. I mean, that's true, by the way.

And it wouldn't bother people as much. For instance, was the opener against Atlanta down in Atlanta, right? Where, I mean, Bryce throws two interceptions that are bad interceptions. Well, one was definitely a bad interception. The other was that might have been a mistake by the wide receiver, whatever.

But the. They could have won that game. They could have won a number of the games that they play. And nobody would care as much about the statistical putridness of their offense.

If instead of being two and eight, they're two and eight. Correct. The Panthers.

No, I'm sorry. One. I gave them a win. They didn't get to say one.

I've only been to one game. The Bears were two and seven. The Panthers wanted to instead of being one and eight. If the Panthers were three and six, they'd still be bad. Right.

But it wouldn't be as horrific looking at their statistical data. Exactly. Anyway, Frank Reich, not inspiring confidence is speaking of confidence. Is he worried about Bryce Young? No, I'm not worried about Bryce's confidence. I think he is. I think he's mentally tougher than a lot of rookie quarterback.

I mean, for as a rookie quarterback, considering the start we've had. I don't think I see any retreat in him. That's not the right word. I see aggressiveness. I see resolve.

I see determination. And I feel like he's taking ownership of it and he's taken more ownership of it than he should. You know, because it's a it's a group effort. But the quarterback and head coach are always going to be at the center.

That's just the way it is. And so it's just a credit to him for taking responsibility. For the whole offense. And when the when, in fact, it's it's not just can he be better? Sure.

And I can I be better? Absolutely. Can we all be better on offense?

One hundred percent for sure. We could try better as an offense. We'll get to that.

What I mean by that in a minute. What is ailing the offense now, Coach Reich? You know, today, it wasn't a question of beating ourselves today. We just didn't execute at a high enough level. And, you know, we knew the Bears had a good run defense, you know, although early I thought we ran it acceptable. But, you know, we just we just did not execute today. And so that's what's disappointing to us as coaches and players. And so we'll have to look at the film. I remain confident, you know, and it's like I was just in the press conference.

Where's your what? Why would you be confident? Well, because I know the guys we have and I know the coaches we have. And and this isn't you know, we're not talking, hey, we don't we're not saying that we have to be the most prolific offense in the NFL. But we've lost a bunch of close games where all we have to do is play decent on offense and we win. We win multiple games.

And so that's the first step. We're not saying we got to go out and light it up and have 500 yards and 50 points. We're playing good football. Our formula to win is play great defense, play good special teams and go out there and score 20, 20, 23, 24 points with the way we're playing and defensive special teams. We're going to win a lot of football games. And so that's that's what we have to do on offense. OK, but at what point are you going to figure it out? Like this is the frustrating part because here we are.

We're halfway through the season and you look like you are regressing. You are not program. I'm sorry. You looked at you. You looked at me and I was silent, right?

Because I haven't gotten past the very beginning of that statement. I nearly stopped it. When he said early on, we ran the ball acceptable.

What do you consider acceptable? Right. Were you watching your own team? Did you have a carry longer than four yards in the game? Other than Bryce. Other than Bryce Scrambles. Two early scrambles, right? For first downs.

Wow. I get I lose my mind because the game sometimes can be boiled down to being really simple. We can talk all day long about third down conversions. Afters were three of 15 on third down.

They didn't even try on a couple of fourth downs that they should have. We're going to get to that. I have a poll up. We're going to tell you what the poll is in a minute. The most important down of any football game is first down.

The most important. Not even close. I don't care what your third down conversion rate is. Tell me what you did on first down. Would you like to know what Carolina did on first down? Do you know how many times they snapped the ball on first down, Victoria?

How many? 22 times. Do you know how many total yards they had on 22 first down snaps? Probably like five. 15! You were even more pessimistic.

I watched that disaster. 15 total first down yards. It was actually 35 as a net or gross but then you had to take into account back to back penalties. Right. That made it first and 30.

Exactly. Here's the poll. Here's the poll question today. Which of these three decisions was your favorite from the coaching staff? Was it punting late in the second quarter with a 10-3 lead near midfield? You're at the 48 yard, your own 48 yard line. Fourth and one.

Did you love that one? At one and seven, man, we're just going to play a conservative here. Yeah, why not? Because we just might be able to sneak into the playoffs if we just try to win this game like 13-3. Don't want to risk it. So you punted the ball on fourth and one.

Gosh, my blood pressure is way up already today. You punted the ball on fourth and one basically at midfield and the Bears, led by Beauty Pageant, still drove it into field goal range and kicked the field goal. Right.

They still did that. Of course. All right. So that's one decision. The other decision now it's 16-10. You've got a fourth and five in the fourth quarter.

A lot of time left. Fourth and five, fourth quarter. You're down six points. You're at the Bears 45 yard line. Well, it's a punt. Yeah, why not?

What are you doing? What are we trying to, are we trying to win a football game? You know, you have to score points to win, right? But we're just trying to get to 22 or 23 points a game. Yeah.

So that's the other poll option for you. Or we mentioned first and 30, right? It's still 16-10.

It is. On first and 30, did you like the handoff for three yards? Who didn't love that? I was so mad about that. Because I think in their brains they thought, well, this play is designed to get 20 to 25 yards. Yeah, because they've been doing that this whole game.

They're able to do that. And I watch this and I go, why is anybody criticizing Bryce Young when we should all know the problem? And a few weeks ago I said, you fire him if you want, but I will tell you this. This is not the coaching staff or the head coach. This is not the head coach that will get this franchise where they want to be.

I am positive of it. Well, now you can't even keep blaming Frank because Thomas Brown is making the calls. Why are you making that call, Thomas?

I don't know who makes the call or if Frank Reich is directing him to do certain things, right? But I am not going to say that it's not Thomas Brown's fault, okay? On first and 30, down six points in the fourth quarter, you are running the ball. Now, the stupid thing is that they actually picked up a first down. They did.

Right? They actually picked up a first down, which blows me away, but they did. But they ran the ball on first and 30, down six, when their season is irrelevant. And they're so great at running the ball. And on top of that, just to rub lemon juice in the paper cut, the team that you are losing to has added incentive to beat you because your draft pick belongs to them. Yep. So now, at one and eight, the Bears are like, well, at worst, that's the second pick in the draft. Uh-huh, yeah. It's like they won twice. They had the truck, they ran over us, then they backed up and ran over us again.

Thank you. And now let's hear from Chris Canty from Unsportsmanlike about Bryce Young. I just wish that Bryce could give us a little bit more. I get that things aren't ideal around him, but that's why you're the number one pick, and I can't help but watch that game through the lens of they took him over C.J.

Stroud. But then also keeping in mind that the Carolina Panthers owe the other team that was on the field last night their first round pick, which is likely going to be the number one overall pick. So now it's not only comparing Bryce Young to C.J. Stroud, but it's also comparing Bryce Young to Caleb Williams and Drake May. And what's the likelihood that Bryce Young's career arc is going to be better or higher than all three of those quarterbacks? It doesn't feel great right now, and so it's hard to say that the Carolina Panthers didn't miss on this, even though it is a really small sample size of Bryce. Small sample size, and as my friend Steve Logan likes to tell us, and he's told me this for I don't know how many years, quarterback is not played in a vacuum. You are beholden to an offensive line that allowed you to be sacked three times and pressured 20 others. It is beholden to a wide receiving corps that dropped three passes and with very few exceptions, maybe one exception did not run a pattern longer than 10 yards down the field.

Nope. How did they even allow Michael Strachan or Strachan, whatever his name is, to run? It was like a 30 yard pattern. How did that even happen? Why was that allowed? Great question. This coaching staff has been neutered.

I don't know who did it, but it's neutered. They have no guts at all. No, none. It's so frustrating to watch, not from the standpoint, not just from the standpoint, that they are utterly inept. You know what else? They do lead the NFL in one offensive category.

Oh boy, it's not a good one. False starts. 18 of them. 18 false starts. I think only one yesterday, though. Yeah. It might have been more.

It felt light. They were too busy doing other dumb things on the field. I don't know. But really, it comes down to first down. You know, they completed like seven passes for three yards or less yesterday. Yeah. Ryan Fitzpatrick talked about it in the postgame show on Amazon. He said, why do they complete so many passes with the receiver facing the quarterback?

He's like, where are you going? Yeah. There's no yards after catch. They're all right at the line of scrimmage. Those are no gains.

None. They completed a pass for no yards. They completed a pass for a loss of a yard on first down. Those were both first down plays. Just run the ball at that point. Yeah.

What are we doing? Just run the ball. You can't throw to set up the run because part of me thinks that they feel like they have to do it that way. But you can't throw to set up the run by throwing passes that essentially are runs.

Exactly. What does that say when the Bears can read your plays? When it looks like the Bears know where you're going with things? Well, Jim Harbaugh used to be a Chicago Bear.

Maybe the Bears have electronically scouted the Panthers. That's it. Wait a second. That's legal. Yeah. How about that? In the NFL, it's legal.

Can't do it in practices, but you can go scout games. It really isn't. It's not that complicated.

Shouldn't be. But the more you watch, the more you realize that this team is, maybe I gave it too much credit for being like two years away from like being like two drafts, two full drafts away. Oh, yeah, absolutely. There is almost nothing redeemable on the offensive side of the ball other than Bryce Young and Adam Thielen, but Thielen's 100. So what are we doing? This is such a poverty franchise. It is so hopeless. Like it just feels like as a Panther fan, it just feels hopeless. And it always comes back to, oh, Bryce, this isn't it.

Right. So everybody who says that, look, I am not here to tell you that Bryce Young is going to be a superstar. I think he'll be very good.

I think he'll be an outstanding quarterback. But you may not know the players that C.J. Stroud has around him, but every single one of them is way better than everybody around Bryce Young.

Yeah. From the offensive line to the wide receivers to the running backs. I mean, their first down plays yesterday were putrid. Atrocious. Three yard run.

That's actually one of the good ones. Pass for one minus one yard. Three yard run. Four yard run. Pass for three yards. Pass for no yards. Incomplete pass.

Four yard run. Whoa. Uh oh. Holy cow.

Now we're moving. By the way, they needed a defensive penalty to get a first down on that try. Exactly. Two yard run. Then that was the drive where they punted from the minus forty eight up ten three on fourth and one. Incomplete. A run for minus six yards. That's hard to do.

Yeah. We're going negative. Incomplete pass. A fourteen yard pass to Adam Phelan. They completed consecutive passes for double digit yards in the game. Wow.

They're growing. An eleven yard pass to Terrace Marshall on third down. And no, that was a second down pass. And then a fourteen yard completion to Adam Phelan.

They were both short passes but they gained twenty five yards combined. That was like, oh boy. Like living it up. We're like a real pro team. It's gross. The offense is gross. The coaching is awful. So. David Tepper is going to have to make a decision when this season is over.

And. If I were David Tepper. Seriously, if I were David Tepper, I would I would bring in. How many coaches do they have? I'd bring in. Maybe I keep the defense, all the defensive coaches and get rid of everybody on offense.

I'm not kidding. Thomas Brown, you might have to be collateral damage here. Josh McCown might have to be collateral damage.

Jim Caldwell. Because right now they don't operate like they have any idea what's going on. Well, and then my biggest concern is Tepper is making the decisions when it comes to that. Right. I definitely don't trust.

And he's gun shy, probably because he knows that the criticism of him is fair in that he is like he's the moth to light. Yes. Right.

So I would understand if he goes, no, I've done that too many times. We're going to stay the course. All right. But boy, you better draft your way out of this. And I don't know how you're going to do it with without a first round pick. Yeah. So a while you.

Well, no. No first round pick this year. You have your first round pick in twenty five.

Yeah. Just good pick. You don't have a second round pick.

Twenty five. But you have the first round pick in twenty five. They have major, major personnel issues. And that that's the that's the problem. The problem is not the quarterback. The problem is they need probably four new offensive linemen. They need five new wide receivers to two running backs better than Chuba Hubbard and tight ends. Other than that, other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln? All right, we'll come back. Luke Ticock is going to join us on the other side.