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Panthers’ Crumbling Defense Leaves Door Wide-Open in NFC South
- Updated: October 3, 2016
Last year, the Carolina Panthers strolled to an NFC South title with a seven-game lead over the Atlanta Falcons. This year, sitting with a 1-3 record after four weeks of play, they will face an uphill battle just to get into the playoffs.
Now two full games behind Atlanta, with the Falcons holding a head-to-head tiebreaker, we need to reassess the NFC champions’ chances of getting into the playoffs. According to Odds Shark, Carolina opened up as +850 (bet $100 to win $850) favorites to win February’s Super Bowl, tied with the New England Patriots atop the NFL.
As of now, you can find the Panthers as low as +1600, almost double the value after just a month of play, which would have ranked the squad as the ninth-most likely team to win the big game. That’s telling, as Vegas tends to adjust slower than public perception.
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The questions now are: 1) Why is Carolina losing? And 2) Is it something that can be adjusted midseason?
The answer to the first part of that conundrum is simple: The defense doesn’t look the same. One of the better defenses of 2015, Carolina is now 28th in the league in term of points allowed per game as of Sunday night.
In four games this year, the Panthers have already allowed 27 or more points twice. Last season, over 16 games, they only allowed opponents to score 27 or more points just three times.
Those games were to quarterbacks Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees and Eli Manning, who all have championships under their belts. Carolina’s first four weeks of the 2016 season featured passing from Trevor Siemian, Blaine Gabbert, Sam Bradford and Matt Ryan, who have a combined zero Super Bowl rings.
Allowing a 29.5-point average to that group of quarterbacks is problematic moving forward, as they still have Brees twice, Carson Palmer, Derek Carr, Russell Wilson, Philip Rivers and Ryan on their schedule, established quarterbacks who lead some of the best passing offenses in the NFL.
Over four games, Carolina has forced just five interceptions and nine sacks, a worse production pace than its 2015 season. What might be the most telling, though, is how many sacks its starting 4-3 defensive linemen have through four weeks: two.
The rate at which the Panthers are able to get home on pass rushes with their starting line is worse than defensive tackle Kawann Short’s production in 2015 by itself, as he was able to average more than a sack every other game on his way to his breakout 11-sack season.
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A lot of the Panthers’ assets on the defensive side of the ball were spent on adding depth to their defensive tackle position, as starters Short and Star Lotulelei enter the end of their deals. In response, Carolina hedged their contracts by adding former Falcon Paul Soliai on a two-year, $7 million deal and drafting Louisiana Tech’s Vernon Butler in the first round.
Here’s the problem: The Panthers had massive holes at cornerback and defensive end heading into the draft.
Last season, defensive end Jared Allen, a future Hall of Famer, was acquired from the 0-3 Chicago Bears in late September, leading to a 12-start season on the edge …
