Sacked: Carolina Panthers disintegrate once more, falling to 0-4 after loss to Vikings
Ugh. Again.
The Carolina Panthers came from ahead to lose once more Sunday, blowing an early 10-0 lead against the Minnesota Vikings and absorbing a 21-13 loss. Only two teams are still winless in the 2023 regular season — the Chicago Bears and the Panthers, who are now both 0-4.
The Panthers led 13-7 at halftime at Bank of America Stadium. But the game turned in the third quarter when rookie quarterback Bryce Young fumbled while being sacked on second-and-17 from the Minnesota 28, with Carolina seemingly headed at least for another field goal. Instead, Minnesota’s D.J. Wonnum picked the ball up after Young didn’t protect it and rambled 51 yards the other way for a touchdown, and suddenly, the Vikings led, 14-13.
“That was a huge, huge, huge swing of the game,” Young said. “And again, that’s solely, single-handedly, on me. ... That’s no one else but me.”
The Vikings would never trail again, although Carolina made it interesting with a late drive.
The Panthers had a first down at the Minnesota 9 at the two-minute warning, needing a touchdown and two-point conversion to tie the game. There was hope then, but it was quickly extinguished.
After the first-and-goal came a Young tipped pass, a sack by Minnesota safety Harrison Smith, an incompletion and, on fourth-and-goal from the 18, yet another sack by Smith, who also had had the sack on Wonnum’s third-quarter TD and who the Panthers apparently decided not to block all day when he blitzed.
“It starts with myself,” Panthers coach Frank Reich said afterward of the team’s awful start to 2023. “We’re 0-4. I’m the head coach, that’s my responsibility, to get the team to play better.”
Vikings fans make purple reign
I could say that the Panthers disappointed a stadium full of home fans, but that wouldn’t be true. While the stadium was mostly full, at least half of the seats were taken up by very loud fans dressed in purple — Minnesota fans, happy to see their team win in Charlotte. It was a purple reign, especially at the end, when the game was decided.
Many of those Minnesota fans wore No. 18 jerseys to honor receiver Justin Jefferson, who may be the best wideout in the NFL. Jefferson certainly looked the part Sunday, scoring twice, on 4- and 30-yard throws from Kirk Cousins, and having a third touchdown negated by a holding penalty.
Cousins made some big mistakes, too, and showed why Minnesota (1-3) hadn’t won a game until Sunday. His most notable was on Minnesota’s first drive, when Cousins threw a ball late to the sideline just short of the end zone and Carolina safety Sam Franklin stepped in front of it.
Franklin then took off like he was Usain Bolt, sprinting 99 yards to the other end zone for the longest interception return for a touchdown in Carolina history.
Eddy Piñeiro would add two field goals — one a career-long 56-yarder at the second-half horn that erased some poor clock management by Reich and his staff, when they should have used a timeout but didn’t — and Carolina led 13-7 at halftime.
But once again, the Panthers fell apart in the second half, getting outscored 14-0. They just have such a hard time scoring touchdowns with Young at QB, and it doesn’t help Panthers fans any to see that former Carolina star Christian McCaffrey was scoring four touchdowns in a single game for San Francisco on the same day. The Panthers traded McCaffrey away a year ago.
Said Panthers linebacker Kamu Grugier-Hill, who had an interception of Cousins in the loss: “We’ve got to finish these games. I feel like we play a solid three quarters every game and then we just can’t finish. So we’ve got to fix that.”
“I guess at a certain point in time, you’ve got to man up, you know?” Panthers edge rusher Brian Burns said. “And that time has been well overdue.”
Young looks young
Young again looked like a rookie, taking too many sacks and throwing too many balls without the pinpoint accuracy he’s known for having. Young came out after one unsuccessful series pointing to himself and banging his hand on the bench, which qualifies as a temper tantrum for the mild-mannered No. 1 pick. In 12 NFL quarters, Young has led the Panthers to only two offensive touchdowns. That won’t win games anywhere.
The offensive line didn’t help Carolina and Young, either, as the rookie was sacked five times for 55 yards in losses, with all the sacks coming in the second half. Carolina’s game plan of short, safe passes meant that Young completed 25 of 32 throws for a respectable 204 yards, and the Panthers ran enough bubble screens to fill up a bottle of champagne. But forget about the deep shots. The Panthers completed exactly zero passes of 25 yards or more.
Carolina’s conservative play-calling drew boos on several occasions; Young threw deep only once, drawing a defensive holding penalty (so the play didn’t technically even count as a pass).
As for Carolina’s defense, even missing multiple starters, it played plenty well enough to win. The defense was responsible for 10 of Carolina’s 13 points, either directly or indirectly, and held a high-powered Minnesota offense to 14 (the other seven Vikings points being scored on the fumble return).
To allow 14 points, give up only 1-of-8 on third-down conversions and score on a pick-six interception is a winning performance for most NFL teams.
But not for the Panthers, whose offensive torpor has continued for all three of the games Young has started — though not for the one veteran backup Andy Dalton started in his place, where Carolina had a season-high 27 points in a loss at Seattle and looked healthier on offense than they have in any other game.
In Young’s three games as Carolina’s starter, the Panthers have scored 10, 17 and 13 points.
Reich said he thought the Panthers were close to winning a game at some point. But next on the schedule for the Panthers are road games at Detroit (3-1) and Miami (3-1). A possible 0-6 start looms, although Reich tried to accentuate the positive.
“We’ve been in every one of these games in the fourth quarter,” Reich said. “We’ve had an opportunity to win every one in the fourth quarter. So I really don’t think we’re that far away.”
This story was originally published October 1, 2023 at 4:35 PM.
