Panthers/Falcons game day thread~

I expect good draft pics...that's the best thing to hope for besides improved play throughout the season.

 

so, i guess he was 63 yards on 12 carries for 5.25 yds up to that point, and 76 yards on 13 carries for 5.85 yds from then on. in the first half, TOP was pretty much split evenly. in the 3rd q, carolina had the ball for about 10 minutes, including the first 8.5. turner only ran 6 times in the 3rd q but gained 42 yds and a 7 yd avg. 4th q he ran 34 yds on 10 carries, 3.4 yds.

so no, i don't think the excuse that they were gashed by the 4th q is valid. they didn't appear to be so. it seemed to me that they just didn't have the players on the line and at LB to make enough plays. outside johnson and hardy, they really don't have much and the backup LBs seemed awful for the most part. besides Turner ripping us up, there were also some short passes that turned into long gaines due to bad tackling and a lack of speed. possibly too some of our defensive alignments which just got royally toasted on the corners.

i'm not happy with our lack of commitment to run the ball. hoping this changes. was glad to see them let a RB run it in for a TD. I like a lot of Chud's plays but some of it has me shaking my head. the fade on 3rd and 2. also, wondered about having a receiver run a short crossing pattern in front of Smitty on the first INT. easy TD if we don't bring that DB into the passing lane.

but last year's D was on the field a whole lot more, and teams didn't have to throw the ball around to score points. once they got up a couple of TDs they could pretty much just settle into running the ball. this year, other teams are having to score more, and we've have faced better offenses this year than we did last year as of the 6th game. i'm not whining, but you lose Beason and your defense has to be worse than it was last year.

rivera has had good D's so I'm not losing the faith

 

I think you watched a different game than literally everyone else did yesterday.

You said the defense played pretty doggone good. Um, no.

Yes, there is blame everywhere, including the QB for throwing 2 game changing pics. But the defense was terrible enough to where the HC is talking about making changes on that unit in his presser today.

Ya know...no one just makes this shit up.

 

Furthermore, ATL's offense produced lower stats than normal, because 1. our offense was pretty fucking outstanding the first half, eating up a lot of clock, and converting our 3rd downs - thus why it was a low scoring, slow churning game, and 2. the Falcons ran the ball effectively, and weren't throwing it all over the place. They were swallowing up plenty of clock too, and blowing our line up, converting 3rd downs as well.

Our defense didn't play better than any other defense that has played the Falcons. Granted, the offense gave the defense an awful situation toward the end of the game with the INT deep in our territory. But the defense did nothing to slow them down, or keep them out of the endzone.

The defense played well?

Where do you get this? I'm not trying to flame or be a prick, because you're one of five or six who I have a lot of respect for on here....and I know you know a thing or two, so I truly want to hear your thoughts on why you think the defense played well. (edit- I have to say this- they weren't close to good enough.)

I hear magnus saying the blame is to be spread around, and I can get behind that. He's right. But you're the only guy I see saying the defense played doggone good.

 

It's tough to win games when you have a bunch of shitty players.

 

I'm not saying you're making anything up, I'm saying that you're like a lot of casual fans who think things and develop certain biases that have little to do with reality. Not only am I telling you that you're wrong (which should carry a lot of weight), but the facts & statistics also point in that direction.

Again, the Falcons only had 17 points until seven minutes left despite the turnovers, and Atlanta ended up with less than their season average in yards gained. As noted, 76 of Turner's rushing yards came in the final 17:17 of the game, so it was clearly a case of the defense wearing down, but doing a pretty decent job earlier. And then on plays like the one law1ng2b2 mentioned, the defense was in a great scheme and the players executed, but Ryan simply made a perfect pass under pressure. And I pointed out that the defense had exactly the same rankings in yards and points coming into the Atlanta came as they did last season.

This is a case of you continuing your irrational bias toward McDermott, which frankly I've just grown tired of. If you want to criticize, then at least say something useful like "When ______ happened, I think the defense should have been in a _____ set and done _______." Or be specific when you want to complain about something the team did. Just posting "the defense sucks" and "McDermott never should have been hired" over and over again is not only annoying, but useless. I believe that spending more time thinking about specifics will help you realize that your complaint really wasn't that legitimate in the first place.

 

The D played like shit.

ATL possessions -

1st half - Punt,TD,TD, Half(30 seconds on clock when they picked Cam)
2nd half - Punt,FG,TD,TD


Carolina possessions -

1st half - 13 play drive FG, 9 play drive TD, 9 play drive INT in endzone
2nd half - 13 play drive TD, 3 & out, 3 & out, 2 & pick, 10 play pick to end game

Care to guess when ATL took control? When our O started fucking up... The only way we win games this year is for the O to keep this raggedy ass fucking D off the motherfucking field. The O isn't without fault though. Cam screwed the pooch with the picks... Rookies gonna rook.

 

every game I just get the feeling that if we don't score as many or more points then the other team, we're going to lose

 

they made a few changes to help out but they haven't. We have no real returners, and the few times we got a punt nothing happened. At this point I'd kick it as deep as possible against Armanti because he'll still take time settling under it and won't have a good enough first step to beat the gunner.

Third down defense definitely blows. Especially down a safety or two, you really have to choose between rushing and covering. They had some good plays, but we're really down a bit there.