Cat Scratch Reader
Every ounce of momentum the Carolina Panthers have generated this season has been met with a bone-jarring stop. That hurt all the more last night in their 20-9 loss to the San Francisco 49ers when the Panthers were presented with a gift wrapped and golden opportunity to win their first primetime game in two years and take the division lead over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in late November for the first time in ten years. A battered to hell and back offensive line, Bryce Young, and Dave Canales couldn’t score more than three points in the first half despite three incredible turnovers. The offense was similarly unable to find any real momentum in the second half. Injuries piled up on an already hurting defense. That left the Panthers, out of gas, trying to fill up their burlap bag at the pump with what looked like a complete lack of understanding as to how you actually compete in a three-legged race.
That has been more or less the story of each of the Panthers’ losses this season. Some combination of injuries, questionable leadership, and an absent passing game have left an otherwise improving team bereft of any competitive hope. Every time the team wins it looks like they might be figuring it out and every time they lose it makes us question how they have won any games at all—let alone six.
The unit as a whole gets a giant shout out here. Down two starting linebackers who already felt like scraping the bottom of the talent barrel, the Panthers showed up to play team football, rallying to the ball on every down, and limited Christian McCaffrey to 3.7 yards per carry and 142 all-purpose yards on 31 touches. That man could have put up 300 yards easily with that kind of volume against the Panthers beleaguered defense.
On top of that, Jaycee Horn and Mike Jackson in coverage basically eliminated the forward pass from the 49ers playbook while they were on the field. This was the perfect performance, truly as good as you could have asked for, to put the Panthers in a strong position to win on Monday Night Football against a better built and better coached team. I hate that it was wasted, but I loved watching that first half before the injuries to Claudin Cherilus. Corey Thornton, and Horn changed the game.
Speaking of those injuries, as much as I hated watching them happen, I was impressed that the defense managed to hold on afterwards as well as they did. They held the 49ers to only ten points in the second half and forced a punt after Young’s fourth quarter interception to keep the game alive.
I don’t know what happens next season, but I do know that I want to see Ejiro Evero coaching this defense with another year’s worth of talent infusion by Dan Morgan and Brandt Tilis.
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