5 Carolina Panthers firmly on the hot seat vs. 49ers in Week 5

Ben McAdoo – Carolina Panthers OC

With the defense and special teams more than holding their own, there is now some severe criticism coming the way of Ben McAdoo. The Carolina Panthers placed a lot of faith in the newly appointed offensive coordinator this spring, giving him plenty of influence within the decision-making process with a view to potential improvements during the current campaign.

This hasn’t occurred as yet, to put it mildly. Things are worse than they’ve ever been and McAdoo’s less-than-stellar scheme has to shoulder a large portion of the blame.

There is no complexity to what McAdoo implements week-to-week. It’s easily figured out by defenses and is significantly impacting the primary weapons available to Carolina.

Baker Mayfield must perform better, there’s no getting away from that. But there is something amiss with the system and the last thing McAdoo wants to see is the San Francisco 49ers given how dominant their defense has been of late.

McAdoo has to get creative in a relatively short space of time for the Panthers to stand any chance of mounting momentum against the Niners. Whether he’s capable of such drastic changes is highly debatable based on what we’ve witnessed over the first month of competitive action.