Carolina gave up 59 points at home, and our model has the Panthers at six wins with the defense it trusted in July gone missing
Updated
The whole July projection for Carolina rested on a defense that had climbed into the top half of the league by our grades. Then Chicago came to town and scored 59. Caleb Williams threw for 269 and ran for 65 with two touchdowns on the ground, D'Andre Swift ran for 124 and three scores, Kyle Monangai ran for 100 more, and the Panthers gave up more points in one afternoon than any team in the league this season. When we re-ran the year with that game seeded in, Carolina slid from six and a half wins to six, a 6-11 finish with an 11 percent playoff chance. The record barely moved. What the record rests on flipped completely.
Start with the good news, because there was some. Bryce Young went 23 of 37 for 361 yards and three touchdowns, and our model now projects him for 4,152 yards and 22 scores behind a passer rating near 93, up from the 3,661 yards and 18 touchdowns we had in the summer. That is a quarterback playing better than functional, and it is the opposite of the regression we expected in July. Jalen Coker caught eight balls for 138 and two scores and climbs to 75 catches for 1,006 yards. Tetairoa McMillan projects for 96 catches and 1,293 yards, a rookie number one having a number one season. Tommy Tremble emerges at 55 catches. Chuba Hubbard carries the ground game at 703 yards. The offense projects for 290 points, 28th in the league, which is a number that is going to look wrong if the Chicago game was any kind of indicator.
The defense is where the projection came apart, and it is worth being precise. Our model still projects Carolina allowing 377 points, 20th in the league, and giving up the tenth-fewest yards, which is a unit that grades reasonably on a per-snap basis and just had the worst afternoon in the league. Jaelan Phillips got to Williams once and projects for 15 sacks. Princely Umanmielen added a sack. Devin Lloyd holds down the middle at 119 tackles. Those are the same names we praised in July, and on paper they are still a decent group. On the field they gave up 59, and the model, which seeds Week 1 stats into the rest of the season, now sees a defense that can be run on and scored on rather than the quiet engine of a rising team.
The sack total is the tell. Carolina projects for 37 sacks, 29th in the league, down from a summer run in which the front was a strength. A defense that cannot get home has to cover for a long time, and against Chicago it did not cover for any of it. When we ran the rest of the season the Panthers stole fewer games on stops alone than they did in July, and that is where the half-win went.
The division is the reason six wins is not five. Atlanta lost in Pittsburgh with its third quarterback and slid to ten. New Orleans took Detroit to overtime and holds at eight. Tampa Bay lost in Cincinnati and projects for five. When we ran the rest of the season, Carolina finished third in the NFC South more often than fourth, and the six divisional games are still the ones where a team with a competent offense can bank wins.
The market opened Carolina around seven and a half wins, and in July we sat a win under it. Now we sit a win and a half under, and the lean has changed its reasoning. In the summer we doubted the offense and trusted the defense. After Week 1 the offense looks like the strength and the defense looks like the question, and a team that has to win shootouts with a 28th-ranked scoring projection is a team that loses more of them than it wins.
The path to more runs through Young, and it is a wider path than it was. If the quarterback who threw for 361 against Chicago is the real one, if McMillan and Coker keep producing at this rate, the offense outruns its grade by a distance and Carolina pushes toward eight wins and the market number. The path to less is the Chicago game being a template rather than an aberration, a defense that cannot get off the field asking an offense that grades 28th to score 30 every week.
The next three weeks are a fair test of which unit was telling the truth in Week 1. Carolina goes to Atlanta, where the Falcons may or may not have Penix back, then to Cleveland against the lowest-scoring offense in football, then hosts Detroit and the second-highest, before a Week 5 bye. When we ran that stretch, the Panthers were favored in Cleveland and a clear underdog in Atlanta and against the Lions, which works out to something like 1-2 entering the bye. The Cleveland game is the one to watch on defense. If a group that gave up 59 can hold the Browns under 17, the July grade was right and Chicago was an aberration. If Cleveland moves the ball, the re-run was right.
So the read on the Panthers is progress at the position that matters most and a step backward at the unit we thought was already fixed. Young is the hope now, not McMillan, and the defense is the swing rather than the foundation. Six wins is where that adds up. It is not a doormat. After 59 points, it is not quite the team on the rise we described in July either.
