The Panthers defense forced three turnovers as Carolina beat New Orleans 22-14. The Panthers improve to 1-2 this season and will face the Arizona Cardinals next Sunday.
well, welcome back into sports extra. You know what? It has been 371 days since we could even talk about a Carolina panthers win at Bank of America Stadium and you really got to go back to november two just celebrating a win at all. So to help me break down this double a little bit more, let's bring in Orioles, chris lee who was in charlotte, but chris this game was all about the defense. After going through the first two games, not forcing a turnover at all, the defense was able to pack a little bit of a punch. They get three on the day. Just how big of a step forward is this for that unit? Yeah, Casey, this is huge. This is something that the panthers defense has been talking about all week. They wanted to contribute more to the game. They've already been doing a pretty good job keeping some offenses in front of them. But the main thing that they wanted to do is score themselves but also forced more turnovers. They more than did that. Markey's Haines taking it 44 yards on the fumble recovery to go to the house for the first defensive score of the season. And that was thanks to Frankie lulu stripping Alvin Kamara who's been absolutely great for the panthers this year. And Frankie lugou and then of course there was two interceptions out of that big man, Derrick Brown, he told me he doesn't practice trying to catch the ball. So he just did that off of instinct today. And of course, jaycee Horn coming up with an interception like he did last season also against the Saints, of course his dad played for the Saints back in the day. So I know he's happy that his first two interceptions are against the team that his dad played for. Well look so the defense is able to get off the field today. But in turn the offense is not able to stay on the field. Panthers just four for 14 on third down conversions. Chris when you look at this, what is the biggest issue here? Yeah, it just seems like play calling has been an issue but it also seems like baker Mayfield can't get the ball in the right spots. You said it for 14 on third down today, 10 of 37 on third down Casey this entire season. Going through the three games also coming into this game, the panthers were 29th in the league and third down efficiency. That's not going to cut it. Uh we don't know what's been happening with the play calling. Also a lot of folks haven't been involved like we think they should have D. J. Moore one catch for two yards, Robby Anderson, one catch Tommy tremble, one catch uh christian Mccaffrey to catch is something like six or seven yards. So the panthers aren't really getting a lot of help from their quarterback baker Mayfield but they're also not getting receivers open. You know, I heard matt rules say today after the game that if you would have told him that they would win an NFC South game without big production from Robby Anderson and D. J. Moore. He wouldn't believe it. But that's obviously more for discussion later. You know, there was an offensive player of receiver, low viscous, you know, we waited two games to see him after he got traded to the panthers from the jaguars just before the season started, we saw him today. He makes an immediate impact. Just how big can he be an impact for this offense? Moving forward, Casey, we talked about this last week. I was just like, Hey McAdoo, why haven't you had in the game? Why haven't you thrown to Tommy trouble? Why haven't all these other players kind of been involved in the offense? What we just talked about? Well today, they finally got Into the offense and they got him uh, you know, catching some passes, the first pass that he caught 67 yards straight to the house, which was of course the longest play of the day for the Carolina Panthers. And then of course he added 23 yards on top of that. His 90 yards on his two catches Was 52% of the passing yards that Baker Mayfield had today. So that shows you just how bad the offense has been without and what he gave to him if it weren't for, you know, catching those two passes. This offense will have less than 100 yards passing today. This is how big he can be for this team. He's the game breaker. And then maybe in the next coming weeks he can help get Robby Anderson open. Help get DJ more open because now you have just another person to pay attention to. Oh yeah, along with christian Mccaffrey who the panthers still need to get a little bit more involved in their offensive game. Yeah. Rule said La vista could be a great spark for this offense. We saw it right away already. Up next is the Cardinals and that's what we'll talk to you chris, Thank you so much.