5 crucial takeaways from Panthers dominant Week 2 win vs. the Saints
By Luke Gray
Carolina Panthers must fix their third-quarter offense
Two games, two completely stagnant performances from Joe Brady’s offense in the third quarter.
Again the Carolina Panthers went scoreless in the third against the New Orleans Saints as they did in Week 1 against the New York Jets.
Luckily this week the defense held up once again to keep the Panthers in a deserved driving seat and get themselves to a 2-0 record.
Thankfully, things improved in the fourth quarter with a good late drive from Sam Darnold ending in a first touchdown of the season for Christian McCaffery.
The third quarter culminated in an awful attempted shovel pass from Darnold to running back Chubba Hubbard which was picked by defensive tackle Malcolm Roach.
Although the Panthers were able to comfortably see out the game in large part thanks to a great defensive display, when the schedule becomes tougher they can ill afford these lapses for entire quarters.
With no disrespect to Zack Wilson and Jameis Winston when Carolina goes up against better quarterbacks such as Dak Prescott and Tom Brady they will be punished for these scoreless quarters and cannot simply continually rely on the defense to bail them out.
While I’m sure it’s something offensive coordinator Brady is working on, this is an issue that has plagued the offensive coordinator during his stint in Charlotte and the Panthers won’t be a solid playoff team until this improves.