The Carolina Panthers are officially NOT making it to the playoffs

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BTW, Voigt River, Hibby by law, C terms and conditions, 18 plus. Will Brinson, senior NFL writer, CBS Sports.com, Pick 6 podcast moderator. He joins us as he always does on Mondays because I haven't spent a lot of time on it. Let's talk about first, the Panthers finally elimination loss at Tampa. At least they ran the ball. I think we try to find some signs of progress. They ran the ball effectively. Can I hang my hat on that?

Sure, if you want. Yeah, I mean, Tampa is one of the, I mean, and I think they're a little bit healthier this past week, but I mean, Tampa is one of the worst past events in football right now because of just the injuries that they sustained. And yeah, if you're going to have a game where Bryce young could swing it around. Yeah, but they can't protect them.

They proved that they can't protect him. So yeah. Right. All right. Yeah.

They, they do it. They do a worse job of protecting Bryce Young than Boo Corrigan does at protecting the ACC. Am I right? Uh, it was not their best look was not, uh, it was not the Atlantic coast conference. Best look only, only, only, only NCC can find a way to get blamed. Right? Exactly. Exactly.

Hey, real, real quick about the Wolfpack, uh, by the committees, by the committees, uh, you know, logic, if we had the 12 team playoff this year, state's in it. No. Uh, yeah. Like the hottest. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Five in a row.

The way they played. Yeah. They're in. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't, I mean, I think that, um, if you were, you were ranking, like they, you know, taking like current, like current form and including that and like helping your roster, like state would probably be the number one team in the ACC right now.

Definitely ahead of Florida state. Yeah, for sure. Um, yeah, I mean, not to, I'm sorry, I knew there was no way I could not derail you there.

Um, but the, uh, but just a good job there. Um, but the, uh, the, the papers are, it was just not very good. And I think it's gonna, I don't know.

I think it's, I don't, I think it was like, it's, it's just, you see it from every corner now, right? Like I know Peter King wrote about it today. Uh, you know, he hadn't written about it. Uh, he, he already written, you know, it was weak and calm for NBC or whatever.

And then he broke it down. I mean, and I, and I wrote about last week, I've seen it, everybody's written about it. I mean, it's, it's pretty clear that it's, you know, that, that it's widely acknowledged as a David Tepper problem. Uh, I've been saying this year, we've been talking about this for a month.

Yes. And you know, like each individual whim is not David Tepper's fault or each individual law, excuse me, it's not David's ever fall, but collectively, when you sort of build out whatever you build out and you don't have the patience to see things through and you start to look at the list of coaches, not saying Frank Reich is Jimmy Johnson or, um, you know, any of these, you know, holiday coaches, but there's plenty of coaches who have really poor records early on in their careers with a new team, with a young quarterback. And it takes time to turn things around now. Like I just think the problem is if you're, if you're hoping for a quick fix to the NFL, it's going to take more than like the quick fixes in the NFL that happened because of like massive, like aggressive coaching moves are typically, uh, more along the lines of like when Jim Harbaugh took over the 49ers, that roster for San Francisco was in a really good spot.

And, uh, and just to say, Peter King's come one more time. I thought I, this is something that I had missed previously, but when Carolina undersea works last year, they had a, they were running the ball 61% of the time. And then they go out and it was like, well, you have this hot stretch in the, in this way of coaches are dangerous, man. And I mean, just like you can, you can just get hot under a dinner room coach because everybody's sort of like, all right, like the season's lost, like, let's just play a little loose, play a little free. Don't want to get fired and, you know, everybody evaluate everybody's job.

Want to, want to, want to make sure I don't get fired, you know? And so you have these, you know, you just have everybody going out there and playing with a different, a different type of football. Well, because of that, because of that stretch under Steve Wilkes, that basically allowed Carolina to convince itself, David temper or whoever else is at the top that they, that they were a quarterback away from being a good team. And I think a lot of us fell for it to a degree too, where it's like, my hand is up as somebody who did not fall for it. Okay. Let me put it this way. The Atlanta Falcons are leaving this division at six and six right now, Tampa Bay, the team that Carolina just, I mean, could it be, I mean, absolutely. Just don't give up that one place. Don't give up that play to my heavens. Right.

Don't give up that. But even, even so it's 21 18 late in the game, you have third and one. And, and for some reason, when running the ball is working on third one, the priority has to be getting a new set of downs.

Yes. It, it, there's no other priority there than getting a new set of downs and getting to where you have, you want to get to a spot where you have four plays to continue your trajectory to try to get a field to trigger the touch in the winter field goal tie. And yeah, I mean, they, they, they, they fell to that aspect. I just think it's, I think the other thing too, is like, when you go there and quarterback away and you're, it's like, all right, well, you've been pounding the ball, like Donka Foreman and Cuba Hubbard. And you're, when you're, you're in this bad division. So you think it's all like, they can't, a lot of papers could be in the mix for this division. I mean, they've lost a couple of close games. I'm not saying that they're, they're not good football team at all. They should have beaten Atlanta to start the season.

But like, yeah, exactly. A lot of NFL teams tumbled their way to five or six wins. And if Carolina was like, had three wins right now, you'd be like, well, they stink, but they're, they're in the race. Do we need any more proof than the jets have won four times?

Right. And you had the bears game. They could have won. You had the coach, they said, I mean, I'm sorry, the Colts closer to 75.

And she could have beaten the Colts at home and the Frank rank revenge game could have been the Falcons. It's going to be the body. The ball bounce is funny. I don't think it's, it's not bouncing Carolina's way, but they haven't done the things they need to do to set themselves up to get the bounces. No, look, there's a lot of things that are wrong about the Carolina Panthers.

Obviously everything flows down from the top. David Tepper has proven to be a, an impetuous delusional owner who thinks his team is significantly further along than it really is. Uh, I do not have an emotional fight here because I am not a Panthers fan.

And sometimes it takes eyes from outside of that to say, you know what, and maybe I'm, and maybe I'm leaning too far the other way. I think this, I think the roster offensively is the worst in the, in the national football league, the jets at least have a couple of playmakers. And I think some better offensive line pieces who might not be healthy right now, uh, then the Panthers do when they're fully healthy. I'll take Garrett Wilson. I'll take Breece hall.

I'll take very Tucker. Um, I, I think there are a few pieces on the jets who are significantly better than anything the Panthers can put out there when they're completely healthy. Um, but the jets are horrific offensively and they're poorly coached, I think. And I think those two things are true about the Carolina Panthers. They are horrific in terms of personnel and also poorly coached. And the owner thinks that we can keep changing these things, rearranging the deck chairs, uh, and somehow the ship's not going down, but the ship is going down again.

And it's all because they have not ever said, you know what? We're pretty far away and we have to somehow fix that. And they're not fixing it. And one of those problems too, you know, you talk about the 60, 40 run passport from last year, like the end of last year and the final entity books is dressed as interim coach. Well, you know what that made that offensive line look like a good run blocking unit, like a unit that you could build behind a unit. You could put a young quarterback behind and be fine. The problem is when you, when you drift back to quote unquote normal splits for the NFL teams run, you know, on, I think it was like 40%.

It's a 60, 40 pass one split. So any quote unquote normal NFL offense is going to pass more than half the time. And when you take an office that the office of line that is very questionable and pass protection, but able to block run block against, you know, bad run defenses. And you're able to sort of just like, you're like, look, if he stinks, we don't have any quarterback play. We're just going to try to get downhill and run on teams and play great defense.

Um, you know, that it's not a formula that is guaranteed success because there's, there's much more variation and review to your variants and all that. But, um, when you, when you change that split and you're now asking these opposite alignment to pass protect 20 plus percent more of the time, especially if you're losing all the time. So you're having to throw more, you know, we saw it from jump street against the jets in that first preseason game where it's like, this is not a unit. I think it's, uh, if you call him, he's given up the fourth most pressures of any offense to football. Bradley does was like, great. That was the worst center, according to PFF. I mean, there's a lot of giant concerns along that offensive line relative to being able to pass the tax.

And the truth is, is that the, the best way, the best way to protect a young quarterback is to give them, it is Ryan here. And I have a question for you. What do you do when you win? Like, are you a fist pumper, a wheeler, a hand clapper, a high fiver. I kind of like the high five, but if you want to hone in on those winning moves, check out Chumba casino at Chumba casino.com. Choose from hundreds of social casino style games for your chance to redeem serious cash prizes. There are new game releases weekly plus free daily bonuses. So don't wait.

Start having the most fun ever at Chumba casino.com. Great running game. And they never, they never leave, you know, with a franchise whose motto is keep pounding.

I didn't think that meant to the defense against your rookie quarterback, but apparently that's the way they looked at. Keep pounding, keep pounding Bryce young into the ground. The investment that we traded, uh, up eight spots to get to number one for, uh, it has been so poorly constructed that this was very predictable. And David Tepper is the reason for it. I will not in, in no way will I ever believe that it wasn't Tepper's urging that had them go from nine to one. They hired a general manager. I've said this repeatedly.

I'm like, I don't know. I mean, Scott fitter is widely renowned as a trader. He loves to trade, but he comes from the John Schneider school of general managing or front office management, whatever you want to call it and personnel. Right. And they, they, that's a trade downfall.

Yeah. You don't become trader Scott or whatever the hell his name is, uh, whether he said something involving trades, you can't become like a super, like a super aggressive trade guy by trading up all the time. Cause you just run out of draft picks. Like in order to be someone who's known as someone who loves to trade, you trade down and you can see that across the board, um, with his approach to the NFL draft with two major exceptions. One last year when he went up or two years ago, I guess when he went up and traded, uh, a future third round pick, like a top 100 pick, which at the time, Carolina paid the fence screened at me for questioning to get Matt corral, because there was a quarterback run of like these questionable mid-tier quarterbacks in, in that draft class, he panicked. He went and traded for, for Matt corral. And it was very clear that David Tepper was like, we need a young quarterback. Go get, go get me one with Sam Howell was sitting there for the taking of the fifth round.

Right. Um, and then this past year when he traded up, you know, he traded a ton of active to the bears, like way, way, way, way early. But you, you, they hadn't even done the evaluations of the quarterback and he made that move.

If anything, the move would have been, you discussed the trade with the bears. You let the Texans pay whatever they want to pay to go. Cause if you believe you like, Oh, well there are three quarterbacks. So they really matter. It's like, that's fine, but you need to let the bait, let the Texans trade up one spot and then go because David has never talked about that. And especially when she's like, we're going to go to two and you know, we just get strapped.

How are you going to choose? Right. Yeah. At some point they knew that the Texans were considering going to clearly like, I didn't talk about it till right now actually, but clearly that indicates that they've been told the Texans were trying to get to one with the bears and then the bears would be willing to trade with the Panthers to let them come to two. Right.

I need to go back and parse that exact language that we said, but I think that makes sense. And they didn't want to wait till they paid the price that the bears wanted for the number one overall pick to leapfrog the Texans that David Tepper being unable to say, to exercise any amount of patience. And you give up DJ more, who would have been a huge help to brush on, you give up, you know, future second round picks, which would have been possible offensive lineman. And you know, you give up probably the number one overall pick this year, which is.

Yeah. Oh no, it's going to be, it's going to be the number one overall pick this year. Will Brinson is joining us here. Let me just ask you about two more games before we, before we have to say goodbye. I thought it was interesting that San Francisco went into Philadelphia as the favorite in spite of the fact that there was a two game gap in the, in the records and Philadelphia has managed to win tons of games against really good teams, including a win in Kansas city. So Philadelphia would have been justified to wear the disrespect banner, except, and I put, cause we do top five bottom five every week. I have been saying this for the, almost the entire season, San Francisco is the best team in the sport. And when, when Trent Williams is at left tackle and Deebo Samuel is on the field and they're healthy, I don't think there's anybody close to him. That doesn't mean they're going to win a Superbowl.

They can, you can lose to anybody if you don't play well, but that was, that's the best team. And boy, did they smack Philadelphia. Yeah. Remember Deebo Samuel went on a, my buddy Adam Shines, uh, XM radio show before the Superbowl and said, or before, or maybe it was after the NFC championship game was like, we would have won by 30 points if we'd had a quarterback. Right. Um, and I think, I think he took that to heart the way that he was playing, the way that he was running. And he makes a difference.

Trent Williams is a massive difference maker. Yeah. Lane's lane Johnson.

Wouldn't play it. Right. Like Johnson was, I mean, Fletcher Cox was out there. He was hurt. Lane Johnson, Fletcher Cox, banged up regardless, whatever it is. Those two guys are injuries matter in the NFL. And it's not always, I think in 2023, it's so easy to get caught up in field position injuries because of, you know, offensive football and just, you know, just the way that, you know, just the nature of the beast, the red zone there, you see touchdowns being scored, but like Trent Williams is maybe the most important non quarterback in the NFL. Cause like that's how that's more important than some quarterbacks. Um, that's how valuable he is. He, you know, he is an unbelievable run blocker. He is able to get the second level in Cal Shanahan scheme.

Um, you know, he's physical in incredible past. He's just going to stop at the alignment of football. And you know, there's a reason why they, you know, they, the Shanahan's brought him into Washington and then made sure to get him in San Francisco regardless of the cost.

Uh, you know, he, he makes a huge difference. And I agree with you when that team, when that team is healthy, they're the best team in football. And I think the schedule kind of bears out where if the lions stay hot, they could steal it too. But it's, it's, it's a four horse race in the number one seed. The NFC Dallas is kind of right there now with the Eagles to a little bit, um, then, and I think San Francisco would be my pick if I was, if I was selecting a team to grab that one spot and look, you get the one spot and you get the one spot in either conference and it's a massive, massive difference in terms of your chances of winning the super bowl, the analytics bear it out. Like I think the chiefs lost yesterday, dropped them from 47% down to 15% to, uh, to get the number one seed. And I don't know if this is getting you what I'm talking about, but the, then that dropped their super bowl odds from like 17% down to 9%, according to our sports line projection models. That is the other game I wanted to get to.

So let me just say, let me, let me just ask you this, um, cause it's perfect. You knew exactly where I was going, uh, shouts and congratulations to Green Bay for resurrecting their season while nobody was watching. Uh, they are right now in the mix for the final, uh, one of the final two wildcards.

Yeah. But yeah, we have four teams at six and six fighting for two spots in the AFC. There are four teams at seven and five fighting for three spots. Kansas city is eight and four. And I think it's fair to be worried if they really can beat good teams without good receivers. Now I don't even know that I think Green Bay is a good team. And it was clear that Kansas city without good receivers, they have great, maybe the best tight end in the sport this year. And one of the best ever in Travis Kelsey, but all they have, it seems are what are tight end targets for Patrick Mahomes. They have nothing on the outside that scares anybody.

Yeah. And Kelsey's, Kelsey's the best, probably the greatest thing of all time. So who else gets stressed when it comes to looking for the perfect holiday gift, maybe you need something for the girls gift exchange this year or your office bestie that you spill all the office tea with family.

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See terms and conditions. 18 plus all the time crawling with like a word to red zone production. But I mean, Kelsey just a beast in modern tight ends. And I think he's never been up and down this year. He had some drops. He's had some questionable games.

Uh, you thought with Taylor Swift in attendance, it would be, you know, a big blow up Kelsey spot. Green Bay played great football and Jordan love is cut. It's crazy. He, and if you ever watched him in college, I think it makes a little bit of sense because he was, you know, he was, and I talked with Brian Wilson, our power and Wilson about this in the podcast last night, but in college at Utah state, Jordan love was inconsistent on a play to play basis in a week. He's very streaky. This is how he runs.

And you're seeing that right now. He was very good out of the gates for the, for the Packers. And then just had a really questionable stretch where, you know, Packers are losing a ton of games. Obviously it's awful being asked him Jordan love. They, they'll know by the end of the year of Jordan love is the guy like the GM is being asked that. And then you get the stretch of three games where he's just been awesome.

And he can, he's just, he's got crazy upside with his legs, with his arm. You can see why, you know, if you're a Packers, you know, these are the Packers you believe you might've found your third straight franchise quarterback. To me, this game was more about the Packers and I'm going to keep hitting this point home about the chiefs over the next few weeks, as we get to the playoffs, they're unlikely to get the one seed Miami. They beat Miami and they'd beaten Jacksonville. So they do have some tiebreakers there, but those teams have easier schedules. The difference there with the chiefs to me is in the past, we've said, okay, if Kansas city can get to the post-season and the defense can get hot, there are real problem for anybody. Well, what is, what is the deepest keeps playing as well as it has all year and they just need the offense to get hot, but that's kind of a scary thought.

And I know you would obviously much, much, much rather prefer the AFC to come through Arrowhead stadium to have the bi-week you get the extra week of prep. I mean, everybody, of course, everyone wants to be the one seed. If they get it there, everyone's in trouble.

If they don't, I still think you have to worry about the fact that like what is magical home just gets scorching hot for a couple of weeks. That's all it takes. And so I would be very, very hesitant to count out Kansas city yet. I know that the receiver's having a good guy. More looks like that.

Maybe a failed experiment where she writes is actually played really well lately. I didn't have a huge role, uh, on, on, on Sunday night. Marcus out of scaling is no good. He's no good.

Yeah. I'm all in that play, but there was also a holding by the cheese because the referees were terrible down the stretch. Referees weren't bad down the stretch, but, uh, Kansas city with the best quarterback in the league, uh, looks awful offensively and have, have looked awful offensively for like the last month and a half.

And I don't think that's fixable. So they're going to have to ride defense and hopefully, uh, Travis Kelsey and Patrick Mahomes will just tear it up. But, uh, I think it's, it's not, it's not a non-viable formula.

No, it's not non-viable, but it's a house of cards. It's going to come down, uh, at some point, uh, will Brinson, my friend, the one, the one thing I would say about that though, like did the chase lose the Tyree kill trade? It's like, yeah, Tyree's, he's awesome.

He's killing it. They also won the super bowl. They won the super bowl the year after the trade.

So they, I know, I know people, people are like, well, pretty nice, but she's like the defending football champions. All right. You're the man. I appreciate your time, buddy. Talk to you later.

Will Brinson, senior NFL writer, cbssports.com. Hello, it is Ryan. And I was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite social spin slot games on Chumba casino.com. I looked over the person sitting next to me and you know what they were doing. They were also playing Chumba casino coincidence.

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