Might not always be pretty, Chris. It’s never pretty, but. Scoreboard. They did it again, score did it again. They did it again. Scoreboard, scoreboard. Let’s get this sucker started. Get dialed in Panthers fans. Here comes an in-depth look at your team. Exclusive interviews, locker room insight. Let’s huddle up for Panthers Playbook presented by Wake Orthopedics, a WakeMed physician practice. Here are your hosts, Dennis Cox and Chris Lee. Welcome back to another episode of Panthers Playbook. That’s Chris Lee. Dennis Cox here with you, sponsored by our good friends over. At Wake Orthopedics, folks, leave your thoughts, leave your comments on this 23 to 20 win by the Carolina Panthers over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And while you’re in the process, make sure you like and subscribe at it as well and hype up the video too, because I know Chris, Panthers fans, just in general, speaking of hype. This is the loudest I’ve seen Bank of America Stadium since I attended the Metallica concert here in the summertime. Like this place was rocking and there was an impact late in the game. Even Dave Canales talked about it. We saw some false starts, miscommunications by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Panthers fans, let’s be honest, you really have something tangible that’s directly in front of you right now when you look at this Panthers team in the sense of, The Division’s right there. They’re first place. They’re first-place team. As ugly as the win was today, it’s right here, right here. It’s right here, Chris. Um, going back to the impact and how loud this place was just really quick before we talk about the game. This reminded me, I was trying to think of the last time I felt like I I saw this or felt this from Bank of America Stadium, and I thought back to, um, 2022, Cam Newton’s first game back here. He had two road games, I think Arizona and somewhere else, and then he got back here. Panthers lost that, but it was cool coming into the stadium, it was versus the Washington football team at the time. It was cool seeing the fans wearing the hats and all that outside, so many Newton jerseys here, and it felt like that, uh, that feeling that had been missing since 2019 came back for one game, and while I don’t think it was quite to the level of where Cam Newton had it, this is a good step in the right direction, having Bank of America Stadium rocking once again. I mean, it was loud in there, congrats to the fans. And congrats to the Panthers for using that two-year advantage. They did. And as I said there in the open, it wasn’t pretty. They didn’t run the ball super effectively as, as a whole in this game. And your biggest run was a jet sweep for Jimmy Horn Jr. for 25 yards. That literally was one quarter of their entire rushing total was that Jimmy Horn Jr. run today. So they didn’t run the ball effectively. Passing game with Bryce Young, let’s be honest. He made the play of the day. I mean, outside of Lathan Ransom’s interception, he made the play of the day. The scramble on the, he made a couple, yeah, but on the far side of the field from where we are currently standing, the scramble around to the left where he found Tatavion Sanders in the back of the end zone. Like props to the dude, man. Like the dude made a freaking play. Like made a play when you needed it in the second half. Best play, individual play to me in Bryce Young’s pro career. I can’t think of another time where Bryce Young did something that really wowed me, um, you know, and that’s not to take away from, this isn’t a knock on Bryce Young because I know what y’all like to say in the comments. This is a positive for Bryce Young. He should have been sacked. There were 3, Tampa Bay Buccaneers in that backfield, one had their hands on him, and those guys are a lot bigger than what Bryce Young. He didn’t go down, he took all bit of his strength and wiggled out of that, found Jatian Sanders wide open in the, uh, in the end zone, and, you know, Dave Canal said it as well. They covered that up well. It became a scramble drill, and once that happened, um, you know, Jadeveon Sanders was able to break free, have that open part of the zone, and then he’s right there open, and like that could have been, that right there could have been the difference of the game, just that one part. Now there’s other different plays in the game. But that could have been the difference, uh, because if you take a sack there. Who knows? Maybe you walk away with just 3 and this game looks completely different. Very much so, very much so. And we actually asked Dave Canales about this in the postgame, about how in the second half, and if you go to the 3rd quarter specifically, each team only had 1 possession. That 3rd quarter, that was the, that 3rd quarter possession was the one that ended in a touchdown totavion Sanders, but that impacts how you have play calling. And he said that, yeah, when you feel how the game of teams are having these long drives, you might only have 2 possessions in the 4th quarter, which is something you and I said in the press box, even during that drive, I said, you know what, if, if I’m Dave Canales, I’m thinking, I only have 2 drives potentially to go, to go win this thing. And sure enough, they did just enough to get a field goal by Fitzgerald, which by the way, props to that dude for kicking. Another game-winning field goal again. I don’t think we talked about him enough. Speaking of the rookie class, which you can get into a little bit, but that had an impact on his play calling in terms of how aggressive do you need to be in those situations. I know they got behind the sticks on one of the opportunities and, and had to punt, but they made just enough plays as a team, as a whole to come out with a win. And to be honest, I’ll, I’ll say it again, this team doesn’t win pretty. They don’t win pretty. It’s another 3-point win where they didn’t run the ball super great. The passing game was, was pretty good. Wasn’t great. Xavier Leggette, love to see him, A, know where the sideline is, and B, catch passes when they’re perfectly thrown to you. Bryce would have had over 200 yards if it weren’t for, if it weren’t for Xavier Leggette. Absolutely not on Bryce. Absolutely not on Bryce. But they still found a way to win. Again, I don’t know if this team’s good, but you can’t deny they’re in first. How about this? OK, as we, as we pivot to talk about that rookie class, can we give a quail hollow golf clap to Dan Morton? You mentioned Ryan Fitzgerald. Nick Skorton had a hell of a game. 2 TFLs, a sack, plenty more tackles, don’t have the numbers in front of me. Nathan Ransom, game-winning interception at the end. You have, uh, uh, Tederoy McMillan, some big time catches, including a touchdown, including a touchdown. You have, uh, Mitchell Evans making some pretty big plays when you needed it at the right time. This rookie class is now impacting winning for the Carolina Panthers, right? And that’s the one thing that you wanted to see over the last several seasons. I don’t know if we’ve seen a rookie class have this much impact on the field. This is gonna do wonders for them in the future because now these guys are getting all of these reps, they’re impacting winning, they know how to win now going into their second season. How much better, what’s that jump gonna look like in year two for them? And, and then also, we gotta also shout out the sophomore class, because the sophomore class is showing out, uh, as well, Jataon Sanders. Uh, again, making plays that we talked about before, he’s looking good, and then, uh, you have others who are on the field doing good, looking good for the Carolina Panthers. This is, this young group of guys is gonna drive this team to the next level, and now you can start to build that depth we’ve been talking about for a long time, you can start to build on what’s going on moving forward, and listen. Dan Morgan can only build on this. You can’t really mess this up. You really can’t mess this up right now. But I think if, if, I mean, that’s, that’s certainly is a long-term look, and I think it’s also vital that this team is playing meaningful games in the month of December. I mean, Christmas is literally later this week, um, and next week when the Panthers are back. Back here. This is the thing I’m, I’m curious how they learned from this game looking forward is that because next week when they’re back here at Bank of America Stadium taking on the Seahawks, who by the way, have something to play for because they’re trying to be the number one overall seed in the NFC. So it’s a team that’s coming in to try and win this game. Panthers also have a chance to potentially win the division next week. If Tampa Bay loses to Miami, and you beat the Seahawks here, guess what? You go into week 18, it doesn’t matter what happens, you’re in the playoffs. So there’s so much at stake. This is something I want to see this young team build off from. It’s been since weeks 5 and 6 since we’ve seen this Panthers team win back to back games, or, or maybe it’s 6 and 7. I can’t remember, but it’s, it’s, it’s still the first half of the season though. Don’t, don’t, don’t. Don’t I do what you’re gonna try to do. Don’t. But it’s been since the first half of this season since this team has stacked wins back to back and good performances back to back. That’s the next step in this team going forward. If you want to be a playoff team, you have to stack wins consecutively. You just have to. This team needs to do that because. The last thing you want to do is slip up next week against Seattle, which is again, not gonna be an easy game. Tampa gets right against Miami, then you have to go on the road and have to beat the Bucks on the road in week 18. That’s the thing I don’t want to see for this Panthers team. But that winning and trying to put that together is one of the things we talked about in the locker room after, uh, the game with some of those rookies. Speaking of. Lathan Ransom, who made the game-winning play, let’s go to the locker room and hear for number 22. Yeah, I think, you know, um, every game that we find a way to get better, I mean, we’re gonna have mistakes and stuff that we gotta fix, and I think that, you know, our team does a great job of tackling it head on, um, not getting their feelings hurt by corrections or, or stuff we gotta fix and, you know, knowing that we’re gonna do what we gotta do for the team to help win. All right, so Lathan Ransom makes a massive play. I even tweeted this out. Or maybe I’ll put it on, on our notes and stuff that we actually, uh, we did during the game, but I said Nick Skorton is gonna be a solid player for a really long time for this team. And let’s not forget, he turned 21 at the end of training camp. It was after the 3rd preseason game, he actually turned 21. He is super young, super young. He’s just being able to legally drink. He wasn’t able to legally drink when he got drafted. Dude is scratching the surface on what he could potentially do. And Chris, you caught up with him in the locker room about his big day. The coordinators, um, you know, Dan Morgan, you know, Mr. Tepper, uh, Coach Canales, you know, and those guys bringing us here, man, and give us the opportunity to showcase our skills and then, uh, testing my other rookies, man, just being so mature and, you know, ever since we came in here, man, those guys have been locked in, you know, ready to, uh, uh, ready for the opportunities, and, you know, you see it on Sunday, so man, just kudos to those guys. All right, Chris, you mentioned the rookie class. You mentioned the sophomore class, but there’s one name we haven’t mentioned yet regarding the sophomore class because he was an undrafted player. It’s Jalen Coker, which, by the way, I didn’t realize he had it in his bag on a consistent basis being a deep threat down the sideline, like Jalen Coker. Keep, keep on being you, son. Like keep on being you, because let’s be honest, you wanna talk about Dan Morgan? Bye. The hollow golf club. Hell of a fine in Jalen Coker. Hell of a fine because this dude is making an impact and I, I’ll say it, I’ll say it comfortably right now. 2nd best. He’s your #2 receiver. He’s your #2, 2. He is your #2. He’s your #2 receiver. Flat out fact right now, he’s got to be your number #2 receiver, and that’s no shade to anybody else. No, it’s just, it’s literally just based off of what we’ve seen and the results on the field, and, uh, it’s amazing to see him step up time and time again, and also like, even if he didn’t make that catch, it would have been pass interference because he, he had. He got beat, and so, um, you know, seeing him step up, making, it seems like a big play every week at this point, um, he’s he’s gonna be a big deal for the Panthers moving forward as well, uh, great to see him and his growth, and, uh, the Panthers are, he’s putting the Panthers in a position to where they’re gonna have to probably make a decision on who they pay. In a couple of years. we still got some time to figure some stuff out, right? But like, Jalen Coker is, is looking good and again, a solid number 2 receiver. I hope that they do a little bit more to get him involved a little bit early, find some, some more touches early in the game, uh, but, uh, so far, what a find for the Carolina Panthers. Uh, it’s not often that you have this undrafted free agent coming in and making such a huge impact. Like that guy is for sure a starter, your #2 receiver, and he’s an undrafted free agent, and you drafted 2 receivers in the 1st round of the last 2 years. So, that’s huge of Jalen Coker to put that work in to get to that point. I mean, you took a couple of 2nd round receivers before that too. And he might be the 2nd. I’m just, just saying, just saying, like, this is true. Speaking of that young man, Jalen Coker, Chris caught up with him in the locker room postgame. Yeah, I think it’s just a continued resilience from the team, um, and I think, you know, I speak for everyone when we know what, what we’re capable of and when we come out and play like we, like you did today and like we have in the past, we’re gonna continue to stack W’s. All right, first, the question is going forward, how does this team react? Because we have seen this team bounce back from losses. They’ve been win-loss, win, loss, win, loss, win, loss. They haven’t lost back to back games since weeks 1 and 2 of the season, which is good. But they also, again, haven’t won back to back games since the first half of the season either. How do they handle success? I think 5 or 6, maybe somewhere between weeks 5 and 7. Somewhere around there is where they won consecutive games. They won 3 straight, somewhere between weeks 5 and 7. Um, but how do they handle success? That’s the one thing that’s still a question for this team. just basically that’s the answer, essentially like you’ve got to build on this, and there’s that yo yo, there’s that back and forth. They’re playing X-brain right now, right, because they’re, they’re going back and forth. And every week it’s a yo yo trick, right? And we don’t wanna see that. Um, we, we need to see you, uh, build on wins because if you wanna stack up and move forward in the playoffs, you’re gonna have to stack back to back wins together to even keep your season alive. And so right now you’re in the driver’s seat, uh, in this division. You have a great opportunity to end the season on a three-game winning streak, and now you have some momentum heading into the playoffs. And I think the team as a whole, you look at the team as a whole, keep doing what you’re doing as far as like I think the defense right now is bend but don’t break and they’re, they’re finding when to make the right play at the right time for the most part, right? Lathan Ransom, great bounce back for him, having, um, a, a great, a crazy penalty last week to put, help put, uh, you know, uh, the Saints closer in, in field goal range. And of course they kicked the game winner off of that. Now he makes a game-winning play at the end of the game, so a great bounce back from him. So you wanna see the players rise to the occasion, you wanna see the offense. Look, no turnovers for the offense. No turnovers. It’s been a minute since they’ve had a turnover. It’s been a minute. And so like the first half of the season, there were a lot of turnovers. There were a lot of turnovers, and it felt like every time there was one, there was gonna be 2, and sometimes there was 3. And so for the fact that they haven’t been doing that, that’s big. But then coaching. Here’s the thing that I want to see, right, because we were talking about this before we started, and Dave said, you know, we weren’t doing well with the, with the run. OK, overall. 5.1 average yards per carry for the Panthers, 5.1 average carry for the Buccaneers. So I know what you brought up earlier, the 25 yard run, which is a quarter of their runs, but also when you back out, you don’t give yourself an opportunity. So let’s also look at your lead backs. Rico Dowdell, only 9 carries, 29 yards, 3.2 yards per carry, not the best, but Bucky Irving, 19 carries for 71 yards, 3.7 yards per carry. You’re only talking about a half yard difference in 10 different carries, right? So who knows what happened. What happens if you keep running, uh, uh, Rico Dowdo and you had more from Chuba Hubbard as far as more yards per carry, 4.5, 6 carries, 27 yards, it’s still had 9 yards to carry though as well for Tampa. He did because Tampa was good at using a change of pace and putting their backs back in there, putting the Panthers defense back on their heels. Panthers don’t do that to teams, and to me, you can look across the field and see that difference. I, I love looking at time of possession, right? And this is, that’s when you look at the run yards, yards per carry, things like that, or even just the carries in general. You want to get to a place where you’re having the ball more than the other team. It’s 34-36 to 25-24, uh, time of possession, Tampa Bay’s way, right? For Tampa Bay, they’re looking at this like we had time of possession, we let it slip, we didn’t take care of our opportunities, of course we had the turnover at the end and that type of thing, but we did what we needed to do game plan wise to go out there and get a win. If the Panthers don’t win, we’re gonna go back and look at time of possession. So there’s still things to build upon to me, if you’re, uh, Dave Canales. If you’re gonna come in with a plan, try to stick with the plan. It wasn’t that much of a difference between the, the run game for Tampa and the Panthers run game as far as the results. The difference was Tampa just called more runs. That’s true. That they stuck with it. They did, they stuck with it, they did. Very good point, they did. Either way, the Panthers win. The Panthers win. And, and, and Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris. The division is theirs to It’s theirs to take Here’s another thing I’ve been thinking about, OK? We gotta give them another Quil Hollow golf clap. 8 wins With 2 to go, with 2 to go, right? So. When you think about that. The most that they’ve had since they went to the playoffs in 2017 was seven wins in 2022. This is the most wins, that’s since 2017 for the Carolina Panthers. Let’s think about this. We have expectations. We’ve got more than 7 wins, and there’s 2 to go. There’s 2 to go with the division in the playoffs, still possible, right there in your hands, right here, right there, it’s right here. You got, oh, you said in your hands, so I was gonna show in the hands, but yes, right here. Right here. Right here. Shout out to Wake Orthopedics, the sponsor here at Panthers Playbook. Again, leave your thoughts in the comment section down below on this win. And do you think this team can actually close it out? Can this team have the killer instinct and close it out? That’s something we’re gonna learn going forward. By the way, the next episode of Panthers Playbook, because Thursday is Christmas Day, we’re actually gonna put an episode for you out on Wednesday, Wednesday. And by the way, Chris, it’s the season of giving. We’re giving something away on Wednesday. Oh, we’re giving something away. I’m gonna tell you what it is. I know, right? We’re giving something away on Wednesday, so make sure you have not, if you haven’t subscribed, make sure you do. We’re giving something away on Wednesday. It’s the season of giving. But until then, folks, enjoy this win. That’s Chris Lee. Also, by the way, the locker room sound not only come from Chris Lee. Shout out to Pat Walter WRAL for helping us get in that video as well. So a big shout out to Pat from WRAL. Y’all are the best. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. All the holidays to you. Y’all be good. We’ll see y’all on Wednesday. Keep pounding.
