5 things the Carolina Panthers must learn from Week 1 drubbing at Falcons
By Ricky Raines
Carolina Panthers offense is still developing chemistry
Another relevant aspect of Bryce Young’s underwhelming debut – this offense is still working out the kinks.
I understood the desire to remain on the ‘vanilla’ side of things during the exhibition games. However, I couldn’t help but feel like this newly assembled group of players would’ve benefitted from collective playing time, operating actual concepts and play calls, together in warmup contests.
The most surefire way to make the correct adjustments and improvements to a unit is by first identifying the deficiencies and implementing changes accordingly in practice sessions and exhibitions.
We saw the offense operate out of the pistol formation on Sunday - a new wrinkle that hadn’t been at all demonstrated in August. On one snap from the pistol, Young and Chuba Hubbard weren’t on the same page as far as which side the handoff was to be made from, resulting in a clunky exchange and minimal yards gained.
Even in pre-snap motions, the timing was off. That’s a function of familiarity and the scheme requirements simply evolving into a second nature of sorts.
We saw throws miss short and long as a result of Young and his playmakers not exactly being on the same page. In a game where the offense didn’t attempt many downfield attacks, the margin for error was already thin.
According to Next Gen Stats, Young attempted just nine passes over 10 yards, completing only two of them. The average completed air yards for the signal-caller ranked fourth worst of all qualifying quarterbacks in Week 1 at 2.6 yards.