I was starting to think I had the Carolina Panthers figured out.
They weren't great, but they were getting better. Bryce Young was playing some of his best football, the defense had settled down after a rough start and Carolina had started winning games. I was starting to buy into the idea that maybe this team had finally turned a corner.
Then Tampa Bay came to town and beat them 43-13.
I'm not going to completely change my opinion of the Panthers because of one bad Sunday. But I'll admit, this one bothered me a little more than a normal loss because there wasn't really one thing you could point to and blame.
Pretty much everything went wrong.
I thought the run defense had figured it out
Maybe that's what bothered me most.
Carolina gave up 291 rushing yards against Chicago in the opener, and I remember wondering how you were supposed to win games when you couldn't stop anybody from running the football. Then the Panthers got better. The run defense settled down, and I thought maybe we could finally quit talking about it every week.
Tampa Bay ran for 258 yards Sunday.
Bucky Irving had 106 yards and two touchdowns, Kenneth Gainwell had 88 and Sean Tucker added 52 yards and another score. Baker Mayfield threw the ball just 11 times because, really, why would Tampa Bay do anything else?
That's the number I keep coming back to. The Buccaneers scored 43 points and barely needed their quarterback to throw the football.
I thought Carolina was past games like that. Apparently, I was wrong.
Bryce Young deserves some of the blame, too
I've defended Young quite a bit this season, and I still think most of it was deserved.
He had been playing better. He was taking better care of the football, making some big throws and looking more comfortable running the offense. I've written plenty about the progress he's made, so I'm not going to make excuses for him when he has a game like this one.
Young went 14-of-27 for 163 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions. He also lost a fumble, giving him three turnovers on the afternoon.
The offensive line didn't exactly do him any favors. Young was sacked five times, and playing quarterback when you're down 33-6 at halftime isn't a situation I'd wish on anybody.
Still, three turnovers are three turnovers.
I'm not suddenly back to questioning whether Young can be Carolina's quarterback because of one game. I do want to see what happens next, though. We've spent the past few weeks talking about him taking a step forward, and now we get to see how he responds to taking one backward.
There wasn't much to feel good about
Usually, even in a loss, you can find something.
Maybe a young player had a good game. Maybe the defense played well enough to win and the offense couldn't get anything going. Sometimes you walk away thinking the Panthers probably should've won.
I couldn't find much of that Sunday.
Carolina turned it over four times, allowed 258 rushing yards and gave up five sacks. By halftime, it was 33-6 and whatever plans the Panthers had coming into the afternoon were pretty much gone.
And that's where I'm struggling with this one.
Were we watching a team get better over the past few weeks, or were the wins making it easier to ignore some problems that were still there?
I don't think it's fair to say none of the improvement was real. Young really was playing better. The defense really had improved, and the Panthers were finding ways to win games they probably would've lost before.
That's why Sunday was so frustrating. Just when I thought I knew what this team was becoming, they gave us three hours that looked a whole lot like the Panthers we thought they were leaving behind.
Maybe we don't know who this team is yet
Six games probably isn't enough to know for sure.
I'm not ready to throw away everything Carolina did before Sunday, and I'm definitely not calling the last few weeks a fluke. One terrible game doesn't get to erase everything that came before it.
But I'm also not shrugging off a 43-13 loss at home.
If Carolina comes back and looks like the team we were watching before Tampa Bay, maybe we chalk this up as one of those Sundays where everything went wrong at once. Those happen in the NFL.
If the run defense gets pushed around again, the turnovers continue and Young struggles, I'm going to look at this game a lot differently.
I was starting to believe the Panthers had turned a corner.
After Sunday, I need to see it again.
Add us as a preferred source on Google