In disappointing season for Panthers, their loss to Falcons was ‘a comedy of terrible’

Bruce Irvin tried to talk his way through it, surface a pearl of wisdom somewhere amid the disappointment, but in the end he just had to give up.

Some defeats can leave even the most verbose players at a loss for words.

After this one, the Carolina Panthers were borderline speechless.

“We worked so hard, to come out here and lay it down like that, it’s tough,” Irvin said in the aftermath Sunday, eventually getting to the heart of the matter: “I don’t know what else y’all want me to say.”

What else is there to say?

“It was a comedy of terrible,” tight end Greg Olsen said, compressing an extraordinary 29-3 home loss to the Atlanta Falcons into six extraordinary words.

Words otherwise largely failed to capture the scale of the disaster. To the extent the Panthers’ season was hanging in the balance, to the extent this was a must-win game for their playoff hopes, that’s all out the window now. There’s still next week at New Orleans as a potential path back to relevance, the first of two games remaining against the division-leading Saints, but that’s starting to loom as the longest of shots.

Certainly, the Panthers could do to the Saints what the Falcons did to them on Sunday: Hand out a division loss on their home field, play at a level that belies whatever their record may be. The Falcons came in 2-7 and dropped the Panthers to 5-5. Certainly anything is possible in the NFL, within a division.

“That just goes to show, it’s the NFL,” defensive lineman Gerald McCoy said. “You can’t say a team is ‘this’ because of their record. It’s a division game. You see the talent on the roster.”

But that also seems like false consolation after a loss like this. Given the stakes, the Panthers’ performance — from Kyle Allen’s four interceptions to the sacks allowed to the punt return they allowed for a touchdown to Matt Ryan’s comfort in the Atlanta pocket — doesn’t suggest the beginning of anything, only the end of something.

Here we are, two months and 10 games into the season, and the Panthers have lost Cam Newton, squeezed a four-game winning streak out of Allen, placed the entire offense on the capable legs of Christian McCaffrey, and they still haven’t gained any ground. They’re already three games back of the Saints after no-showing for this one. By this time next week, they could very well be four games back with five to play: down, down and out, as they say on the golf course.

They had a chance, in these crucial back-to-back midseason division games, to make a statement — if not to turn their season around, to at least put themselves in position to salvage something from it. Instead, they’re back to .500, bereft of momentum, with a pair of home losses within the division and still have to go to New Orleans and Atlanta, the steepest stretch of the climb still ahead.

“We didn’t play well enough to control our own destiny,” Panthers guard Greg Van Roten said. “I’m not sure what our situation is now, but I’m pretty sure we need help.”

They do, but football tends to help those who help themselves. The Panthers had that chance Sunday. They not only failed to take advantage, they never came close.

“I have a lot of opinions,” Olsen said. “I don’t always want to share them with you.”

They were left with nothing, and not much more than that to say.

This story was originally published November 17, 2019 at 6:04 PM.