4 pros and cons to the Carolina Panthers young defense in 2021

Enthusiasm vs. Experience

I touched on this a bit when talking about the aggressiveness of younger players, but another thing that tends to get lost with time in the NFL is the love for the game itself.

It’s been said many times that when you turn a hobby into a job it ceases to be fun. Luckily this has not happened to me with writing just yet and probably never will.

In today’s climate, there seems to be a lot of athletes in multiple sports walking away from the game because it isn’t fun for them anymore or because they feel they’ve done all they can or wanted to do. Not these young guns though, JaMarcus Russel notwithstanding.

The majority of interviews with young players have one thing in common, talking about how blessed or happy they are to be playing the game they love at the highest level and that shows on the field in big ways.

When you lose that passion for anything your performance begins to suffer.

Sadly if you look at a lot of aging stars in the league they tend to have lost that passion and end up showing up to workouts overweight or just unwilling to put in the work or effort to be the player that they once were. Either resting on past performances and glory or just not caring anymore.

This love that a young player has drives them to be better and play hard because they are legitimately having fun out there. It fuels them and pushes them along to those spectacular effort plays and highlight-reel moments. Because why would you put effort into something you don’t love?

There are also those increasingly creative celebrations that they are coming up with nowadays like Brian Burns’ spiderman impression that shows just how much fun they are having.

The flip side to this would be the lack of experience. Even if an older player has become complacent they still have the knowledge to largely get away with it and still be an average starter in the league.

Experience, however, is one of those qualities that is over and underrated at the same time.

Because once you have the experience to tune your instincts tightly enough to anticipate what your opposition will do you’ve often lost the step necessary to counter it.

Experience is always the greatest teacher and that is one thing a young defense like the Carolina Panthers definitely needs, a mentor. Without this, they will struggle to get past the negative rookie tendencies that some players get stuck in.