Beautiful day, brutal game: Thoughts on the mistake-prone Panthers losing to Bears
The day was pristine — sunny and 63, with the sort of October crispness in the air that people like to call “football weather.”
The game, on the other hand, was a mess, and it ended with Chicago winning, 23-16, over the mistake-prone Carolina Panthers.
The Panthers drew a penalty on the opening kickoff, then followed that on offense with a negative-yardage run, a quarterback sack that could have been a safety and a tipped-ball interception. It was a grand slam of mistakes, and it set the tone for a game that would have been more well-suited for the mud.
“We were knocked off course from the opening kickoff,” Carolina quarterback Teddy Bridgewater said. “This game will humble you, and I’m pretty sure it humbled a lot of people today.”
The Panthers made a litany of errors, especially on offense. They looked chaotic and disheveled, with a large measure of credit for that going to Chicago’s excellent defense. They also made a string of good plays, too, to keep the game close — Jeremy Chinn’s first career interception, for instance, and Robby Anderson’s diving 39-yard catch down the sideline. And Carolina’s defense fought hard and played well enough to give the team a chance to win.
But the Panthers’ offense only scored 16 points, and that’s not going to win you many NFL games. Here are seven reasons why the point production was off for a Carolina team averaging 24.2 points per game coming in:
▪ Bridgewater had little time, and that made him far less effective. He threw an interception on his very first pass, then ended up having to scramble around way too much as the offensive line broke down more often and the receivers didn’t get open nearly as fast. And then he threw an interception on his very last pass, too, ruining Carolina’s last shot at a game-tying drive before it ever got started. He ended up 16 for 29 for 216 yards, with no passing TDs and two interceptions.
▪ Mike Davis had his first subpar outing in four starts after replacing Christian McCaffrey. Davis lost a fumble in his own territory and had a modest 55 total yards, although he did score a touchdown for the fourth straight game.
▪ The home crowd was not much help. Limited to only 7 percent of capacity as usual due to COVID-19, there were 5,240 fans in the stadium. And I’d say at least 2,000 of those appeared to be Bears fans. It got to where some of the Bears were actually signaling their own fans to get loud at times when Carolina’s offense was on the field, and it was working.
▪ Joey Slye missed a 54-yard field goal. That’s not an easy one to make, but Bears kicker Cairo Santos did hit one from 55. Slye did hit three other field goals.
▪ Carolina’s red-zone offense just couldn’t get it done. The Panthers had the ball inside Chicago’s 5 twice in the first half, only to come away with field goals from 20 and 21 yards by Slye. The Panthers also were only 3 for 13 on third-down conversions.
▪ Wide receiver DJ Moore had his hands on a ball in the end zone and couldn’t hold onto it. It would have been a difficult catch, but it was one of Carolina’s best opportunities for a touchdown all day. Moore also dropped what would have been at least a 20-yard pass from Bridgewater late in the third quarter. And then Moore also had a chance to catch a fourth-down pass on Carolina’s next-to-last drive that he couldn’t bring down (the throw by Bridgewater, again under pressure, also turned Moore around on the play).
▪ Penalties hurt the Panthers: Left tackle Russell Okung had two false starts, and there were a number of other bad ones as Carolina ended up being flagged eight times for 69 yards.
This story was originally published October 18, 2020 at 4:13 PM.
