Fans of the Carolina Panthers who responded to our Week 8 survey are experiencing some tempered optimism amidst their favorite team’s first win streak since the early days of Matt Rhule. Of course, the outside
world is expecting that to all come crashing down tomorrow as the Panthers host the much more highly regarded Buffalo Bills.
But nothing the Bills do can erase the fact that the Panthers have won four of their last five games on top of a stifling run defense, a dominant rushing attack, and mistake free quarterbacking. Sure, the pass rush may be largely non-existent, a flaw which could prove fatal against quarterbacks of Josh Allen’s caliber, but the team as a whole is playing better football than they have in years.
82% of respondents recognized that as reason to be confident that the team is headed in the right direction. The long term question about Bryce Young may yet to be settled by the team, but fans are at least happy to see what everybody else can do when turnovers aren’t the story of the day.
Unfortunately, Young is not going to play this week after suffering an ankle injury last week against the New York Jets. And Dalton, who turns 38 next week, is far from inspiring confidence in his own right.
We’ll have to see if the overlap between the 63% of fans who expect the offense to look no better to worse than usual under Dalton and the 82% of fans who are confident the team is heading in the right direction can retain any of their optimism in the wake of a loss to the Bills.
Of course, if the Panthers pull the upset of their decade today then we can all enjoy that watching that confidence rating spike through the roof.
