November 10, 2025 • 23 mins
Today on the Happy Half Hour, Darin and Kassidy digest the Panthers week 10 loss to the New Orleans Saints, discuss the ever-changing NFL landscape, talk about the offensive line depth, and so much more!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Happy Half Hour. Hello friends, and welcome to yet another
happy half hour. That's still the name of the show,
I promise.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
It's that happiness is relative.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
And you know what, it's still the Happy half Hour,
and it's still brought to you by our friends at
Deep Eddy. And I heard all the people in the
Deep Eddy Sweet yesterday had them a big old time.
That was a good time, even though I think everything
about yesterday's game was exciting and fun and an enjoyable experience,
except for the game itself.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
It was a perfect day up until the third play
of the game, or third play of the Saints first drive.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
It just didn't go the way you wanted it to.
The Carolina Panthers are now five and five on the
season after a seventeen seven loss to the New Orleans Saints.
This one was not great from the standpoint of they
got taken out of the mode of football they want
to play almost instantly. I mean, they went down the
field first drive, scored a touchdown Rico safely, no pumps,
(01:00):
he was safely within the bounds of the celebration rules,
and then nothing else went right the rest of the day. Yeah,
don't think that's hyperbole.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I think well, so, like I said, the third play
of the Saints drive, everything kind of went downhill from there.
The first play was a great or they handed it
off Alvin Kamara was kind of wrapped up real quick.
Second play, Tyler Shuck was sacked by Trevin Wallace, and
it's like, Wow, this is really gonna this game is
gonna go exactly how the Panthers wanted to. Yep, the
third play, it looked like they were about to sack
(01:30):
him again. He did a little shoulder move, got out
of it, found a wide open Juwan Johnson Denfield was
like fifty two yards or something like that. And that's
kind of how the rest of the day went.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
And it went like that, and it went like that.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
He It's so interesting because and you know, Nick Gorton
kind of like warned us about this last week. He's
like people keep saying rookie quarterback, rookie quarterback. He's twenty
six years old.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Man's two years older than Bryce Young.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, and so he's got a lot of experience. It
wasn't at the NFL level, but he's not kind of
he's not coming in Green either, And I think you
finally saw that start to come together this was his
second start in the NFL. On paper, you go, rookie quarterback,
second start in the NFL. Just traded away one of
your just traded away one of your top receivers, your
(02:17):
left tackle or left guard. I'm sorry, Like this should
be a pretty standard approach for how to get to
him on defense, and it's the approach they took for
the entire game pretty much. Blitz blitz, blitz, pressure, pressure,
pressure that leaves you susceptible on the back end, and
the Saints took advantage of it with eight explosive plays.
(02:39):
Dave Canal has told us today, right.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
And there were things happening, and you know, we've talked
about this previously this year. I remember talking about the
Bills game and I said, you know, this enough an outlier,
you can kind of build a fence around it and
call it a zoo. And just to understand that it's
not like everything else, this one was moving down that
road because this game so many of the components, I mean,
(03:02):
to your point, Nick Gordon's getting pressure. There was pressure
throughout the day. But the thing you don't expect is
j Horn falling down. Yeah, and you don't happened twice
one of your best players to be on the ground
looking for help for officials that wasn't gonna come, and
then watching Chris o'lay run the other direction. I mean,
that's that's the kind of thing that Carolina Panthers don't expect.
(03:24):
And there was a good bit of this in the
post game. Afterward you talked to JAC. I mean, j
C basically raised his hand and said, put it on me.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yeah he did. He said, he told the defense, like
you all did what you needed to do. I messed up.
This one's on me. Respect to JC for taking on
that responsibility and ownership. It's not all on him, no,
But to his point, there were two the Saints scored
two touchdowns. Both of them were on explicit plays that
(03:52):
JAC felt at fault for and then it's hard to
argue with him. One of them you can argue should
have been OPI. But jac he also said that, you know,
George Lee has shown them in recent weeks that at
the NFL level, they're calling that less and less and
that he's got to he can't expect the call to come.
He's gonna have to play through it, and that you know,
(04:14):
it's sure, it's a little difficult sometimes because if he
plays through it too much, he might get a flag
for DPI. But you still got to play through it.
And then with the Jwan Johnson touchdown as well, I
think he slipped on that play as well, Right, he slipped, yeah,
and Johnson was and Johnson was was open for that
thirty yarder. He said he told the defense afterwards, like,
(04:37):
I'm one of the leaders, I'm one of the highest
paid guys on this team, that that's not acceptable, that
that performance for me was not acceptable. And he was like,
y'all keep doing what you're doing. I promised to be better.
And he had a little bit of like oomp to him,
a little fire when he goes, he goes, I can't
wait to play next Sunday. Yeah, Like I'm gonna make
it up to him.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
It's it's interesting watching the reaction actions to this one,
and it's fascinating. This led into the next thing in
my notes this immaculately prepared show, Rundown, I did hear.
One of the things I wanted to bring up early
in this show was the Bryce Young we saw after
that game was unlike the Bryce Young we've seen after
any game this season or any game in a long time.
(05:19):
Because Bryce was coming in hot. He walked up onto
that stage in the team meeting room, got behind the
lecter and started answering questions almost before they were asked. Yeah,
and he was ready to do the act of contrition,
raise his hand, say bad ball, bad read on me
one hundred percent. I mean, questions weren't even all the
way out before he started asking them because he was
(05:40):
so eager to do that. Bryce was hot game. We
don't see angry Bryce often, but we got angry Bryce after.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
That game, and there was You started to see it
during the game a little because he got hit on
a play and they ended up getting the guy for
rough in the passer and so it was it was
a first down, but he like he was, he got
a mad But then I think shortly after that might
have been the interception. I'm trying to remember the link
how it went.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
The bottom line is, yeah, they saw and teammates talked
about it after the game. When you see Bryce like that,
it's kind of that proof of ownership. I mean that
he is used to situations where things go well, going
back to his days at Alabama, and there is some
frustration when a game's going like that when they weren't
getting the ball downfield. I mean, the Saints basically dared
(06:30):
them to throw the ball and they weren't able to
make it happen. So Bryce was frustrated it wasn't working
out in the passing game and after the game, I mean,
he was foremost among the people making sure everybody knew,
along with the JC Horns and Derek Brown's of the world,
this ain't okay.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, And I do think it's interesting as well that
this is now two weeks in a row that we've
sat here and said, oh, I haven't seen that sort
of Bryce in a press conference before, because last week
that might have been some of the most confident and
a little like cocky but undeserved that we've seen Bryce
this week complete one eighty. But to your point, we've
never You don't really see Bryce mad that often, and
(07:12):
he was mad. Now the question is what does he
do with it? Well, does it snowball or does he
use that as fuel to kind of go out there
and then take it out on the falcons.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
One of the things people close to me get frustrated
with is my constant desire to push everything to the
middle and to keep everything even and be the same
guy every day. And even my wife, I love her,
she was not thrilled with that game and wanted explanations
for why. And you know, my short answer last night
was sometimes you get to bar, sometimes the bar gets you.
(07:43):
And that was an unsatisfying answer for my wife and
for many people. I mean, you want people to care,
you want people to be upset. It beats the alternative.
But in talking about the big swing from last week
at Green Bay was over here now this week, you're
over here three weeks ago at four and four. If
I said you know they're going to split these next
two games, right, you would take it and you're going
(08:06):
to be five and five at the end of those.
Everybody'd have been like, that makes sense, Yeah, happen, and
nobody understood. Nobody appreciated the path it was going to
take to get to that same five and five. So
expectations messed with people. I understand that, but I do
think it's instructive to see that kind of reaction, to
(08:27):
see how much anger, and it speaks to what we've
talked about. Over the course of this year, they've figured
out their how, and yesterday they saw that ain't how
yesterday they were exposed as when somebody takes away seventy
five percent of our how what do we do? And
there was no answer for it yesterday afternoon. And that's
(08:47):
why so many people were frustrated, because they've seen the
good football, to use Dave Canalis's term, you've seen the
stuff that they can make come alive, as Canalis likes
to say, and it was not there yesterday.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
And to that point as well, I would also say
Canal has seemed a little mad today. You know, there's
you can tell when a coach is defeated and you
can tell when a coach is motivated, and I think
it was a little it was more of the latter
today with Canalis, he was upset. He took a lot
of ownership for what happened and vowed to kind of
(09:21):
figure out a path forward from this because he was like,
you know, if teams are going to we have to
be able to be multifaceted, like if they're going to
take away our run game, and this is a team
that wants to be a running team, but you can't
have no answers if a team takes that away. And
there were still opportunities yesterday there was an effort to
push the ball downfield and to answer for it, and
(09:43):
the connections didn't happen. And he kind of challenged Bryce
and the receivers today like trust each other, Like don't
just say like, oh, this is the play that's called,
this is the play I'm going to go run. Trust
that it's gonna happen. And that's a big point of
it as well. The counter part to that, and what's
(10:04):
going to be interesting to see this week is like
you don't ever want to let the pendulum swing too
much the other way and go, oh, okay, if they're
going to take away the run game, we have to
push it downfield, and then you start you start searching
for plays that aren't there. I don't think that'll happen.
But just because of how consistent Dave Canalis and Bryce
(10:25):
Seanka Ben and you know, their whole thing is like
to come in and be the same every day, I
don't think they would be reactive in that way. But
I do think there will be a push to kind
of make sure that that part of the offense is
capable of carrying them. If teams are going to continue
to try to focus on shutting down Rico, which is
what the Saints did yesterday.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Yeah, no doubt about it. And Cuba talked about that
a good bit yesterday. And for a guy who carried
the ball three times in a game, you wouldn't think
you'd spend a lot of time with Cuba postgame. But
a couple of things happened. Number One, Cuba Hubbard became
the all time leading rusher among Canadian born running backs.
Did you know that?
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I did know that. I put it in a story
last night.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
I know you did. It was in inside the Numbers
on Panthers dot Com. I know you guys have already
digested all those numbers, already passing Saints legend Ruben Mays
on that list. You know who else is on the
list of all time Canadian born running backs?
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Do I get a hint?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
No, Bronko Nagersky. How about that? You be Hubbard greater
than Bronco Negersky. Just I mean, it's just science. There's
no argument with that. But Chuba was talking, and he
lived this life last year before things really got clicking
second half of the year, Cuba said, listen, when it
(11:41):
doesn't work like that, you've got to be content to
take your three to take those grimy runs and keep
running them. And I remember even in the nineties, Dom
keepers used to talk about we've got to run with tempo.
That meant running Anthony Johnson into the line of scrimmage
twenty five times for eighty two yards and we're going
to go for two point seven a carry so many
(12:04):
times we wear you out. And Cuba said, eventually that
does work. And when the Carolina Panthers have worked offensively,
that's what it's been. It's been the run game working.
It's been popping a couple runs, but it's been that
steady beat, that rhythm of the offense working, allowing things
to get open down the field. And that's when everything
(12:25):
is in sync. That's when everything works. But when Rico
daldel is held to zero pumps and fifty three yards
in a game and working, that ain't what they're looking
for here.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
And to your point too late last year, when you
got into the second half of the season, you did
see them push it downfield a little bit more so,
I think it's something that is very possible in this offense.
David Moore told me today, he said, we've got the quarterback,
We've got the play calling. We've got the receivers to
do this, it's just a matter of doing it. Last
year you had out on feeling for a lot of
(12:56):
those plays. Who steps up this year to kind of
take that role and say I'm gonna be there anytime
you need me. You're seeing Tmax still kind of figure
out some stuff in the NFL. He's so good, he's
really really good at the hard catches. They just kind
of need him to be great at the easy catches,
and you're seeing him definitely get there. But there is
(13:19):
still a little ways to go you need. You're seeing
leget try to get open more. Like there's still some
to David Moore to quote David Moore again, like all
the pieces are there now, it's a matter of figuring
out how this particular group works together. And then again,
who's gonna step up and kind of take on that
id on the un roll of being there when a
play has to get made.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. But we could spend all
day digging into the details of yesterday's game. But who
wants that, right? Not a lot of people, I mean,
because it did not go the way they had hoped.
I think, more than anything, else, and I have prepared.
I do some graphic design work on the side, not
many people.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
I was so scared about what he's about.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
That's right, I've done some graphic design work. I don't
know if you can read this on the screen.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
I can.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
What does it say?
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Cast It says two and fifteen five and twelve five
and five.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Huh do those numbers mean anything?
Speaker 2 (14:15):
That is twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Oh yeah, things are getting better, gang things. Things are normalizing,
to use one of my favorite football words, things are
normalizing to the point where the Carolina Panthers win games
and lose games for specific and tangible reasons, not because
everything's out here and woo, you know, things are getting weird.
(14:38):
The Carolina Panthers are winning and losing games for reasons
we can define and draw boxes around. And yesterday they
lost a game because the New Orleans Saints were determined
to not let Rico Dwell run on them, and they
did not. I kind of laughed. I couldn't help but
laugh when Rico was describing it after the game, and
he was like heavy boxes right from the start, Safety's
(14:58):
dropping in out the sky, it's like the Saints, you know,
and they were determined. I mean it was. It was
as obvious an intent of a defensive game plan as
I've seen. And tomorrow Davis really good at his job.
That guy's been given the Carolina Panthers paint in the
neck for a long time, Cam Jordan. They've got dudes
(15:19):
on that side of the ball still, and that's why
when you knew that they were going to be that
intent to stop the run, they had the people to
do it, and they did it. But on the whole,
when you look at what's happened this season, simply having
found that how knowing your platform, knowing what's got to happen,
(15:39):
and then achieving it as often as not. I mean, guys,
this is different. And I love the fact that the
Carolina Panthers can leave a game and people be angry
that it didn't go the way it went half the time. Yeah,
because that ain't five and twelve, and it certainly ain't
two and fifteen from a couple of years ago. The
(15:59):
progress that's been made to get to this point as
difficult as yesterday was the stomach and again my wife
and I said, I just looked at her I said
two and fifteen five and twelve five five. I don't
want to hear that right now. Nobody wanted to hear
that Sunday night in the aftermath. But now that we're
here on Monday and things have calmed down, we can
accept the fact that, okay, things are getting better systemically.
(16:24):
Now there are problems to fix in the short term.
But I was turning to Austin Corbitt about it today
just in general terms in the locker room. He was
around here in twenty twenty three when they played so
many different combinations of linemen and it never worked. I mean,
they played seven different left guards, eight different right guards.
I can say that by memory because I lived it,
(16:45):
and they gave up sixty five sacks that year. This year,
they've played eight combinations of starting linemen in ten games,
and it hasn't been this big disaster movie of a
situation with the offensive line because those guys have all
been here. I mean eight combinations on Sunday, but it
was eight combinations of dudes who have all been here
at least two years, some of them four and five.
(17:07):
So when you play a new combination of people in
it includes Zikey and Timo and Cade Mays and Austin
and Damian Lewis. That's so much better than anything they
saw in twenty three when everything was getting a little weird.
That allows things to stabilize a little bit. And I'll
be interested to see as this thing goes on what
(17:28):
that stabilization looks like.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Right, And you know we've said to talking about being stable.
We've said too from the beginning, like you've got a
coach at GM and a quarterback that are on the
same timeline, and how much of a difference that makes.
I mean, you look around the NFL just even today
and see other teams kind of having to reset, and
(17:51):
you can tell that this is still a building process,
but one that is actively getting built. And at times
that's stuff. Anytime you're kind of setting a standard and
building a team. There's gonna be games you lose that
you should win. There's gonna be games you win that
you should lose, and then it's gonna be what do
you do with the others? And I think the last
two weeks might have been an example of that. So
(18:12):
it's like, Okay, well, now you've got another one coming up.
What are you gonna do with with one. You know
how they're saying baseball like, you lose fifty, win fifty,
it's what you do with the other fifty. Even though
I know that math is not right.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
That's castiy math.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yeah, you're gonna win some you're supposed to lose. You're
gonna lose somem you're supposed to win. What do you
do with the others?
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:29):
And that starts this week. You still got a lot
of division games in front of you.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
I mean the other thing that brought it into relief
for me last night when I get home from the game,
because I tell you, one of the things that happens
to me on game days is somebody will say, do
you see what the Cowboys did? Did you see what
the Giants did? You Nope, didn't see any of that.
Saw everything the Carolina Panthers did right here in front
of this giant pain.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
I will say I was paying attention to the Patriots
Bucks score.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah, that's fair, and that one went the way the
Carolina Panthers wanted it to. But when I get home
and look at those scores and you realize, oh the
Bucks lost, Oh the Buffalo Bills lost to the Miami Dolphins,
You realize games like this because we're so hyper focused
on what happens right here in front of our face.
In the global perspective of the NFL, stuff like this happens.
(19:18):
There's weirdness every week. I mentioned last night, I woke
up Sunday morning and the Carolina Panthers were a game
and a half out of first in the NFC South
and if the season ended at that moment, they would
have been picking sixteenth in the draft. Last night when
I went to bed, Carolina Panthers were a game and
a half out of first place in the NFC South
(19:38):
and they'd be picking sixteenth in the draft. It season
ended right now, and it's just it wasn't what they wanted.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
But no.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Real yardage was lost on the whole, I mean the
stuff they're trying to improve. And again, no one has
set playoffs or anything like that as a benchmark for
this season because this season's been about improvement. This season's
been about stabilizing and finding that how I was talking about,
and that's still there. I mean, the football has gotten
(20:09):
so much better. It's hard to imagine what we were
looking at this time last year.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Yeah, I mean, if you're walking away from a seventeen
to seven loss that puts you at five and five
in the middle of the season, and you're mad. That
means you're getting to a place where you're expecting to win,
and that's what you if nothing else, thirty thousand foot view,
that's what you want.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah, and listen, it's gonna be interesting to see the
way this develops over the next couple weeks. They've got
a three week sprint to the bye week, two of
them on the road, starting this week in Atlanta. We'll
see our old friends from the Falcons down there in
a couple of days. Then you go to San Francisco
speaking old friends Christian McCaffrey and the forty nine ers
on Monday Night football in a couple of weeks before
(20:50):
you come back to this building and get the Red
High A tough one. Los Angeles Rams, and nobody really
wants to run into Matt Stafford and the Rams right now.
At the same time, A lot can happen. If you're
telling me the Carolina Panthers are six and seven or
seven six at that point, I'd be like, okay, sure,
sounds about right. It's the how they're getting there that's
(21:12):
gonna be the question. So once they get to that point,
there's gonna be another reset. There's finally gonna be a
bye week, and we need a bye week. Friends, We
could we could really use a chance to breathe for
a second, because we're now ten weeks into this deal
and there are another however many what did I just say?
Speaker 2 (21:33):
We got three games to.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Go before the bye We're all going to be doing
CASTI math here pretty soon. So I tease her about math.
She can do math, she really can. I've seen her
do it.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Well. I did one yesterday that I was like, oh,
that was right.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
You should stop. You are a capable woman who is
doing math.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
It's just not one of them.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Well sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. But anyway,
the Carolina Panthers got three to go before they get
to that bye week, and in it at that point
we'll see I mean, if they are sitting here six seven,
seven and six, guess what. There's going to be meaningful
games in December. And it's been a minute since we've
said that.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
A division games after the bye week.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
So three division games after the bye week. Seattle coming
in here for a game that could end up being
played in primetime for a big old audience, so a
lot of exciting stuff in front of them. Was that
game yesterday what they wanted? It was not is at
the end of the season also no, So we will reset.
We'll get back into this thing later on this week.
(22:33):
By the time we see you on Thursday, they will
be fully moved on to the Atlanta Falcons and getting
ready for week eleven. We'll break it down for you.
There's a lot of stuff coming your way between now
and then, so keep it locked on the team's YouTube channel,
keep it on Panthers dot com for all the latest
stuff for our friends at Deep Eddie or podcast. Matten
is adorable baby who's trying to get home and see
(22:54):
right now, except we're keeping him over time. We'll see
you Thursday on the next Happy half out, Full Full
Happy Half Hour. Hello friends, and welcome to yet another
happy half hour. That's still the name of the show,
I promise.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
It's that happiness is relative.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
And you know what, it's still the Happy half Hour,
and it's still brought to you by our friends at
Deep Eddy. And I heard all the people in the
Deep Eddy Sweet yesterday had them a big old time.
That was a good time, even though I think everything
about yesterday's game was exciting and fun and an enjoyable experience,
except for the game itself.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
It was a perfect day up until the third play
of the game, or third play of the Saints first drive.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
It just didn't go the way you wanted it to.
The Carolina Panthers are now five and five on the
season after a seventeen seven loss to the New Orleans Saints.
This one was not great from the standpoint of they
got taken out of the mode of football they want
to play almost instantly. I mean, they went down the
field first drive, scored a touchdown Rico safely, no pumps,
(01:00):
he was safely within the bounds of the celebration rules,
and then nothing else went right the rest of the day. Yeah,
don't think that's hyperbole.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I think well, so, like I said, the third play
of the Saints drive, everything kind of went downhill from there.
The first play was a great or they handed it
off Alvin Kamara was kind of wrapped up real quick.
Second play, Tyler Shuck was sacked by Trevin Wallace, and
it's like, Wow, this is really gonna this game is
gonna go exactly how the Panthers wanted to. Yep, the
third play, it looked like they were about to sack
(01:30):
him again. He did a little shoulder move, got out
of it, found a wide open Juwan Johnson Denfield was
like fifty two yards or something like that. And that's
kind of how the rest of the day went.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
And it went like that, and it went like that.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
He It's so interesting because and you know, Nick Gorton
kind of like warned us about this last week. He's
like people keep saying rookie quarterback, rookie quarterback. He's twenty
six years old.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Man's two years older than Bryce Young.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, and so he's got a lot of experience. It
wasn't at the NFL level, but he's not kind of
he's not coming in Green either, And I think you
finally saw that start to come together this was his
second start in the NFL. On paper, you go, rookie quarterback,
second start in the NFL. Just traded away one of
your just traded away one of your top receivers, your
(02:17):
left tackle or left guard. I'm sorry, Like this should
be a pretty standard approach for how to get to
him on defense, and it's the approach they took for
the entire game pretty much. Blitz blitz, blitz, pressure, pressure,
pressure that leaves you susceptible on the back end, and
the Saints took advantage of it with eight explosive plays.
(02:39):
Dave Canal has told us today, right.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
And there were things happening, and you know, we've talked
about this previously this year. I remember talking about the
Bills game and I said, you know, this enough an outlier,
you can kind of build a fence around it and
call it a zoo. And just to understand that it's
not like everything else, this one was moving down that
road because this game so many of the components, I mean,
(03:02):
to your point, Nick Gordon's getting pressure. There was pressure
throughout the day. But the thing you don't expect is
j Horn falling down. Yeah, and you don't happened twice
one of your best players to be on the ground
looking for help for officials that wasn't gonna come, and
then watching Chris o'lay run the other direction. I mean,
that's that's the kind of thing that Carolina Panthers don't expect.
(03:24):
And there was a good bit of this in the
post game. Afterward you talked to JAC. I mean, j
C basically raised his hand and said, put it on me.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yeah he did. He said, he told the defense, like
you all did what you needed to do. I messed up.
This one's on me. Respect to JC for taking on
that responsibility and ownership. It's not all on him, no,
But to his point, there were two the Saints scored
two touchdowns. Both of them were on explicit plays that
(03:52):
JAC felt at fault for and then it's hard to
argue with him. One of them you can argue should
have been OPI. But jac he also said that, you know,
George Lee has shown them in recent weeks that at
the NFL level, they're calling that less and less and
that he's got to he can't expect the call to come.
He's gonna have to play through it, and that you know,
(04:14):
it's sure, it's a little difficult sometimes because if he
plays through it too much, he might get a flag
for DPI. But you still got to play through it.
And then with the Jwan Johnson touchdown as well, I
think he slipped on that play as well, Right, he slipped, yeah,
and Johnson was and Johnson was was open for that
thirty yarder. He said he told the defense afterwards, like,
(04:37):
I'm one of the leaders, I'm one of the highest
paid guys on this team, that that's not acceptable, that
that performance for me was not acceptable. And he was like,
y'all keep doing what you're doing. I promised to be better.
And he had a little bit of like oomp to him,
a little fire when he goes, he goes, I can't
wait to play next Sunday. Yeah, Like I'm gonna make
it up to him.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
It's it's interesting watching the reaction actions to this one,
and it's fascinating. This led into the next thing in
my notes this immaculately prepared show, Rundown, I did hear.
One of the things I wanted to bring up early
in this show was the Bryce Young we saw after
that game was unlike the Bryce Young we've seen after
any game this season or any game in a long time.
(05:19):
Because Bryce was coming in hot. He walked up onto
that stage in the team meeting room, got behind the
lecter and started answering questions almost before they were asked. Yeah,
and he was ready to do the act of contrition,
raise his hand, say bad ball, bad read on me
one hundred percent. I mean, questions weren't even all the
way out before he started asking them because he was
(05:40):
so eager to do that. Bryce was hot game. We
don't see angry Bryce often, but we got angry Bryce after.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
That game, and there was You started to see it
during the game a little because he got hit on
a play and they ended up getting the guy for
rough in the passer and so it was it was
a first down, but he like he was, he got
a mad But then I think shortly after that might
have been the interception. I'm trying to remember the link
how it went.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
The bottom line is, yeah, they saw and teammates talked
about it after the game. When you see Bryce like that,
it's kind of that proof of ownership. I mean that
he is used to situations where things go well, going
back to his days at Alabama, and there is some
frustration when a game's going like that when they weren't
getting the ball downfield. I mean, the Saints basically dared
(06:30):
them to throw the ball and they weren't able to
make it happen. So Bryce was frustrated it wasn't working
out in the passing game and after the game, I mean,
he was foremost among the people making sure everybody knew,
along with the JC Horns and Derek Brown's of the world,
this ain't okay.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, And I do think it's interesting as well that
this is now two weeks in a row that we've
sat here and said, oh, I haven't seen that sort
of Bryce in a press conference before, because last week
that might have been some of the most confident and
a little like cocky but undeserved that we've seen Bryce
this week complete one eighty. But to your point, we've
never You don't really see Bryce mad that often, and
(07:12):
he was mad. Now the question is what does he
do with it? Well, does it snowball or does he
use that as fuel to kind of go out there
and then take it out on the falcons.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
One of the things people close to me get frustrated
with is my constant desire to push everything to the
middle and to keep everything even and be the same
guy every day. And even my wife, I love her,
she was not thrilled with that game and wanted explanations
for why. And you know, my short answer last night
was sometimes you get to bar, sometimes the bar gets you.
(07:43):
And that was an unsatisfying answer for my wife and
for many people. I mean, you want people to care,
you want people to be upset. It beats the alternative.
But in talking about the big swing from last week
at Green Bay was over here now this week, you're
over here three weeks ago at four and four. If
I said you know they're going to split these next
two games, right, you would take it and you're going
(08:06):
to be five and five at the end of those.
Everybody'd have been like, that makes sense, Yeah, happen, and
nobody understood. Nobody appreciated the path it was going to
take to get to that same five and five. So
expectations messed with people. I understand that, but I do
think it's instructive to see that kind of reaction, to
(08:27):
see how much anger, and it speaks to what we've
talked about. Over the course of this year, they've figured
out their how, and yesterday they saw that ain't how
yesterday they were exposed as when somebody takes away seventy
five percent of our how what do we do? And
there was no answer for it yesterday afternoon. And that's
(08:47):
why so many people were frustrated, because they've seen the
good football, to use Dave Canalis's term, you've seen the
stuff that they can make come alive, as Canalis likes
to say, and it was not there yesterday.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
And to that point as well, I would also say
Canal has seemed a little mad today. You know, there's
you can tell when a coach is defeated and you
can tell when a coach is motivated, and I think
it was a little it was more of the latter
today with Canalis, he was upset. He took a lot
of ownership for what happened and vowed to kind of
(09:21):
figure out a path forward from this because he was like,
you know, if teams are going to we have to
be able to be multifaceted, like if they're going to
take away our run game, and this is a team
that wants to be a running team, but you can't
have no answers if a team takes that away. And
there were still opportunities yesterday there was an effort to
push the ball downfield and to answer for it, and
(09:43):
the connections didn't happen. And he kind of challenged Bryce
and the receivers today like trust each other, Like don't
just say like, oh, this is the play that's called,
this is the play I'm going to go run. Trust
that it's gonna happen. And that's a big point of
it as well. The counter part to that, and what's
(10:04):
going to be interesting to see this week is like
you don't ever want to let the pendulum swing too
much the other way and go, oh, okay, if they're
going to take away the run game, we have to
push it downfield, and then you start you start searching
for plays that aren't there. I don't think that'll happen.
But just because of how consistent Dave Canalis and Bryce
(10:25):
Seanka Ben and you know, their whole thing is like
to come in and be the same every day, I
don't think they would be reactive in that way. But
I do think there will be a push to kind
of make sure that that part of the offense is
capable of carrying them. If teams are going to continue
to try to focus on shutting down Rico, which is
what the Saints did yesterday.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Yeah, no doubt about it. And Cuba talked about that
a good bit yesterday. And for a guy who carried
the ball three times in a game, you wouldn't think
you'd spend a lot of time with Cuba postgame. But
a couple of things happened. Number One, Cuba Hubbard became
the all time leading rusher among Canadian born running backs.
Did you know that?
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I did know that. I put it in a story
last night.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
I know you did. It was in inside the Numbers
on Panthers dot Com. I know you guys have already
digested all those numbers, already passing Saints legend Ruben Mays
on that list. You know who else is on the
list of all time Canadian born running backs?
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Do I get a hint?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
No, Bronko Nagersky. How about that? You be Hubbard greater
than Bronco Negersky. Just I mean, it's just science. There's
no argument with that. But Chuba was talking, and he
lived this life last year before things really got clicking
second half of the year, Cuba said, listen, when it
(11:41):
doesn't work like that, you've got to be content to
take your three to take those grimy runs and keep
running them. And I remember even in the nineties, Dom
keepers used to talk about we've got to run with tempo.
That meant running Anthony Johnson into the line of scrimmage
twenty five times for eighty two yards and we're going
to go for two point seven a carry so many
(12:04):
times we wear you out. And Cuba said, eventually that
does work. And when the Carolina Panthers have worked offensively,
that's what it's been. It's been the run game working.
It's been popping a couple runs, but it's been that
steady beat, that rhythm of the offense working, allowing things
to get open down the field. And that's when everything
(12:25):
is in sync. That's when everything works. But when Rico
daldel is held to zero pumps and fifty three yards
in a game and working, that ain't what they're looking
for here.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
And to your point too late last year, when you
got into the second half of the season, you did
see them push it downfield a little bit more so,
I think it's something that is very possible in this offense.
David Moore told me today, he said, we've got the quarterback,
We've got the play calling. We've got the receivers to
do this, it's just a matter of doing it. Last
year you had out on feeling for a lot of
(12:56):
those plays. Who steps up this year to kind of
take that role and say I'm gonna be there anytime
you need me. You're seeing Tmax still kind of figure
out some stuff in the NFL. He's so good, he's
really really good at the hard catches. They just kind
of need him to be great at the easy catches,
and you're seeing him definitely get there. But there is
(13:19):
still a little ways to go you need. You're seeing
leget try to get open more. Like there's still some
to David Moore to quote David Moore again, like all
the pieces are there now, it's a matter of figuring
out how this particular group works together. And then again,
who's gonna step up and kind of take on that
id on the un roll of being there when a
play has to get made.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. But we could spend all
day digging into the details of yesterday's game. But who
wants that, right? Not a lot of people, I mean,
because it did not go the way they had hoped.
I think, more than anything, else, and I have prepared.
I do some graphic design work on the side, not
many people.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
I was so scared about what he's about.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
That's right, I've done some graphic design work. I don't
know if you can read this on the screen.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
I can.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
What does it say?
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Cast It says two and fifteen five and twelve five
and five.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Huh do those numbers mean anything?
Speaker 2 (14:15):
That is twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Oh yeah, things are getting better, gang things. Things are normalizing,
to use one of my favorite football words, things are
normalizing to the point where the Carolina Panthers win games
and lose games for specific and tangible reasons, not because
everything's out here and woo, you know, things are getting weird.
(14:38):
The Carolina Panthers are winning and losing games for reasons
we can define and draw boxes around. And yesterday they
lost a game because the New Orleans Saints were determined
to not let Rico Dwell run on them, and they
did not. I kind of laughed. I couldn't help but
laugh when Rico was describing it after the game, and
he was like heavy boxes right from the start, Safety's
(14:58):
dropping in out the sky, it's like the Saints, you know,
and they were determined. I mean it was. It was
as obvious an intent of a defensive game plan as
I've seen. And tomorrow Davis really good at his job.
That guy's been given the Carolina Panthers paint in the
neck for a long time, Cam Jordan. They've got dudes
(15:19):
on that side of the ball still, and that's why
when you knew that they were going to be that
intent to stop the run, they had the people to
do it, and they did it. But on the whole,
when you look at what's happened this season, simply having
found that how knowing your platform, knowing what's got to happen,
(15:39):
and then achieving it as often as not. I mean, guys,
this is different. And I love the fact that the
Carolina Panthers can leave a game and people be angry
that it didn't go the way it went half the time. Yeah,
because that ain't five and twelve, and it certainly ain't
two and fifteen from a couple of years ago. The
(15:59):
progress that's been made to get to this point as
difficult as yesterday was the stomach and again my wife
and I said, I just looked at her I said
two and fifteen five and twelve five five. I don't
want to hear that right now. Nobody wanted to hear
that Sunday night in the aftermath. But now that we're
here on Monday and things have calmed down, we can
accept the fact that, okay, things are getting better systemically.
(16:24):
Now there are problems to fix in the short term.
But I was turning to Austin Corbitt about it today
just in general terms in the locker room. He was
around here in twenty twenty three when they played so
many different combinations of linemen and it never worked. I mean,
they played seven different left guards, eight different right guards.
I can say that by memory because I lived it,
(16:45):
and they gave up sixty five sacks that year. This year,
they've played eight combinations of starting linemen in ten games,
and it hasn't been this big disaster movie of a
situation with the offensive line because those guys have all
been here. I mean eight combinations on Sunday, but it
was eight combinations of dudes who have all been here
at least two years, some of them four and five.
(17:07):
So when you play a new combination of people in
it includes Zikey and Timo and Cade Mays and Austin
and Damian Lewis. That's so much better than anything they
saw in twenty three when everything was getting a little weird.
That allows things to stabilize a little bit. And I'll
be interested to see as this thing goes on what
(17:28):
that stabilization looks like.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Right, And you know we've said to talking about being stable.
We've said too from the beginning, like you've got a
coach at GM and a quarterback that are on the
same timeline, and how much of a difference that makes.
I mean, you look around the NFL just even today
and see other teams kind of having to reset, and
(17:51):
you can tell that this is still a building process,
but one that is actively getting built. And at times
that's stuff. Anytime you're kind of setting a standard and
building a team. There's gonna be games you lose that
you should win. There's gonna be games you win that
you should lose, and then it's gonna be what do
you do with the others? And I think the last
two weeks might have been an example of that. So
(18:12):
it's like, Okay, well, now you've got another one coming up.
What are you gonna do with with one. You know
how they're saying baseball like, you lose fifty, win fifty,
it's what you do with the other fifty. Even though
I know that math is not right.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
That's castiy math.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yeah, you're gonna win some you're supposed to lose. You're
gonna lose somem you're supposed to win. What do you
do with the others?
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:29):
And that starts this week. You still got a lot
of division games in front of you.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
I mean the other thing that brought it into relief
for me last night when I get home from the game,
because I tell you, one of the things that happens
to me on game days is somebody will say, do
you see what the Cowboys did? Did you see what
the Giants did? You Nope, didn't see any of that.
Saw everything the Carolina Panthers did right here in front
of this giant pain.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
I will say I was paying attention to the Patriots
Bucks score.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah, that's fair, and that one went the way the
Carolina Panthers wanted it to. But when I get home
and look at those scores and you realize, oh the
Bucks lost, Oh the Buffalo Bills lost to the Miami Dolphins,
You realize games like this because we're so hyper focused
on what happens right here in front of our face.
In the global perspective of the NFL, stuff like this happens.
(19:18):
There's weirdness every week. I mentioned last night, I woke
up Sunday morning and the Carolina Panthers were a game
and a half out of first in the NFC South
and if the season ended at that moment, they would
have been picking sixteenth in the draft. Last night when
I went to bed, Carolina Panthers were a game and
a half out of first place in the NFC South
(19:38):
and they'd be picking sixteenth in the draft. It season
ended right now, and it's just it wasn't what they wanted.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
But no.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Real yardage was lost on the whole, I mean the
stuff they're trying to improve. And again, no one has
set playoffs or anything like that as a benchmark for
this season because this season's been about improvement. This season's
been about stabilizing and finding that how I was talking about,
and that's still there. I mean, the football has gotten
(20:09):
so much better. It's hard to imagine what we were
looking at this time last year.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Yeah, I mean, if you're walking away from a seventeen
to seven loss that puts you at five and five
in the middle of the season, and you're mad. That
means you're getting to a place where you're expecting to win,
and that's what you if nothing else, thirty thousand foot view,
that's what you want.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah, and listen, it's gonna be interesting to see the
way this develops over the next couple weeks. They've got
a three week sprint to the bye week, two of
them on the road, starting this week in Atlanta. We'll
see our old friends from the Falcons down there in
a couple of days. Then you go to San Francisco
speaking old friends Christian McCaffrey and the forty nine ers
on Monday Night football in a couple of weeks before
(20:50):
you come back to this building and get the Red
High A tough one. Los Angeles Rams, and nobody really
wants to run into Matt Stafford and the Rams right now.
At the same time, A lot can happen. If you're
telling me the Carolina Panthers are six and seven or
seven six at that point, I'd be like, okay, sure,
sounds about right. It's the how they're getting there that's
(21:12):
gonna be the question. So once they get to that point,
there's gonna be another reset. There's finally gonna be a
bye week, and we need a bye week. Friends, We
could we could really use a chance to breathe for
a second, because we're now ten weeks into this deal
and there are another however many what did I just say?
Speaker 2 (21:33):
We got three games to.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Go before the bye We're all going to be doing
CASTI math here pretty soon. So I tease her about math.
She can do math, she really can. I've seen her
do it.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Well. I did one yesterday that I was like, oh,
that was right.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
You should stop. You are a capable woman who is
doing math.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
It's just not one of them.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Well sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. But anyway,
the Carolina Panthers got three to go before they get
to that bye week, and in it at that point
we'll see I mean, if they are sitting here six seven,
seven and six, guess what. There's going to be meaningful
games in December. And it's been a minute since we've
said that.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
A division games after the bye week.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
So three division games after the bye week. Seattle coming
in here for a game that could end up being
played in primetime for a big old audience, so a
lot of exciting stuff in front of them. Was that
game yesterday what they wanted? It was not is at
the end of the season also no, So we will reset.
We'll get back into this thing later on this week.
(22:33):
By the time we see you on Thursday, they will
be fully moved on to the Atlanta Falcons and getting
ready for week eleven. We'll break it down for you.
There's a lot of stuff coming your way between now
and then, so keep it locked on the team's YouTube channel,
keep it on Panthers dot com for all the latest
stuff for our friends at Deep Eddie or podcast. Matten
is adorable baby who's trying to get home and see
(22:54):
right now, except we're keeping him over time. We'll see
you Thursday on the next Happy half out, Full Full
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