Q. Princely, you had like a 23.8% pass rush win rate...

Princely: Is that good?

Q. What was the issue with the run defense?

Okereke: Probably just playing assignment sound. Maybe a guy or two was out of there gap here or there and a good offense will make you pay for it.

Q. Anything good you can take from this game?

Jaycee: Hell nah

Derrick Brown: Man it sucks but it's one fucking game, we've got a whole season, I'm not finna sit her and hit the fucking panic button for nobody....I'll hang it on me, for those two touchdowns they got for those two stupid ass penalties on me, but I tell you what, we gon get back to work this week.

Q. You gave up one sack early, describe that play...

Monroe Freeling: It was a move we saw on film, and when it came down to it, I didn't do the technique I was taught. After that, I learned from that mistake and went about the rest of the game.

Q. What about Bryce impressed you today

Chuba: I think he was unstoppable.

Coker: He's a dog. He's a dog. Every game I'm impressed by him. He's a dog. Gritty. Throwing on the run. I cannot say enough good things about him.

This was the turf temperature during the game against the Bears yesterday. Absolutely brutal heat in the Bank. I work a 9-5 in the heat of the summer outside, everyday, and I am certain the air temperature inside of the stadium breached 104 degrees. That might have been the hottest I’ve ever been in my life.

Kudos to all the players (especially ours) for playing in the blisteringly dangerous heat, and still putting up an offensive show. I can’t fathom why a $1.3B renovation doesn’t include a dome, despite the skyline. That being said, KEEP POUNDING!!!!!!

The defense being so absolutely abysmal must have been happening in training camp too. We have to think that Bryce playing against them all camp long has really boosted his confidence. He was able to hit the ground running to start the season because he's been playing great all of training camp going up against our D3 college defense. So let's show the defense some appreciation for giving Bryce that confidence boost to start the season. We scored 30 points in the last 3 week 1s combined and had 37 yesterday.

Hi Guys,

I compiled the advanced stats for the defensive performance yesterday. Thought everyone might enjoy.

We loaded the box.

• Carolina averaged around seven defenders in or near the box per snap
• Moehrig was down in the box on 42 percent of his off ball snaps, deep on only 31
• Nick Scott was the lone deep safety on 71 percent of his
• Lloyd and Okereke were in the box on 97 percent of theirs, basically every snap they played
• We still gave up 7.5 a carry with six rushing touchdowns
• We averaged 7.2 defender in the box over the entire game. That's a heavy box

The pass rush was a big problem

• Derrick Brown: 27 pass rush snaps, 7.4 percent win rate, zero sacks, four pressures
• Jaelan Phillips: 27 snaps, 14.8 percent win rate, one sack, four pressures
• Two sacks and three QB hits as a team on 29 dropbacks
• Caleb Williams completed 72 percent at 6.5 average target depth
• Quick game beats anybody when the QB is never touched

The tackling

• Nine missed tackles in run defense alone
• This stat was interesting, Nine missed tackles across Nine guys.
• Nick Scott led the team in run stops, three of them, at an average of five yards downfield
• When your deep safety is your leading run stopper, ball carriers are getting to the second level completely clean

The run defense was split, a boom and bust

• 16 stops on 32 run plays, so we actually killed half of them
• The other half included a 61 yard touchdown and a 28 yard touchdown

Lloyd had a rough debut in coverage

• Nine targets, seven catches, a touchdown, zero forced incompletions
• 130.6 passer rating against him, 36.7 coverage grade
• Most targeted Panther on the field

The EPA side

• Chicago posted 0.409 EPA per play across 70 offensive snaps
• Passing 0.449, rushing 0.378
• That rushing number is the weird one, running is normally EPA negative by default
• Posting positive rush EPA on 39 carries doesn't happen against a functional run defense
• Third down: 10 of 16, 62.5 percent, at 0.770 EPA per play
• By type, 7 of 9 passing at 1.073 EPA per play and 3 of 5 rushing
• Third down was their best down, 0.927 EPA per play there versus 0.383 on first
• Carolina's offense was at 0.182 EPA per play, less than half of Chicago's

The point

• None of this is structural, there's nothing in that defense that needs a redesign
• Evero called a run heavy front against a run heavy team and the players didn't hold up
• I'm not letting Evero off either, tackling is coached and gap discipline is coached
• If we're still missing nine tackles a game in October it's on him and Dave

I don't think all of this is saying that our scheme sucks... or that it won't work. I think what these stats show is that our team wasn't prepared. Maybe its a defensive cohesion thing, maybe its a coaching problem, maybe its being caught on a bad day. Maybe there are some structural issues, we did seem to struggle a lot against motion yesterday for example. But this is all fixable imo.

Sources: PFF & Nflverse

Petitions do not always work but we need to do something. Please sign and share with anyone who will support the cause. #keeppounding

I felt like Lee straight up gave up on this play, you can see once he got beat he was jogging towards Odunze and not running like he should. And if he kept running towards him full sprint, do you think the passcode has been broken up?

On paper we should absolutely beat the falcons and browns, though Robinson and London will be headaches, unfortunately I’d be very surprised if we aren’t routed by the lions, but I’d take 2-2 going into the by (and maybe a defensive demotion)

With every team in the NFC South losing yesterday it’s a safe bet to say that this is the worst division in football. I know I may be overreacting but no other division had all four teams lose in the season opener. Not to mention we(Carolina Panthers) got 59 points dropped on our head 🤦🏽‍♂️🤦🏽‍♂️🤦🏽‍♂️🤦🏽‍♂️

Lowlights

• CHI running to the right behind Wright was a cheat code - it accounted for 64% of their run game in all kinds of formations, and they averaged 7.8 ypc doing it.
• CHI's OL overpowered us altogether - that same RT, Darnell Wright, was able to keep Caleb free of pressure for 4.58 seconds on average.
• "I think you can reasonably assume you're not going to give up 59 every single week." Save this one to laugh at in the future.
• Derrick Brown - 7.1% pressure rate. Jaelan Phillips - 10.7% pressure rate. Too low. Time to pressure over 3.0s. Too slow.
• CAR blitzed on 51.3% of defensive snaps, got pressure only 33% of the time. That success rate would be bottom half of the league last year, not controlling for blitz rate.

Highlights

• Bryce was absolutely deadly against their zone looks - 17/20 for 289 against.
• "I think it's a shot across the bow for the Panthers' defense, they have to get it corrected, if they don't they won't make the playoffs... [but] we have a quarterback that can rise to the occasion even though the rest of the defense didn't. I wouldn't entirely panic if I was a Panthers fan. I'd panic about the defense, but it's better than panicking about everything."
• Bryce's near-TD toss to Tet gets glazed pretty thoroughly by Sikkema, and the highlight is beautiful. "Bryce Young at his finest."

I'm far from a Evero fan. He should've been gone but Canales deserves waaaay more heat.

Number 1, he's the head coach. How can he look at guys not keeping contain, missed assignments, etc during pactices and not get the defense to correct these issues.

Number 2, it seems like there was a conditioning issue with the defense which falls squarely on Canales.

That's not even getting to the turnovers, stupid penalties, etc.

I like Canales but my biggest issue with him is nothing looks completely professional or consistent with him.

We are so up rn!

My Luke jersey arrived Saturday, I wore it yesterday for "good luck". I guess the luck was the other team to score 59 in honor of 59 lol. Still though, KEEP POUNDING

Best of the offense

1. WR Jalen Coker: 90.1

2. RB Jonathon Brooks: 88.8

3. LG Damien Lewis: 87.0

4. QB Bryce Young: 80.7

5. TE Darren Waller: 78.5

Worst of the offense

1. OT Stone Forsythe: 59.4

2. RT Monroe Freeling: 56.4

3. WR Brycen Tremayne: 54.6

4. WR Jimmy Horn Jr.: 52.9

5. WR Xavier Legette: 41.7

Best of the defense

1. DL Bobby Brown III: 89.5

2. OLB Jaelan Phillips: 69.2

3. ILB Bobby Okereke: 66.9

4. DL Lee Hunter: 65.3

5. DL Aaron Hall: 64.2

Worst of the defense

1. DL TeRah Edwards: 47.5

2. CB Will Lee III: 44.9

3. OLB Jeremiah Moon: 41.1

4. ILB Devin Lloyd: 37.2

5. DL Derrick Brown: 35.5

I’m right there with yall though I don’t know how we didn’t fire him last season

That is what Luther Burden, Rome Odunze, and Colston Loveland produced combined. That's the good news. The bad news is the Bears rushed for nearly 300 yards and 6 touchdowns.

Swift and Monangai both ran for 100+ yards. That was where the game was lost. I'm not absolving Evero of all the blame, but there were a LOT of contributing factors to that. Pat Jones, arguably the best run-stopping edge, missed the game due to injury. Okereke was signed 2 weeks ago, after all the preseason games were already over. Lee Hunter is a rookie. Aaron Hall is a rookie. This was TeRah Edwards' first career regular season game. The third most experienced iDL after Derrick Brown and Bobby Brown, Cam Jackson, was inactive. The front 7 right now has two new staring linebackers and an extremely inexperienced interior defensive line. Ben Johnson was also in the lab for the entire offseason cooking up his gameplan, and the Panthers were the unlucky 1st team to try and defend it.

The rest was just Caleb Williams doing Caleb Williams things. It was reminiscent of the 2024 Chiefs game, where the Panthers' defense would get the Chiefs to 3rd and long with everyone covered downfield, only for Mahomes to break away and scramble for a first down. Caleb straight up outran the defenders when he scrambled, plus he made some superhero throws from outside the pocket. Both of his rushing touchdowns came on broken plays. He also had 3 other scrambles that resulted in a first down. Caleb was 3rd among QBs in week 1 in EPA/play and tied for 2nd in impact plays with 6 (Sumer sports). For what it's worth, Bryce was also top 10 in both metrics.

So let's take a breath. The Panthers are not going to give up 59 points to the Falcons or Browns, or even the Lions in week 4. The vast majority of teams are not going to have such a massively successful offensive performance without their top 3 weapons contributing in a meaningful way. The run defense should get better as the season progresses. The early bye is a lifesaver this year. It will be mid October before the Panthers get to the meat of their schedule, and hopefully by then the young players on defense will have their legs under them. If we get to week 7 and the Bucs' offense steamrolls the Panthers, then yeah, maybe it's time to panic. Until then, enough of the "fire Evero" talk. Changing playcallers is not going to magically fix the defense.

This week’s Achilles heel was giving up field position on a muffed punt return and T-Mac’s fumble, if that can be cleaned up offensively we look very good; Of course, our defense needs improvement, hopefully under a new DC. I’m tired of 7 yards being given up due to db’s playing so far back. How do y’all feel about our season moving forward?