Happy Half Hour.

Hello friends, and good morning or afternoon or Tuesday or Monday, I don't know.

I'm just gonna say I'm all right out of the top because I don't know what day it is, but I do know that this is the Happy half Hour, brought to you by our friends at Deep Eddie.

How about that.

We'll take some deep Eddie today, Darren.

It's entirely possible.

I'm actually feeling okay this morning because I woke up after about a two hour nap at home after that red eye flight last night, and my wife told me I looked like a movie star.

Oh wow, that's nice.

I've heard of Pump you Up.

Yes, specific yeah, specifically, she said I looked like Nick Cage in that movie where he drank himself to death, referring to the nineteen ninety five classic Leaving Las Vegas.

That's okay.

We're bleary eyed, but we do it for the people.

So we're here for you to break down Monday night football, Carolina Panthers not the trip they were looking for twenty to nine loss to the San Francisco forty nine ers.

You've been on Panthers dot Com all day in the YouTube channel you've read all about it, you've seen the highlights, you've done the things.

That was not what they were hoping to put on tape out there in San Francisco rough night.

Offensively, only forty three offensive plays, and according to my many years of experience in the NFL, that's not enough football plays.

And that's where it all began.

I mean, they weren't able to sustain anything offensively, one to seven on third downs, only twelve first downs for the entire game.

Just not enough happening in that aspect.

Forty three offensive plays as well, compared to the forty nine ers, I believe.

Seventy seventy some yes, that's yeah.

And that kind of tells the story of the game right there too.

I mean, two hundred and thirty yards compared to three forty.

That forty nine ers were seven of thirteen on third down's that's hard to and the time of possession as well was like thirty eight minutes compared to twenty two.

I'm rounding a little bit, but for the most part, I think the there's a couple of stats that maybe tell the biggest story of the game.

Three points off of three turnovers.

Anytime you only get you come away with three points off of three turnovers.

That's defense did everything they could to keep Panthers in this game for as long as they could and when the offense couldn't do anything with it.

Like, You're not gonna win many games like that.

And I think there's several plays from that game that are gonna haunt them for a while and they all have to do with what they did on those drives coming off of those three turnovers.

R J.

C.

Horn played a great game and then obviously unfortunately left with a concussion in the second and half at halftime.

But he had brock Perty's number that entire first half.

Yeah, he sure did.

But the first JC interception led directly to the first and goal at the one.

Yeah, when Bryce gets picked off, he's looking for Mitch Evans.

God, I love Mitch Evins, the rookie tight end from Notre Dame.

I asked him what he saw on that play and he said a lot of dudes.

Yeah, it gets compressed in there, Mitch.

But Bryce's first and goal from the one rolls out probably had a chance to pileline had had Mitch in a pretty good position coming across the back of the end zone.

But Jayer Brown made a play.

And as the great John Fox like to say, the other team practices too, and the forty nine ers made a couple of plays.

Jayer Brown made a couple of them himself.

You know, he had the two picks against Bryce.

That second pick somebody had, somebody had a hand on team, something was pulling him a little bit.

I mean that play practically had sound effects like boy owing.

When you know, you look at Tea Mack trying to get to the ball and he's sort of clutched up, not able to get to it.

But Brown had the two picks of Bryce.

The offense never found that rhythm.

One of the things about having only forty three plays is you don't get to run.

I mean they only had thirteen rushing attempts, nine by running backs, and the per carry average was really good.

I mean five point three I believe it was per carry.

That's the kind of football the Carolina Panthers want to play.

But when you're not converting third downs and then you get in and those trailing situations late in the game and you've got to throw, that's when you're unable to run.

And only nine carries combined between Rico Dada and Cuba Hubbard not enough and they.

Only had one drive.

I'm sorry their longest drive was eight plays.

No drives of double digit plays one, two, three, four, five, five drives of four, three or four plays.

That's not sustainable.

It just felt like, yeah, like you said, they could never really get in a rhythm for some reason at any point during the night, then this was a defense that you feasibly could have gotten into a rhythm against.

We saw it working at times.

We saw it work in spurts.

Rico and Cuba both ran well when they did get a chance.

Can Alice kind of explained afterwards, He's like, you know, I wanted to build a little bit off of last week with the Falcons game and kind of build off of that passing performance, he said, And then you get down later in the game and you gotta pass.

You know, there's different moments where you can ask yourself like, should they have run it there?

Maybe maybe not.

You know, it's a lot of would it could have showed out after a loss, but yeah, it's it's never felt for a game where it felt like the forty nine ers never really had control until the end.

It also felt like the Panther's offense could never get anything going.

Yeah, and that ended up making all the difference in the game.

To be honest, and you know me, I'm a proponent of old man football.

There's never a run.

I don't prefer, but I don't hate the idea of being a play action past team at the goal line.

I mean it gives you opportunities.

I mean again, I think if people had that, you know, as they look at that tape, if you've got plays to go back and do over, I think Bryce probably has the pilon on that.

I think he's going to look back on that.

In realista, there.

Was nobody but Austin Corbett between him and that pieline, and I think he probably had a decent shot at that.

But you're also talking about a guy who's coming off a painful ankle injury that he played through in Atlanta.

So that's why that one was so frustrating for the Panthers because again, a week ago, we were sitting in these chairs or whatever day it was, I have no concept of time anymore, and you're coming off an Atlanta game where you throw for four forty eight and everything's clicking and everything's working offensively, you know, the challenge for this Carolina Panthers team as it's young.

We've talked about this throughout the year.

It's a young team.

It's growing and learning new lessons every week.

You're learning how to go on the road, You're learning how to come back, all those things.

They've got to learn how to become consistent, and that's going to be one of the biggest challenges for this team because it is still a very young team with a lot of moving parts.

I mean, we've talked a lot this year about nine offensive lines in twelve games, and then Chandlers of Olive leaves mid game and Jake Kerhan come on down, spend the wheel of offensive linemen and see who's going to be this week's contestant.

He finished up the game, and he's played pretty well when he's gone in there.

But it's kind of hard to tell who's going to be available this week on that side of the ball.

But I think if you watch the patterns of the Carolina Panthers, they came out of the New Orleans game the week before knowing they had to really lean into the past.

They come out of this week's game saying, why weren't you able to sustain a run game.

Why weren't you able to stay in balance?

I mean, traditionally, if you look at the patterns of this Carolina Panthers team in the Year of Our Lord twenty twenty five, this is the week when they come back and run.

This is the week the other way.

Yeah, I mean, and those kind of swings are kind of what you expect with a young team.

I mean, that's being consistent is the final lesson.

That's like self actualization up here at the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and you just it takes time and experience and having gone through these things, and you feel like there's going to be a spot.

I love talking to Chuba after games anyway, because Cuba's lived a life here in five seasons.

Cuba has seen some things, my friends, and he had two head coaches and two interims before he ever met Dave Canalis and has become kind of one of the elders in that room, despite being twenty five to twenty six years old.

And Cuba after that game was like, listen, everything's still in front of us.

We're still in a good position.

And again Carolina Panthers are six and six twelve games into a football season.

And I think if a lot of people offered you that in August, you'd probably signed for that, up to and including Dave Canalis and Dan Morgan.

But obviously it's it's come in a way that's made people feel some sort of way.

When you have big wins, when you go to Atlanta, you get win three straight on the road, do what you did in Green Bay, do what you did in Atlanta.

It gets people excited.

And there was a lot, you know, on their plate.

They woke up yesterday morning tied for first in the NFC South after the Bucks lost to the Rams, and so that kind of added that emotional punch to that thing, which you know, had people feel in some sort of way somewhere around midnight last night.

And I mean to your point, you've seen them work on the things that needed addressing, and now it's about putting it all together.

And there's probably something to be said for putting as the season evolved, and this is human nature putting more expectations there than should have been, and I mean we're just as guilty of it as anybody, and so you know, maybe there's there is a little bit of sobering reality there.

Now, how do you beltce back from that?

Something that I think is interesting?

And take this with a grain of salt, because the Los Angeles rounds are nine and two, but the five.

Let me see if I'm doing this right.

No, I'm sorry.

Four of the six losses so far have been followed with a win after Week two, come back and win against Atlanta in Week three, after losing its Patriots in Week four, come back and win against the Dolphins.

Week we gave versus the Bills, win versus Week nine Packers, so on and so forth, lose versus the Saints, win versus Atlanta.

You'd rather not be that good at getting out of trouble, because it means you're in trouble.

It's like Sevy Biastero's playing out of the rough.

Your there's your fifty year old sports reference that Cassy has no idea what I'm talking about.

But like, and obviously that's that's a high task this week against the top team in the NFC and one of the best offenses and defenses in the NFL right now, and but but how do you make sure to not let one loss become two and really, more importantly, not let it become three and then four when when you do still have three division games in front of you.

So what is your response to it.

How do you sort of find that consistency.

That's going to be the question this week and on a short week.

Nonetheless, Yeah, and it is there.

There were good things to take out of that game, as you mentioned up at the top three picks in the first half JC Horn two, Mike Jack one.

You know, j C.

Horn was Brock Perdy's leading receiver in the first half of that game and put the Carolina Panthers in a lot of good positions.

The past defense held on in a way to give them opportunities stay in that game, even though the offense was kind of struggling to get its feet underneath it.

Now good news, bad news.

That secondary may not look like that next week because, as you documented on Panthers dot Com last night, among other things, j C.

Horn leaves that game with a concussion.

Concussion protocol takes its own time.

I mean, j C was up being JC after the game, But the independent neuro is gonna decide whether he's able to play this week or not.

That determination won't come until later in the week.

We'll see how it goes.

Obviously, our first and foremost concern is with JC Horn's health, because we care about JC as a human being.

But that's a medical decision that will get made on its own.

There's another decision that's gonna get made at three forty five Park Avenue probably in the next twenty four to forty eight hours.

Not great pal, that's uh.

He was a little frustrated after that game and gave Juwan Jennings a shot to the shorts that you know, might have had some mitigating factors leading up to it.

Jennings is a aggressive player.

He gives people kind of that Steve Smith treatment of getting your face, try to get you out of your game and rattle you a little bit.

And he did it.

Steve did that to people, People did that to Steve over the years, and that's kind of Jennings game.

He's a physical guy.

He ain't afraid to take a shot.

And so in the build up of that and in the frustration Trey, Trey gave him all upper cut there below the belt, which maybe he probably definitely should not have done.

Yeah, and we'll find out what the league's response to that is.

Obviously they've cracked down on things like that this year.

Does that happen with Trayvon Merrick here or is that considered?

You know, right, you saw skitt yeah, suspended for a week for spitting on a dude.

Spitting on a dude versus punching him in the shorts.

Where do you draw the line on that?

I don't know.

I'll lead that to smarter people than me to decide, But there is a possibility.

So between JC and the concussion protocol, Trayvon's potential eligibility questions Corey Thornton por Corey all right, bless his heart.

That kid had done everything right up to this point.

The season had finally broken through, gotten his chance to play a lot of snaps, A big, physical corner, confident kid, works hard every day, leaves that game on crutches and in a cast on his way out of the locker room, and that's it.

That's a tough sign.

So you know, the Panthers finished that game last night with Mike jack Shaw Smith Wade, who's basically been a nickel his entire time in the NFL.

He was back outside for the first time since college, and a Caleb Evans a special team or the gunner coming in to finish the game at cornerback.

Now you could be looking at those three.

Maybe you call up a Kalin Kingsdrim.

I don't know.

They're going to be looking for a lot of answers depending on what the met says.

Uh later today and then it's safety, you know, Lathan Ransom, Demoni Richardson, Nick Scott, come on down.

Yeah, this is your time now.

Mike Jack actually shouted out Kaylen King last night and said, that's the name fans need to know.

I remember during training camp.

He's a rookie, Darren.

He's spent training camp with the Packers and got a lot of a lot of praise coming out of that training camp.

A lot of people were surprised the Packers didn't put him on the fifty three and thought that they would, just thought that he had earned a spot.

But they had a pretty deep safety or pretty deep corner room already, and so he ended up on the practice squad and then uh no, he ended up cut.

I'm sorry Panthers picked him up and put him on their practice squad here.

But somebody that has has impressed and has catches your eye hereing practice here and there he just kind of can't help but draw your eye.

So somebody that will keep an eye on this week.

Yeah, you know, this could be his shot to come and come up and show what he's got.

But there's a lot to There's a lot happen.

There's a lot of stuff.

There's so many moving parts.

And when you see, just as I made about my eighth trip to the coffee machine this morning, you see Dave Canalis and Dan Morgan walking back and forth the meetings, They've got that look on their face like, don't make small talk, I'm busy, yea.

And you see them, you know this is going to be a busy week and trying to get a team rate to play on the field.

Those injuries are not limited to the second Dear Carolina Panthers, of course, went into that game with a couple of backup linebackers and Chris Barnes promoted from the practice squad for the third time.

He'd need to go to the fifty three to play again, and that's probably indeed claud and Cheril has started the game next to him.

Claude wasn't able to finish.

He left the game with a concussion as well, so he'll be in the protocol moving forward, we'll see what that means for him.

Then you get into that game, Chris Barnes is out there and all of a sudden, Bam, Martin Scott, the rookie from South Carolina is out there running alongside him, and and bam.

Martin Scott is a rookie with all that entails.

But he's making his rookie mistakes fast because that's a big, physical guy.

So he was running around out there and made a couple of plays.

But that linebacker level, we don't know what Roseboom status is for this week.

Again, a short week complicates everything.

And this is practically a Thursday night game because you're coming off a Monday night West Coast road trip.

You come home, here's Thanksgiving in front of you, and all of a sudden, you know, we're trying to figure out who to put on the field.

So we'll see what that.

I anticipate roster moves between now and Sunday's game, for sure.

We'll see what happens with Trevin Wallace this week too.

They tried to get him ready to practice and just couldn't get him ready enough to practice last week.

Obviously, that's difficult on a short week, but they will try again with that.

It'd be great.

I'd be a little surprised, but we'll find out.

But obviously if you could get him back, that would be huge.

But no doubt, don't forget too.

You still have, like I said, three division games in front of you.

Rams is an NFC very important.

You really really want to be healthy for those Saints and Bucks games.

Yeah, no doubt, no doubt.

So well, we'll keep you posted on all that as the day goes along.

Here here's the problem with coming off that Tuesday, and I know it's Tuesday.

You know how No, it's Tuesday because I wrote it in all caps, right, you had.

To do after calling it Monday more than once.

Yeah, it's again this I'm not designed to know what day of the week it is.

I am told by people in my family that there's this thing coming up on Thursday called Thanksgiving.

I hope yours is happy and healthy and you get to hang out with all your friends and family and eat all the cool Thanksgiving food.

I'll be at the house probably with all those people listening to the lit Larlow Guthrie it's Alice's restaurant season.

I'm gonna make Cassidy listen to that eighteen or nineteen times through.

That'll fill time between now and Thursday, and the song like twenty three minutes long.

At eighteen and a half minutes give or take a few.

That was about the Carolina Panthers time of position last night.

No, not really, but a lot of stuff coming up, So keep it locked on Panthers dot com all week.

We're gonna have breaking news for you.

We'll have all the analysis coming up and getting ready for the ramsweek, So Panthers dot com keep it locked on the YouTube channel until a point later this week to be determined when we'll reconvene with the Happy Half Hour.

We'll see y'all next time.