Panthers looked good for 322 seconds vs. Ravens. Take that as a victory.
Fully aware of the danger of reading too much into one tiny snippet of one almost-meaningless preseason game, dare we say it? Dare we must. However briefly the actual in-September-for-real Carolina Panthers were actually on the field, in that very limited window the Panthers actually looked … good.
Maybe not great, but good.
And good is good enough for 322 seconds in August.
Christian McCaffrey and DJ Moore watched from the sidelines, notably among others, so even this was something less than a full dress rehearsal, brief as it was. One series for the starting offense, or most of it. One series for the starting defense, almost all of it.
There’s a low bar here, so the Panthers should take this small sample and run with it. In this kind of first-chance-to-see situation, mere competence is all that’s required, reinforcement that the fleeting good feelings from Spartanburg weren’t all misplaced optimism. The Panthers did that Saturday against the Baltimore Ravens, and more.
The defense was sharp, attacking and aggressive, giving up one long third-down run before tipping a pass for an interception to turn things over to Sam Darnold in his Panthers pseudo-debut. Darnold completed one pass to Robby Anderson, threw another away in the end zone instead of forcing a throw into traffic — progress! — and rookie Chuba Hubbard looked good in open space deputizing for McCaffrey and not-so-good in tight quarters, getting stuffed on three straight goal-line runs.
And that was it for the starters, all 11 plays of scoreless excitement and deliberately unimaginative red-zone play-calling that it was.
“I liked our organization,” Panthers coach Matt Rhule said. “We were quick.”
It’s easy to overreact to what are essentially mere glimpses of the future through a blurred lens, but even taken in that proper perspective, it was more or less what you wanted to see on both sides of the ball. Above all else, the offense and the defense looked like they knew what they were doing.
“I thought we were efficient,” Darnold said. “Like I said earlier, we’ve got to punch it in.”
It may not have been dazzling, but it was smooth. That isn’t always the case in the first stumbling steps of the preseason. It’s not something that should be taken for granted.
They went ahead and played the remaining 54 minutes and change after that, the usual open audition for backup jobs as well as an extended showcase for quarterback Will Grier, the third-round pick two years ago whose time has either come or it hasn’t. It’s hard to imagine his night going much better, at least by August standards. Training camp stars like Terrace Marshall Jr. and Frankie Luvu also backed up their good notices with good performances.
Then there’s Joey Slye, mysteriously still employed, the alleged big-legged kicker who missed from 63 yards last week and 37 yards this week, who continues to be the kicking personification of “what would you say you do here?” Slye’s long range has seduced two successive Panthers coaches into too many bad fourth-down decisions; surely this was the final-final-final-final straw.
Those are the fine details for coaches and general managers to sort out Friday against the Pittsburgh Steelers and beyond as they tweak and tune the bottom third of the roster. In the specific case of the Panthers, who were outscored 17-0 in the second half on their way to a 20-3 loss, they aren’t so overflowing in talent that they can’t or won’t find better depth players on the waiver wire, so some of Saturday’s second-half Panthers may already have seen their last of the uniform.
As far as the top of the roster, where there’s less room for movement, it did what it had to do. The defense was flashy. The offense was functional. Everyone looked like they were on the same page. Disaster was successfully averted.
“There were some signs of good football out there,” Rhule said, truly a preseason assessment.
At this stage of the preseason, that’s a win. Take the W and move on to bigger things.
This story was originally published August 21, 2021 at 9:01 PM with the headline "Panthers looked good for 322 seconds vs. Ravens. Take that as a victory.."
