December 15, 2025 • 21 mins
Today on the Happy Half Hour, Darin and Kassidy recap the Panthers loss to the New Orleans Saints, preview the final 3 weeks of the schedule, discuss playoff scenarios, and so much more!
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Happy Half Hour.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello friends, and welcome to another episode of the Happy
Half Hour. And I promise we're gonna still call it
that because it's the Happy half Hour presented to you
by Deep Eddie. But if you wanted to sneak a
little bit of that Deep Eddie into your nog tonight,
I ain't gonna get mad at you. Because baby is
cold outside. Stay warm. It is crazy. There is a
lot going on. It is freezing in Charlotte, North Carolina.
(00:25):
I have no interest in being outside in anything under
about forty five degrees.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
So have pity on me. Be warm out there.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Everybody, take care of take care of your animals, take
care of your plans, take care of your neighbors. There's
my public service announcement for tonight. And I feel better
about that because I wonder about the tone of the
rest of this show.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Right It could go a number of different ways right now,
and it'll be a surprise to us and to you.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
That's right, funny, you'll know, that's right. We've got notes
for this show.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Look at all this. We'll get into all this later on,
but this is the scrawlings of a lunatic. At about
one o'clock this morning when we got back from New
Orleans and started going through the debrief on all of that.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
One, I started going.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Through playoffs stuff, and we'll get to that in a second,
but I guess to start with, we got to talk
about one that got away from the Carolina Panthers.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
That was not ideal.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Your Carolina Panthers go to New Orleans and it wasn't
quite the stuff we've seen in New Orleans in the
last couple of years.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
But it wasn't good either, because.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
You let a ten point lead get away from you
in the second half, and the Saints, unbelievably the Saints.
You want to talk about playoffs, The best record in
the division in NFC South games belongs to New Orleans,
which has won four total games, but three of them
in the division.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yeah, it just is an insane statement to make. No
other team has more than two wins in the division
right now, and the Saints are the bottom team in
the division. But that's just kind of how it feels
like the NFC South is working this year. It's going
to be a race to the finish. But we knew that.
We knew that was going to be the case, you know,
as jac said today, He's like, he said, what happened
(02:02):
yesterday doesn't really change what's gonna happen next Sunday. We
were always going to have to beat the Bucks next week.
He's like, that was always going to be the case,
So that doesn't really change. It just changes what happens
after that Week seventeen, Week eighteen, things like that.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yeah, And honestly, if you weren't counting on this thing
coming down to at Tampa and week eighteen, have you
not been paying at till for the last eighteen plus weeks.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
The script has already been written, Darren. Yeah, we knew
it was coming.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Down, but I haven't done the reading ahead for what's coming.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
So but yeah, it's it's a it's an it's such
an interesting vibe in the locker room right now. I
don't know if i'd say weird. It's just very interesting
because like obviously they are extremely upset with themselves about
what happened yesterday. They feel like if a guy said
it once today, he said it a thousand times, Like,
you know, we had that game one and we let
(02:56):
it slip away in really two drives, and they were
talking about from the defensive point of view. But I
guess you could kind of argue is from the offensive
point of view as well. You don't convert on the
third down or the fourth down on one drive and
then you plan on the next drive. So it's too often.
It was really two offensive drives, two defensive drives that
tape that changed the tone of that game, and they
happened for the Panthers at the worst possible time. You know,
(03:22):
they're not gonna want to see Chris lave again for
a long time, and uh yeah, but now but everything
is still technically right there in front of them, and
it was they kind of knew that it was always
going to come down to those two games with Tampa.
I think they were just they're a little shocked right
now that the road to get there happened the way
(03:44):
it did.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
There's a little bit of defense mechanism happening as well. Friends.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I mean, when you say we knew it was always
going to come down to Tampa, this one hurts, and
this one hurts a lot of people because to your point,
they know they let one get away. A lot of
the stuff they needed to do in this game, a
lot of the stuff that didn't go right for them
out here in Bank of America Stadium in Week ten
actually did go well early on. I mean they did
(04:09):
run the ball. They didn't run the ball for a
ton of yards, but if you run for what thirty
one times for one hundred and twenty some that's a
good day's running.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
That's that sustainable running.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
You've heard me say before dom Capers, when Anthony Johnson
would go twenty eight times for eighty two yards, He'd.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Say, we ran with good tempo today. And that was just.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
A dominism from early in the days. But that's kind
of the way they ran. It wasn't big explosive stuff,
but Bryce was getting out doing his thing.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
He was scrambling for some significant games.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Cub and Rico were running well enough to keep things moving,
to keep things opened up for play action. There were
shots downfield that weren't there in the Saints game earlier
this year, and it just all kind of unraveled in
that fourth quarter. I mean, in much the same way
you saw them kind of respond after some of the
(04:59):
disappointing losses earlier this year, including the Saints game, when
they came back and beat Atlanta the following week. They're
counting on a little bit of that, but Canalis said today,
you don't want to count on being that reflexive. You
want to be consistent. You want to do the same
thing two weeks in a row. Just at this point
in this team's education, growth, maturity, whatever phrase you want
(05:20):
to put on it, they're not there yet and they're
still in the.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Process of learning.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
So these are hard lessons and you know, they had
to kind of wear that one walking out of their
last night, and it was a long flight home and
it was cold when we got here, so it got
everybody's attention. And that's why, because it's the Carolina Panthers,
I fully expect a much better effort this week.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
It's just what they do, right, It swings one way
than the other. But I mean, to your point, it's
still a growing team. You know, there's a lot of
talk about like what is this team going to be?
And on one hand, you go, this week sixteen, how
do you not know yet? But I think this was
always going to be a bigger picture build here and
(06:03):
obviously kind of being already in the playoff picture in
year two under this staff and this system, it I
think when you step back and look at it, it
does feel a little ahead of schedule. But obviously when
you're in it, it's like, well, of course we want
to win when we have a chance to make the playoffs.
That's the goal for every team. But does it swing
back the other way we'll see. The consistency or really
(06:25):
the lack of consistency is the biggest issue that comes
up after these losses because they know what it looks
like why when they play well, and they know what
it looks like when they don't. So finally, but to
your point too, a lot of things were better yesterday.
Like I actually thought Bryce moved the ball really well,
he saw the field really well. He was he was
(06:48):
getting out of the pocket really well avoiding I mean,
that's a formidable pass rush. And I think Chay Shung
did get to him one time, but I think it
was only once. Let me look, yeah, it was just
one sack, and that's a really good pass rush. So
Bryce was moving well, he was moving out of the pocket,
he was taking off when he needed to. He averaged
(07:10):
seven yards a run and that's that's a pretty good
number when you can do that. I think it was
his second highest career rushing performance. You know, the offense
was moving well, it was just there were a couple
of plays that didn't go well, and then of course
the penalties. We focused a lot on the penalties and
how they affected things on the defensive side of the ball,
(07:31):
which understandably so because that kept the Saints drives goings
and they scored, and then they want to walk off
field goal with the penalty as well, and so but
there were penalties on offense as well that kind of
put them in bad situations, backed them up, forced them
to punt. It was. It was a penalty heavy game yesterday,
and as Canalis said, they all kind of popped up
at once. Yeah, you know, this was one of the
(07:51):
least penalized, third third least penalized team in the NFL
going into yesterday. But everything hit it once.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah, And we could roll through a ton of stats.
But again, if Carolina Panthers rushed thirty two times, if
Bryce Young hits four or five explosive plays downfield in
the passing game, if you've got Bryce running for first downs,
if the defense gets five sacks, because this is not
a defense, it's had a lot of big sack games.
Six was the season high against the Jets earlier this year,
(08:21):
but to get five sacks down in New Orleans and
do all those things. You think, all right, that works
out pretty well, but that eleven penalties for one three
that's a killer. And he said it that. He said
it last night. First thing he said when we walked
in the postgame pressler, it was like, can't survive that
when you're the Carolina Panthers are on such a thin
margin right now by virtue of being a young team,
(08:43):
by virtue of being in the middle of that growth process,
that they just can't afford that kind of stuff. And
when they got into that situation, it began to snowball
on them a little bit. And then you saw what
Canali has described as a disjointed effort defensively in the
last little bit of that game. Then you saw them
make play after play and you could kind of see
(09:04):
them blink a little bit.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
And that's what a young team's gonna do.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
I mean, they are still very much in the process
of trying to figure out how this all goes. And
yesterday was a day when one got away from him.
And it's going to be one that bothers for a
long long time to come.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I mean, as it should. It should bother you. A
point to make as just an aside as well, is
that it's very easy and understandable to look at the
Saints record but.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Which is not good, Which is not good quarantine.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
But the second half of this season, really, ever since
they made that switch to Tyler Shuck like this is,
this has kind of been a little bit of a
different Saints team. They're scrappy. Jake Delon was talking about
it before the game yesterday. He said, the Saint's locker room,
because you know, he lives in Louisiana, He's got a
lot of friends there. He's saying, the Saint's locker room
is like rejecting the word spoiler that you know, Cam
(09:56):
Jordan kind of told them this is not about going
to play spoiler. This is about going to win division
games and showing that we can do that. And I mean,
like we said, they've done it better than any other
team in the division so far. They've got more division
wins than any other team. And so that's not at
all to say like, oh, the Panthers were always going
(10:16):
to lose that game. They had it in their hands.
They know it slipped away. But the same team is,
especially on offense, a lot better than I think they
were getting some credit for. I mean, that group has
really kind of rallied around Shuck as well, and he
can play.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah, And I mean it sets up this division.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
We talked about this last year after that Atlanta game
tail end of the year, We said, you know, wow,
with Michael Penick's playing the way he did getting in
a shootout with Bryce, what's this division look like for
the next three four years. Now, add Tyler Shuck to
the Knicks, and all of a sudden, the Saints look
like they've got a guy they can do some business around.
He's big, he's strong, he can move. He can obviously
(10:56):
throw it around a little bit, especially the way you
saw in those last two minutes to the game, moving
it to Chris o'live in particular, and that's going to
be problematic for people coming down to stretch. The Saints
have always figured out the art of staying competitive, and
sometimes that meant ugly up games.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Sometimes that meant, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Pushing it when they were still in the Drew Brees
era and always being aggressive with salary cap stuff and
things like that to keep pushing the envelope to keep
that team competitive. But they've managed to keep themselves in
conversations for a long time. And you know, now if
they've found them a quarterback that's on that rookie contract
who's young, young ish, even though he's two years older
(11:37):
than Bryce. If you can keep doing those things, then
all of a sudden, it makes you interesting for the
long term. Because they've been pretty stable down there, and
Mickey Loomis has done a good job of keeping teams together.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
So it also say that about this Panthers team.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Though they are they are definitely moving in that direction.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
What's my favorite word for this season.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Normal?
Speaker 1 (11:59):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
This is becoming a normal football team that wins and
loses games in normal ways, like committing too many penalties
as they did yesterday. But again, we don't want to
dwell too much on that one. I'm gonna be like
I'm gonna be like Bryce, I'm super excited to move
on to the next thing. It's been it's been twenty
four hours ish.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
I don't know what time he said, they get until
six thirty tonight, he said. I'm gonna be honest, I'm
still a little upset and mad about everything, but I
gotta I can be mad about it. And then I
gotta flush it by six thirty tonight.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Fair enough.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
We will get he's gonna be mad up till six
twenty nine.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
We will give princely til six twenty nine. We hope
he's in a good mood after that. So it's it's
easy to get hung up on that one. But again,
the most important thing is Carolina Panthers are still in
the playoff chase going into week sixteen in the Year
of Our Lord twenty twenty five. That is a sentence
(12:57):
I don't think a lot of people thought was going
to be said. And because I care about you, my
happy half hour family, you're like family here, you really are.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Which seems just like with family, you're about divoris with something.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
That's right, that's right. You sound like one of my kids.
I have done the math, so you don't have to.
And friends, you want to know how the Carolina Panthers
go to the playoffs, It's all right here. And you know,
Cassidy's sending me gifts of the guy from Always Sonny
and his conspiracy board and all that kind of stuff.
But you know what, my father, Donald Gant god Rested
(13:33):
saw one of his favorite jokes. He used to tell
me when I was in elementary school and get stumped
on some math problems. Even then I was a sports
writer and didn't care for math. Don Gant looked at
me and he said, you know what, Math's kind of
like constipation.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Sometimes you just got to work it out with a pencil.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
And that's a terrible joke that my father used to
tell me and probably form the kind of sense of
humor I have to this day. So now you know
who to thank.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
I do a good scratched out research project though, that's right.
I was just cracking me up, like we're doing this
on the plane last night, and I was like, this
is not convenient.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Yeah, somebody said you could get a computer to do
that for you, but I don't trust computers.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
No. Yeah, I'm with you. You want to see it yourself.
Sometimes you just want to look at it and know
if I usually if I can write something down, I
remember it better.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
The act of the writing makes it a little more
tangible in my mind. And the one thing I mean,
when you've got they're basically four games. There's Panthers Bucks twice,
and then there's Panthers, Seahawks and Dolphins Bucks there's sixteen
combinations of ways those games can go that can kind
of change in ten of them. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers
(14:43):
go to the playoffs.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Boom.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Everybody hates Tampa Bay. The big thing that is going
to pivot all of this is this week's game here
Bank of America Stadium, because if you lose to the
Buccaneers Sunday, there's only one path for the Carolina Panthers
to make the playoffs. That involves beating the Seahawks, having
the Dolphins beat the Bucks in Miami, and you never
(15:05):
want to depend on other people, and then going to
Tampa and winning in Week eighteen. It could be done,
but it's one path among eight possibilities.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
So you don't like your odds.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
There are five game Yeah, it's like it's not fourteen
million possibilities, it's just eight. But things are moving in
the Panthers direction. If they are able to get that
win at home on Sunday, then things open up for
them a little bit and then you then you've got
the opportunity to control a little bit of stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
You need to beat Seattle.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
That would be very helpful because of common games, which
becomes a tiebreaker.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Did Seattle beat Tampa.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Uh Tampa.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Hang on, let me go to my big board of
common games, which is only a page or two deeper
in here.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Strength to victory. Yes, they did beat the Seahawks, but
the Bucks Seawks.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
The Bucks also beat the Arizona Cardinals in the Carolina
Panthers did not, So that's the big swing. They're a
game behind and strength of victory or in common opponent tiebreaker,
which is the fourth one down the line after overall record,
head to head division record. So if you get in
the weeds of tie breakers, that ain't where you want
to be for the Carolina Panthers. You want to take
care of your own business. So get that game Sunday again.
(16:21):
You know the easiest way to do this. If the
Carolina Panthers win their last three games, they're in the playoffs.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Right, just win justin Just.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Win them all.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
In that way, I don't have to do no more math,
and I think that's a benefit to everybody. So it's
all right here on the paper, it's all on the
computer screen at Panthers dot com. If you want that
in a digestible printed form, we've got it there for you.
So enjoy all that. But We've got a lot of
stuff coming up. I mean, it's going to be fascinating
(16:50):
to see how this comes together. Of course, there are
subplots of plenty. Baker Mayfield, Yep, he used to play here.
He sure did. That's going to be a thing people
are talking about all week. Oh Sam the week after that.
Sam Darnold, Yep, he used to play here too.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
That's gonna be a thing we're gonna get all into.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
I think the world of both of those young men,
they were in some difficult situations, not like what's going
on right here right now, in the past when they
were here and you know, didn't work out for them
for a lot of reasons that weren't entirely their fault
somewhere somewhere, but both playing high level football over the
course of the last couple of years.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
It's gonna be challenging, but the challenge is what you want.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
That's what dB said last night. He was like, this
is the grind. This is what we've been doing all year.
It's gonna take every bit of grit we got, and
this is when you love it.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
It's like doing long hand math. It's hard, but it's worth.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
It when you know you come to the answer, you
find out whether it's valuable or not. And this was
because finding out the exact ways this thing's all gonna
come together. We do it for you, the readers, because
we care about you, because you're like family. Hey, speaking
of family, uncle Phil, how about my guy? He almost
(18:02):
pulled one off last night, Philip rivers, Oh, I'm here
doing it for the old people everywhere. And when I
saw Phil rolling around out there, and that's not a
commentary on his physique, he is. He is undoubtedly sore
today after playing his first football game in five years
and then getting on a cross country flight. There ain't
enough ad well to put in that man today to
(18:23):
make him feel right. And he's gonna be an ice
up to about his neck for the next couple of days.
I imagine by Wednesday he'll be practicing again because he's
starting again this week.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
So they said something on Scott Van Pelt last night
that I thought was fitting because we didn't know how
yesterday's game was going to go with him, and it
was either SVP or heiselback. One of them said, like,
you know, he didn't lose them the game, and he
kept them in a position to have a chance to
win it, and you didn't know if that was even
(18:52):
going to be the case. There was a chance he
got he went out there yesterday and embarrassed himself. But
he didn't do that. He gave him a chance to
win it. He didn't lose it for them, Like, that's
good news. If you're the Cols, you can roll with
that for a few more weeks.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
So and in a position it gets one of the
better teams in the NFL at one of the toughest
places to play in the NFL.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
So, yeah, here's the moral of the story.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
If you've got a choice to choose between a brand
new thing and an old thing that you've seen before,
what do you pick?
Speaker 3 (19:21):
I know what you want me to sing, you've.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Seen before the thing you know, the thing you trust.
You go with old things because old things will not
let you down. Lack long hand math like Philip Rivers.
By the way, what's your favorite Christmas song?
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Ooh, probably Darlene Love, Baby Please Come Home.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
The correct answer is Elvis Presley's Blue Christmas. So always
trust the old things.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Whether it's Darlene Love is an old song?
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Yeah, but you were going Mariah carry or I love.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
That Darlene Love song. I'm gonna look up when it
came out.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
At any rate. So we'll sing holiday songs. We'll sing
Christmas carols the rest of the rest of the month.
We're here in the office because, like Dave Canalis said,
this is the business we've chosen.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Actually he didn't say that.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
That's from Godfather, But if Dave Canalis was a gangster,
that's what he would have said.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
He is not.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
He's a wholesome family man. He just knows this is
the time of year. You got to lock in because
you know what, it's playoff time. Yeah, and it's all
on the line for the Carolina Panthers. We'll have it
all broken down for you here at Panthers dot com.
Keep it locked on the website, on the app, see
us on the YouTube page for all the video updates.
We'll keep you posted. She'll be over here looking up
(20:33):
songs before his Yeah whatever mine is older. Yeah not
if you're going Mariah Carey on me. So anyway, that'll
take care of us for this edition. We will see
you on later later on this week on the Happy
half Hour, we'll get down into the weeds of this
Bucks matchup and see what we're gonna expect Sunday, right
here at Bank of America Stadium, where it's not gonna
(20:54):
be freezing cold, so you have no excuse not to
join us.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
We'll see all then
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Firefour
Happy Half Hour.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello friends, and welcome to another episode of the Happy
Half Hour. And I promise we're gonna still call it
that because it's the Happy half Hour presented to you
by Deep Eddie. But if you wanted to sneak a
little bit of that Deep Eddie into your nog tonight,
I ain't gonna get mad at you. Because baby is
cold outside. Stay warm. It is crazy. There is a
lot going on. It is freezing in Charlotte, North Carolina.
(00:25):
I have no interest in being outside in anything under
about forty five degrees.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
So have pity on me. Be warm out there.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Everybody, take care of take care of your animals, take
care of your plans, take care of your neighbors. There's
my public service announcement for tonight. And I feel better
about that because I wonder about the tone of the
rest of this show.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Right It could go a number of different ways right now,
and it'll be a surprise to us and to you.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
That's right, funny, you'll know, that's right. We've got notes
for this show.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Look at all this. We'll get into all this later on,
but this is the scrawlings of a lunatic. At about
one o'clock this morning when we got back from New
Orleans and started going through the debrief on all of that.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
One, I started going.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Through playoffs stuff, and we'll get to that in a second,
but I guess to start with, we got to talk
about one that got away from the Carolina Panthers.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
That was not ideal.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Your Carolina Panthers go to New Orleans and it wasn't
quite the stuff we've seen in New Orleans in the
last couple of years.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
But it wasn't good either, because.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
You let a ten point lead get away from you
in the second half, and the Saints, unbelievably the Saints.
You want to talk about playoffs, The best record in
the division in NFC South games belongs to New Orleans,
which has won four total games, but three of them
in the division.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yeah, it just is an insane statement to make. No
other team has more than two wins in the division
right now, and the Saints are the bottom team in
the division. But that's just kind of how it feels
like the NFC South is working this year. It's going
to be a race to the finish. But we knew that.
We knew that was going to be the case, you know,
as jac said today, He's like, he said, what happened
(02:02):
yesterday doesn't really change what's gonna happen next Sunday. We
were always going to have to beat the Bucks next week.
He's like, that was always going to be the case,
So that doesn't really change. It just changes what happens
after that Week seventeen, Week eighteen, things like that.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yeah, And honestly, if you weren't counting on this thing
coming down to at Tampa and week eighteen, have you
not been paying at till for the last eighteen plus weeks.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
The script has already been written, Darren. Yeah, we knew
it was coming.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Down, but I haven't done the reading ahead for what's coming.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
So but yeah, it's it's a it's an it's such
an interesting vibe in the locker room right now. I
don't know if i'd say weird. It's just very interesting
because like obviously they are extremely upset with themselves about
what happened yesterday. They feel like if a guy said
it once today, he said it a thousand times, Like,
you know, we had that game one and we let
(02:56):
it slip away in really two drives, and they were
talking about from the defensive point of view. But I
guess you could kind of argue is from the offensive
point of view as well. You don't convert on the
third down or the fourth down on one drive and
then you plan on the next drive. So it's too often.
It was really two offensive drives, two defensive drives that
tape that changed the tone of that game, and they
happened for the Panthers at the worst possible time. You know,
(03:22):
they're not gonna want to see Chris lave again for
a long time, and uh yeah, but now but everything
is still technically right there in front of them, and
it was they kind of knew that it was always
going to come down to those two games with Tampa.
I think they were just they're a little shocked right
now that the road to get there happened the way
(03:44):
it did.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
There's a little bit of defense mechanism happening as well. Friends.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I mean, when you say we knew it was always
going to come down to Tampa, this one hurts, and
this one hurts a lot of people because to your point,
they know they let one get away. A lot of
the stuff they needed to do in this game, a
lot of the stuff that didn't go right for them
out here in Bank of America Stadium in Week ten
actually did go well early on. I mean they did
(04:09):
run the ball. They didn't run the ball for a
ton of yards, but if you run for what thirty
one times for one hundred and twenty some that's a
good day's running.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
That's that sustainable running.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
You've heard me say before dom Capers, when Anthony Johnson
would go twenty eight times for eighty two yards, He'd.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Say, we ran with good tempo today. And that was just.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
A dominism from early in the days. But that's kind
of the way they ran. It wasn't big explosive stuff,
but Bryce was getting out doing his thing.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
He was scrambling for some significant games.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Cub and Rico were running well enough to keep things moving,
to keep things opened up for play action. There were
shots downfield that weren't there in the Saints game earlier
this year, and it just all kind of unraveled in
that fourth quarter. I mean, in much the same way
you saw them kind of respond after some of the
(04:59):
disappointing losses earlier this year, including the Saints game, when
they came back and beat Atlanta the following week. They're
counting on a little bit of that, but Canalis said today,
you don't want to count on being that reflexive. You
want to be consistent. You want to do the same
thing two weeks in a row. Just at this point
in this team's education, growth, maturity, whatever phrase you want
(05:20):
to put on it, they're not there yet and they're
still in the.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Process of learning.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
So these are hard lessons and you know, they had
to kind of wear that one walking out of their
last night, and it was a long flight home and
it was cold when we got here, so it got
everybody's attention. And that's why, because it's the Carolina Panthers,
I fully expect a much better effort this week.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
It's just what they do, right, It swings one way
than the other. But I mean, to your point, it's
still a growing team. You know, there's a lot of
talk about like what is this team going to be?
And on one hand, you go, this week sixteen, how
do you not know yet? But I think this was
always going to be a bigger picture build here and
(06:03):
obviously kind of being already in the playoff picture in
year two under this staff and this system, it I
think when you step back and look at it, it
does feel a little ahead of schedule. But obviously when
you're in it, it's like, well, of course we want
to win when we have a chance to make the playoffs.
That's the goal for every team. But does it swing
back the other way we'll see. The consistency or really
(06:25):
the lack of consistency is the biggest issue that comes
up after these losses because they know what it looks
like why when they play well, and they know what
it looks like when they don't. So finally, but to
your point too, a lot of things were better yesterday.
Like I actually thought Bryce moved the ball really well,
he saw the field really well. He was he was
(06:48):
getting out of the pocket really well avoiding I mean,
that's a formidable pass rush. And I think Chay Shung
did get to him one time, but I think it
was only once. Let me look, yeah, it was just
one sack, and that's a really good pass rush. So
Bryce was moving well, he was moving out of the pocket,
he was taking off when he needed to. He averaged
(07:10):
seven yards a run and that's that's a pretty good
number when you can do that. I think it was
his second highest career rushing performance. You know, the offense
was moving well, it was just there were a couple
of plays that didn't go well, and then of course
the penalties. We focused a lot on the penalties and
how they affected things on the defensive side of the ball,
(07:31):
which understandably so because that kept the Saints drives goings
and they scored, and then they want to walk off
field goal with the penalty as well, and so but
there were penalties on offense as well that kind of
put them in bad situations, backed them up, forced them
to punt. It was. It was a penalty heavy game yesterday,
and as Canalis said, they all kind of popped up
at once. Yeah, you know, this was one of the
(07:51):
least penalized, third third least penalized team in the NFL
going into yesterday. But everything hit it once.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah, And we could roll through a ton of stats.
But again, if Carolina Panthers rushed thirty two times, if
Bryce Young hits four or five explosive plays downfield in
the passing game, if you've got Bryce running for first downs,
if the defense gets five sacks, because this is not
a defense, it's had a lot of big sack games.
Six was the season high against the Jets earlier this year,
(08:21):
but to get five sacks down in New Orleans and
do all those things. You think, all right, that works
out pretty well, but that eleven penalties for one three
that's a killer. And he said it that. He said
it last night. First thing he said when we walked
in the postgame pressler, it was like, can't survive that
when you're the Carolina Panthers are on such a thin
margin right now by virtue of being a young team,
(08:43):
by virtue of being in the middle of that growth process,
that they just can't afford that kind of stuff. And
when they got into that situation, it began to snowball
on them a little bit. And then you saw what
Canali has described as a disjointed effort defensively in the
last little bit of that game. Then you saw them
make play after play and you could kind of see
(09:04):
them blink a little bit.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
And that's what a young team's gonna do.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
I mean, they are still very much in the process
of trying to figure out how this all goes. And
yesterday was a day when one got away from him.
And it's going to be one that bothers for a
long long time to come.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I mean, as it should. It should bother you. A
point to make as just an aside as well, is
that it's very easy and understandable to look at the
Saints record but.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Which is not good, Which is not good quarantine.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
But the second half of this season, really, ever since
they made that switch to Tyler Shuck like this is,
this has kind of been a little bit of a
different Saints team. They're scrappy. Jake Delon was talking about
it before the game yesterday. He said, the Saint's locker room,
because you know, he lives in Louisiana, He's got a
lot of friends there. He's saying, the Saint's locker room
is like rejecting the word spoiler that you know, Cam
(09:56):
Jordan kind of told them this is not about going
to play spoiler. This is about going to win division
games and showing that we can do that. And I mean,
like we said, they've done it better than any other
team in the division so far. They've got more division
wins than any other team. And so that's not at
all to say like, oh, the Panthers were always going
(10:16):
to lose that game. They had it in their hands.
They know it slipped away. But the same team is,
especially on offense, a lot better than I think they
were getting some credit for. I mean, that group has
really kind of rallied around Shuck as well, and he
can play.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah, And I mean it sets up this division.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
We talked about this last year after that Atlanta game
tail end of the year, We said, you know, wow,
with Michael Penick's playing the way he did getting in
a shootout with Bryce, what's this division look like for
the next three four years. Now, add Tyler Shuck to
the Knicks, and all of a sudden, the Saints look
like they've got a guy they can do some business around.
He's big, he's strong, he can move. He can obviously
(10:56):
throw it around a little bit, especially the way you
saw in those last two minutes to the game, moving
it to Chris o'live in particular, and that's going to
be problematic for people coming down to stretch. The Saints
have always figured out the art of staying competitive, and
sometimes that meant ugly up games.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Sometimes that meant, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Pushing it when they were still in the Drew Brees
era and always being aggressive with salary cap stuff and
things like that to keep pushing the envelope to keep
that team competitive. But they've managed to keep themselves in
conversations for a long time. And you know, now if
they've found them a quarterback that's on that rookie contract
who's young, young ish, even though he's two years older
(11:37):
than Bryce. If you can keep doing those things, then
all of a sudden, it makes you interesting for the
long term. Because they've been pretty stable down there, and
Mickey Loomis has done a good job of keeping teams together.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
So it also say that about this Panthers team.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Though they are they are definitely moving in that direction.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
What's my favorite word for this season.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Normal?
Speaker 1 (11:59):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
This is becoming a normal football team that wins and
loses games in normal ways, like committing too many penalties
as they did yesterday. But again, we don't want to
dwell too much on that one. I'm gonna be like
I'm gonna be like Bryce, I'm super excited to move
on to the next thing. It's been it's been twenty
four hours ish.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
I don't know what time he said, they get until
six thirty tonight, he said. I'm gonna be honest, I'm
still a little upset and mad about everything, but I
gotta I can be mad about it. And then I
gotta flush it by six thirty tonight.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Fair enough.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
We will get he's gonna be mad up till six
twenty nine.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
We will give princely til six twenty nine. We hope
he's in a good mood after that. So it's it's
easy to get hung up on that one. But again,
the most important thing is Carolina Panthers are still in
the playoff chase going into week sixteen in the Year
of Our Lord twenty twenty five. That is a sentence
(12:57):
I don't think a lot of people thought was going
to be said. And because I care about you, my
happy half hour family, you're like family here, you really are.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Which seems just like with family, you're about divoris with something.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
That's right, that's right. You sound like one of my kids.
I have done the math, so you don't have to.
And friends, you want to know how the Carolina Panthers
go to the playoffs, It's all right here. And you know,
Cassidy's sending me gifts of the guy from Always Sonny
and his conspiracy board and all that kind of stuff.
But you know what, my father, Donald Gant god Rested
(13:33):
saw one of his favorite jokes. He used to tell
me when I was in elementary school and get stumped
on some math problems. Even then I was a sports
writer and didn't care for math. Don Gant looked at
me and he said, you know what, Math's kind of
like constipation.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Sometimes you just got to work it out with a pencil.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
And that's a terrible joke that my father used to
tell me and probably form the kind of sense of
humor I have to this day. So now you know
who to thank.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
I do a good scratched out research project though, that's right.
I was just cracking me up, like we're doing this
on the plane last night, and I was like, this
is not convenient.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Yeah, somebody said you could get a computer to do
that for you, but I don't trust computers.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
No. Yeah, I'm with you. You want to see it yourself.
Sometimes you just want to look at it and know
if I usually if I can write something down, I
remember it better.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
The act of the writing makes it a little more
tangible in my mind. And the one thing I mean,
when you've got they're basically four games. There's Panthers Bucks twice,
and then there's Panthers, Seahawks and Dolphins Bucks there's sixteen
combinations of ways those games can go that can kind
of change in ten of them. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers
(14:43):
go to the playoffs.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Boom.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Everybody hates Tampa Bay. The big thing that is going
to pivot all of this is this week's game here
Bank of America Stadium, because if you lose to the
Buccaneers Sunday, there's only one path for the Carolina Panthers
to make the playoffs. That involves beating the Seahawks, having
the Dolphins beat the Bucks in Miami, and you never
(15:05):
want to depend on other people, and then going to
Tampa and winning in Week eighteen. It could be done,
but it's one path among eight possibilities.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
So you don't like your odds.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
There are five game Yeah, it's like it's not fourteen
million possibilities, it's just eight. But things are moving in
the Panthers direction. If they are able to get that
win at home on Sunday, then things open up for
them a little bit and then you then you've got
the opportunity to control a little bit of stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
You need to beat Seattle.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
That would be very helpful because of common games, which
becomes a tiebreaker.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Did Seattle beat Tampa.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Uh Tampa.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Hang on, let me go to my big board of
common games, which is only a page or two deeper
in here.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Strength to victory. Yes, they did beat the Seahawks, but
the Bucks Seawks.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
The Bucks also beat the Arizona Cardinals in the Carolina
Panthers did not, So that's the big swing. They're a
game behind and strength of victory or in common opponent tiebreaker,
which is the fourth one down the line after overall record,
head to head division record. So if you get in
the weeds of tie breakers, that ain't where you want
to be for the Carolina Panthers. You want to take
care of your own business. So get that game Sunday again.
(16:21):
You know the easiest way to do this. If the
Carolina Panthers win their last three games, they're in the playoffs.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Right, just win justin Just.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Win them all.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
In that way, I don't have to do no more math,
and I think that's a benefit to everybody. So it's
all right here on the paper, it's all on the
computer screen at Panthers dot com. If you want that
in a digestible printed form, we've got it there for you.
So enjoy all that. But We've got a lot of
stuff coming up. I mean, it's going to be fascinating
(16:50):
to see how this comes together. Of course, there are
subplots of plenty. Baker Mayfield, Yep, he used to play here.
He sure did. That's going to be a thing people
are talking about all week. Oh Sam the week after that.
Sam Darnold, Yep, he used to play here too.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
That's gonna be a thing we're gonna get all into.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
I think the world of both of those young men,
they were in some difficult situations, not like what's going
on right here right now, in the past when they
were here and you know, didn't work out for them
for a lot of reasons that weren't entirely their fault
somewhere somewhere, but both playing high level football over the
course of the last couple of years.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
It's gonna be challenging, but the challenge is what you want.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
That's what dB said last night. He was like, this
is the grind. This is what we've been doing all year.
It's gonna take every bit of grit we got, and
this is when you love it.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
It's like doing long hand math. It's hard, but it's worth.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
It when you know you come to the answer, you
find out whether it's valuable or not. And this was
because finding out the exact ways this thing's all gonna
come together. We do it for you, the readers, because
we care about you, because you're like family. Hey, speaking
of family, uncle Phil, how about my guy? He almost
(18:02):
pulled one off last night, Philip rivers, Oh, I'm here
doing it for the old people everywhere. And when I
saw Phil rolling around out there, and that's not a
commentary on his physique, he is. He is undoubtedly sore
today after playing his first football game in five years
and then getting on a cross country flight. There ain't
enough ad well to put in that man today to
(18:23):
make him feel right. And he's gonna be an ice
up to about his neck for the next couple of days.
I imagine by Wednesday he'll be practicing again because he's
starting again this week.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
So they said something on Scott Van Pelt last night
that I thought was fitting because we didn't know how
yesterday's game was going to go with him, and it
was either SVP or heiselback. One of them said, like,
you know, he didn't lose them the game, and he
kept them in a position to have a chance to
win it, and you didn't know if that was even
(18:52):
going to be the case. There was a chance he
got he went out there yesterday and embarrassed himself. But
he didn't do that. He gave him a chance to
win it. He didn't lose it for them, Like, that's
good news. If you're the Cols, you can roll with
that for a few more weeks.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
So and in a position it gets one of the
better teams in the NFL at one of the toughest
places to play in the NFL.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
So, yeah, here's the moral of the story.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
If you've got a choice to choose between a brand
new thing and an old thing that you've seen before,
what do you pick?
Speaker 3 (19:21):
I know what you want me to sing, you've.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Seen before the thing you know, the thing you trust.
You go with old things because old things will not
let you down. Lack long hand math like Philip Rivers.
By the way, what's your favorite Christmas song?
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Ooh, probably Darlene Love, Baby Please Come Home.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
The correct answer is Elvis Presley's Blue Christmas. So always
trust the old things.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Whether it's Darlene Love is an old song?
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Yeah, but you were going Mariah carry or I love.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
That Darlene Love song. I'm gonna look up when it
came out.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
At any rate. So we'll sing holiday songs. We'll sing
Christmas carols the rest of the rest of the month.
We're here in the office because, like Dave Canalis said,
this is the business we've chosen.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Actually he didn't say that.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
That's from Godfather, But if Dave Canalis was a gangster,
that's what he would have said.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
He is not.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
He's a wholesome family man. He just knows this is
the time of year. You got to lock in because
you know what, it's playoff time. Yeah, and it's all
on the line for the Carolina Panthers. We'll have it
all broken down for you here at Panthers dot com.
Keep it locked on the website, on the app, see
us on the YouTube page for all the video updates.
We'll keep you posted. She'll be over here looking up
(20:33):
songs before his Yeah whatever mine is older. Yeah not
if you're going Mariah Carey on me. So anyway, that'll
take care of us for this edition. We will see
you on later later on this week on the Happy
half Hour, we'll get down into the weeds of this
Bucks matchup and see what we're gonna expect Sunday, right
here at Bank of America Stadium, where it's not gonna
(20:54):
be freezing cold, so you have no excuse not to
join us.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
We'll see all then
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Firefour
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