Initial Thoughts on the Panthers' Loss to New Orleans

Thoughts following the Panthers home-opener.

The Panthers hosted the New Orleans Saints on Monday Night Football and fell 20-17 after a stiff defensive battle.

The Saints led just 6-3 at halftime as both offenses struggled to sustain success and traded turnovers. In the second half, the defenses still dominated, but the offenses were able to open things up enough to find the endzone a few times.

Here are a few thoughts from the game:

The defense is generating pressure

Brian Burns and company weren't giving Saints quarterback Derek Carr any room to breathe on their way to 4 sacks and a handful of pressures.

The secondary was exposed a couple times, but still provided more than enough time and disruption to allow the front-seven to hit home.

Even more impressively, the defense was able to do this without captain Shaq Thompson who was carted off the field with an ankle injury early in the game.

Through two games the defense's stamina is being put to the test by an offense unable to sustain drives, but Ejiro Evero's unit is doing their part and then some to this point.

The passing game has a DJ Moore-sized hole in it

There will be plenty of overreactions to Bryce Young's counting stats through two games. Yes, there are some concerns there for sure. Are they anything that can't be attributed to growing rookie growing pain? Not for the most part. It is going to take a lot more time and football before there can be a clear consensus one way or the other. 

What we can be sure of to this point is that this offense is seriously lacking in playmakers.

One of the biggest reasons Young has struggled so far is because of the lack of separation generated by his receivers. The Saints were able to smother with man defense tonight, and the quarterback was feeling the pressure because of it.

If you just look at the box scores, the receivers significantly improved from last week. The struggle there is that much of that yardage was gained on during the final offensive drive of the game where the Saints had already taken their foot off the gas and were happy to let the clock run. 

Obviously Young would not be the Panthers QB without the team shipping former stud wideout DJ Moore to Chicago because the pick used to draft the rookie came from that trade. With that said though, I'm not sure how the Panthers or their fans will truly get to see what Bryce Young is capable of until there are some major improvements to his weapons.

Is it just me or did the offense run the ball on first and second down a lot?

Okay to be fair I have not looked at the stats to actually confirm this one at all so don't hold me to it. 

With that said- and building off of the last observation about the lack of weapons- this offense has been about as vanilla as possible through two weeks.

Run. Run, third and long. Pass, incomplete. Punt. Rinse. Repeat.

Having a rookie signal caller probably has almost everything to do with this conservative approach, but one can't help but wonder if the approach has been a bit too conservative.

The playbook is going to be smaller, that's fine. But being a rookie quarterback is hard enough. Some creativity and confidence building through success could go a long way on multiple fronts.

Implement more pre-snap motion. Use some rub concepts that open up receivers for simple looks past the line of scrimmage. Pass the ball on first down.

There will surely be more to come for Reich, Young, and the offense as a whole, but the sooner the better on that front from what we've seen so far.

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