Cat Scratch Reader
Carolina Panthers football is back. You’ll get to see the black and blue up against another team in a football game, even if that game doesn’t count for anything. And head coach Dave Canales has already said that he intends to play the starters a bit in the first two weeks of the preseason. They didn’t play at all last preseason, and they looked like a team that didn’t practice to start last regular season. Hopefully that’s different this time around.
In the regular season, this space is used to talk about what the Panthers can do to find success based on the strengths and weaknesses of the opposing defense. This game doesn’t count, neither team is trying to win, and we don’t know who’s going to be on the field on a snap to snap basis. So instead, we’ll talk about what to watch for and topics of interest, like…
McMillan adds an extra bit of physicality and size to a Panthers wide receiver room that wasn’t necessarily lacking there. He should be the team’s number one receiver in time, but it remains to be seen how long it takes him to get up to speed. Can he immediately show what made him a top 10 pick in this past draft? I’d love it if the Panthers could get a red zone opportunity for him or two to show what really is supposed to make him special.
Elsewhere in that somewhat crowded receiver room, Hunter Renfrow is trying to find a place. He overlaps quite a bit with the role Adam Thielen played last season, so it’ll be interesting to see how his playing time works out in the regular season. But in the preseason, he should ball out against opposing depth secondaries.
Oh, and there’s Jimmy Horn. How does he look against a team other than his own?
We should get plenty of Jack Plummer reps throughout the preseason. While the starters are going to play, I still assume their time is going to be limited. Backup quarterback Andy Dalton doesn’t need preseason reps, so he’s probably not going to get much time either. That means lots of snaps for Plummer, who improved week over week in his appearances last year. Dalton isn’t going to be around forever, so the Panthers do have to figure out what is going to happen with the backup quarterback position long term. Plummer can start to establish himself as a steady backup when the Panthers no longer feel the need to have a wily old veteran at that spot.
The Panthers took a couple of skill position players in the draft at spots where they already had some depth, making paths to snaps murky. Trevor Etienne was picked in the fourth round, but he’s not going to get...
