Carolina Panthers
Welter and Lea: It's difficult to evaluate Bryce Young when he has so much dysfunction surrounding him
Pat Welter and Chris Lea discuss how the Panthers lost to the Saints 28-6 on Sunday.
Let's dive a little bit deeper into a 28 to 6. Carolina Panthers lost to the New Orleans Saints with Wrals. Chris Lee. What's going on? Chris? Let's start with the logical place, Bryce Young and his development, he said it himself missed a lot of throws today. 13 to 3600 and 37 yards. I'll give him this. He did run the ball well, albeit scrambling and running for his life. What did you see? Yeah, I think it's kind of hard for me to, to say, I, you know, to look at Bryce and kind of give a real evaluation and I've been saying this for a few weeks now on, uh Panthers Playbook on the podcast. It, it's tough when you have the dysfunction around him. You have, as you said he was running for his life, you have a bad scheme that's in place. You also have AAA play caller who, you know, he hasn't had really good play callers this year. Uh, you also have receivers who don't, uh, get open receivers when he does hit them straight in the hands. Um, they're not catching the ball receivers who aren't running full speed on their routes to even get towards the ball and it, you have all this when you put it together all these weeks down the line in the season, does Bryce Young actually trust his receivers, is that why we're seeing plays and, and, and throws that are seem a little bit off. So it's hard for me to kind of sit back and say, yeah, Bryce Young did this wrong because, uh, look at like the, the bad situation that he's in. Uh, I don't even know if he even trust these guys. So is he putting it in spots where literally nobody but his receivers, if it's a receiver can even get to, it can get to it themselves because if he throws an interception, of course, it's gonna be to talk about bad Bryce. So I don't know, know what to make of any of this pat. Honestly, I, I said all of that just to say that I don't know what to make of any of that, which is kind of like a weird situation. I wanna ask you as a former quarterback from high school. If you don't trust your receivers, how are you gonna, you know, throw it on target, you know, all the time? And we know that Bryce Young was talked about for all of his accuracy, uh, coming out of college and all of a sudden he's not accurate. It feels like that is distrust to me. Yeah, I mean, you've got a split second to make those decisions and it looks a lot different when you're on field level versus when you're watching on TV. Or playing in Madden looks to me like a lot of those sacks today, Chris were covered sacks with nobody being open. I will say he did seem to get more support from his running game over 200 yards rushing Cuba Hubbard. Uh Miles Sanders even showed out in this one for a change. Does this seem like maybe the start of at least an identity under interim head coach Chris Tabor, uh, I, I guess they should have made it, uh, the identity, uh, the, the whole time this entire season. But yeah, I mean, this is, uh, a long time coming, right? You had Shuba Hubbard who was a big part of last year's end of the year success with the run game. Uh, and, you know, he continues to look like he's, uh, running back number one and they gave him, uh, the carries as a running back, number one with 23 carries getting 87 yards. And so, you know, I'm, I'm happy that they have done that and that they've really realized that Miles Sanders just isn't the guy. But as you said, Miles Sanders ended up having a pretty good game, especially with the one long run for 48 yards, which, uh, was very close to becoming the touchdown, which would have been the Panthers only touchdown of the game. Um, you know, it, it was great to see the run game kind of come along. Uh, you, you would hope that when the run game comes along that maybe it'll open things up for the receivers, but again, bad scheme and everything else, you know, I don't have to go back through all that. Uh, but happy to see that, that's what it's happening, what's happening for the Panthers now, hopefully for the rest of the season, uh, they can establish, uh, that run and, uh, keep the ball a little bit more and, and maybe it equals more scores for them, which hopefully means at least another win or two for the end of the year. We, we could only hope. Yeah. Well, not based on what I'm reading right now, Chris, because there was an article in the athletic this week from Joe Person and Diane Rossini, which really was illuminating about what's going on inside Bank of America Stadium. A, a quote, hunger games culture, Chris, to me this, this said a lot David Tepper trying to bring in this all star staff, all star team, but nothing fits. You got a scheme that doesn't align with the players. You've got coaches that are coming from different trees and different philosophies. Nothing is jointed totally disjointed inside that stadium and that's reflected on the field. Absolutely. And I mean, that article, if you haven't had a chance to read it, please go read it, but dysfunction all around with the Carolina Panthers, especially amongst the coaching staff when the coaching staff is willing to stab each other in the back during the week so that they don't look bad, uh, then you, you're gonna have a real problem, which is another reason why I don't know if we can give, uh, uh, the best, uh, evaluation of what Bryce Young is, uh, right now at this point of his career, but it does show its way on the field because it does look like a lot of times players are lost that players don't know exactly what to do. And again, this is a team that almost made it to the playoffs at the end of last season with the coaching change and, uh, Steve Wilkes. So it, it shows me uh that, you know, this coaching staff really is a problem. I hope that whoever is the next head coach, uh can, can come in and, you know, really clean this stuff up and really have uh a, a great culture going forward. But Pat, it also reminds me of an interview I've heard with Jeff Saturday when he was on the Pat mccabe Show and he was describing the culture, he had to clean up after Frank Reich last year in Indy. And so I hate to like pile on a guy who's not even in the building anymore, right? But a lot of this has to do with the shift that Frank Reich was steering. Uh, a lot of it has to do with David Tepper as well. Uh But when you're the head coach, you need to set up a better situation than this. And Man Frank Wright really let a lot of folks down and it's like, sounds like there's gonna be a big mess to clean up at 800 Mint Street for the next head coach. Yeah, David Tepper didn't want to answer questions about what was going on during his press conference, but credit to the journalists out there, we will ultimately find out. So we finally have some answers about what's going on with the Panthers. They got a few games left here to try to get a win home next week versus the Falcons. Thanks a lot, Chris for coming on.