Panthers: Placement of bye week makes life difficult
The timing of the bye week is not ideal for the Carolina Panthers….
The Carolina Panthers 2018 schedule is action-packed. That is putting it mildly. One thing I glanced over when looking at it the first time was the placement of the bye week.
The Panthers bye comes in at Week 4 of the season. As Max Henson of Panthers.com notes, that means there will be 13 weeks of football without a break. That is not easy for any team to do, especially when you consider what the bye week usually means to teams.
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Rest, rehab and relaxation are the three biggest things that come to my mind when a bye week is upon a team. Furthermore, if a team is struggling, it gives them time to assess their gameplan over the first half of the season and see what adjustments they need to make. The Panthers will not necessarily have that luxury.
If there is one bright spot in all of this, they will have faced good competition once the bye week hits. Dallas, Atlanta and Cincinnati will give them a good baseline of where they are at over the first couple games. They may need a break following that trio of games, especially if things do not go as planned.
However as the season wears on, there is little doubt that the lack of a stoppage will catch up to the team. It’s only natural as the bumps, bruises and late nights begin to take their toll on everybody within the organization. This stretch of continuous play will test the team and it will be a nice but cruel benchmark to see just how good this team is at performing under less-than-ideal circumstances.
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For the fans, this may be seen as good news. This means 13 straight weeks of football. For the fantasy players, it may make their lives a little easier too. It is a unique situation and one the team will have to challenge and conquer head-on as they aim to make another run at the Super Bowl.