So rather than just wasting breath screaming about how much I hate the Falcons (which is a lot) and how angry that game made me (very much so) I wanna talk about what is making the team so bad right now.
First off, Derek Anderson deserves some credit for dragging the team kicking and screaming back into the game. Call it "garbage time" if you want but he led the team on 2 TD drives and had a very real chance of pushing the game to OT until he threw that pick-six. He's a great backup and with Newton concussed (more on that later) he may be starting against the Bucs on Monday night. Fun fact: DA has 2 regular season starts for the Panthers and both were wins against the Bucs.
Now the bad: everything about this team this year is terrible except for Greg Olsen and Luke Kuechly. Starting with the offense, something is horribly wrong with the receiving corps. Ted Ginn Jr is still our second WR ahead of Funchess because despite Ginn's tenancy to drop the ball, at least he can sometimes catch the ball unlike Funchess. Corey/Philly Brown has questionable hands but probably catches passes better than Ginn. However, he is CONSTANTLY overthrown by Newton for reasons I cannot understand. After all, Ginn isn't as tall as Benjamin so we can rule out Brown being the only receiver under 6'4" as the reason. Kelvin Benjamin was held catchless against the Vikings (OBJ was almost completely shut down by the Vikings as well but he's having a pretty crappy season so it's not all the Vikings secondary being invincible) and wasn't that great against the Falcons middling defense. With that said, the Falcons were unable to stop Benjamin when he ran slants and I can't understand WHY they wouldn't keep running that play until the Falcons finally stopped it! Oh right, because Mike Shula is a horrific OC and he needs to be first against the wall if we hit the bye at 1-5.
The offensive line is abysmal. Ryan Kalil can't do everything himself and Trai Turner plays RG so he can't help protect Cam's blindside. Speaking of, Oher is bad but with him out we have no one who can play LT with any respectability. Remmers is already a pretty unremarkable RT but at LT he was dreadful. Daryl Williams stepped up to start at RT but didn't play any better than Remmers did. As a result, we get to watch Cam run for his life on every single play and since he always tries to make a play rather than protect himself he winds up getting drilled constantly. Sure he's a big guy but he's broken his back before, got hurt SOMEWHERE by the Broncos and looks to still be playing through that, and now he's concussed. He may not even start for a few games and Anderson is way less mobile. Pray that DA doesn't get murdered.
Mike Shula just outright sucks. As an OC he refuses to deviate from run/short/deep/punt in every series. You could set your clock by it and every other team knows that. We're running the ball well on the Broncos? Time to throw deep to Ted Ginn! Mismatch with KB and some 5'10" chump at CB? Let's give the ball to Fozzy Whittaker or CAP, whoever's worse that day! Funchess keeps dropping the ball? GIVE HIM MORE TARGETS!!! And yet, for as much as he loves to run, he abhors giving Cam any designed run plays short (ha) of "The Belichick Special" QB sneak for 1 yard. Belichick runs it with Tom Brady from the 1 with something crazy like 90% effectiveness; Shula gives it to Tolbert at the goal line and Cam in the open field with middling success. When using Tolbert for First Downs and Cam for TDs there's a much higher success rate, but no. Let's not do that!
On to defense: Kuechly is a beast and deserved DPOY more than Watt last year and should win it this year. He leads the defense like Ray Lewis and can do absolutely anything on D but he CANNOT do EVERYTHING! But there's not much help for him this year! Thomas Davis is old and probably in his last season. He's playing fine, I have no complaints, but he's not playing very well and it's clear age has caught up to him. Shaq Thompson is fine I guess? He's a good compliment to Kuechly but hasn't done enough to really set himself apart from the rest of the D; it's still Kuechly and Davis, not Kuechly, Davis, and Thompson. Speaking of linebackers, Jeremy Cash has yet to see the field as a converted safety and once again WHY THE FUCK WAS HE CONVERTED!? OUR SECONDARY IS OUR WORST LIABILITY AND TRE BOSTON IS HORRIFIC AND YET YOU THOUGHT WE NEEDED TO TAKE THE ACC DPOY AND MOVE HIM FROM SAFETY (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) TO FUCKING LINEBACKER (
?) ANOTHER FUCKING LINEBACKER?
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?
? WE ARE GETTING BURNED BY EVERY SINGLE COMPETENT RECEIVER IN THE GODDAMN LEAGUE BUT WE'RE GOING TO HAVE CASH SIT ON THE FUCKING BENCH AS THE
THIRD FUCKING STRING LB BEHIND EVEN MAYO BECAUSE WE NEEDED ANOTHER MFGD LB?
HOW DARE YOU! HOW FUCKING DARE YOU! HOW DARE YOU SINK OUR ONCE STELLAR DEFENSE BY DEPRIVING THEM OF DESPERATELY NEEDED POSITIONS IN FAVOR OF YOUR FUCKING VANITY PROJECT THAT
ISN'T EVEN FUCKING WORKINGSecondary: trash. Our safeties are bad and our CBs are bad. Gettleman is so anxious to keep us out of Hurney (salary cap) Hell that he spent 3 of our 5 picks this year on CBs and none of them are ready for the NFL despite starting 2 of them. They will be ruined forever if this continues. He then complimented this ragtag group by letting both Norman and Harper walk and signing No One to replace them. I can't believe that Kurt Coleman is such a superior option at SS over Donte Whitner. James Bradberry is VERY not ready and James Worley is somehow even less ready. Bene Benwikere is coming off an injury and is our best CB but just gave up gobs of yards to Julio Jones. (btw, Norman gave up 178/1 to Jones last year and shutting down OBJ isn't that impressive this year, so until he actually does something noteworthy up in Washington he doesn't need to run his mouth.) There is nothing to inspire confidence in this group.
Defensive Line: Charles Johnson is getting old. Star Lotulelei is playing decently I suppose but he's not really making an impact like he did yesterday. Vernon Butler was playing pretty good but now he's hurt, so now KK Short is getting all the spotlight at DT, except I can't tell if he's taking plays off or getting doubled on the line or what, but he's a shadow of himself from last year. Kony "2012" Ealy is also not living up to his play from last year. The biggest issue is that we're now forcing these guys to blitz on basically every play because our secondary is useless at defending the pass and yet we can't afford to send a corner or safety to blitz. So of course the blitz doesn't work and now we're weaker against the run and still bad against the pass. We can still defend the run, but not as well as last year with almost the exact same personnel.
Punter: Andy Lee is the best addition to this team. That's sad that an old punter is the best new addition.
Dave Gettleman: I don't even want to talk about him because I hate him so much. He refuses to trade up for positions we need and refuses even more to sign free agents to positions we need which is how we ended up with Oher and Remmers as our starting long term OTs. I just can't. We could have easily traded up in 2015 instead of taking Thompson/Funchess/Williams (who sucks) and grabbed Flowers or Peat or whoever. Hell, maybe don't draft Thompson at all in the first round and make a similar reach for Donovan Smith? He's trying to get Cam killed in the exact same way that Luck is currently being killed in Indy: without any OL protection.
With that said, Falcons started off hot last year and then proceeded to burn to the ground so I'm not anointing them the champs yet. Panthers are still better than the Saints and Bucs so if we knock them off and go into the bye 3-3 then I think 10-6 and NFCS champs is still within reach.
