It’s not often that a Carolina Panthers game has me breaking out the dictionary to confirm that my instinct on word choice is appropriately grave enough for the situation. Okay, it’s not often this season for me to have to do that. Sunday’s meltdown, however, had me reaching for a Websters. The definition for catastrophe was ‘utter failure’, by the way, so I’m calling that suitable.
Normally, I would try and find an element or takeaway from the game that was interesting or inspired some curiosity.
Then I’d look into that and add some additional context or interesting tidbits. For that game? I’ve got nothing. More accurately, there were too many points of failure to even attempt at singling any one area out. Offense? Terrible. Defense? Putrid. Special Teams? Grotesque.
What did inspire me however was a note from someone on social media who pointed out that the Panthers are 0-6 when entering a game with a winning record under Head Coach Dave Canales.
I couldn’t believe it to be true, so I had to look it up for myself. Don’t know why I doubted it, but it was true. For your amusement, here are those 6 games the Panthers entered into with a winning record.
- Week 8, 2025: 40-9 loss versus the Buffalo Bills (entered 4-3)
- Week 10, 2025: 17-7 loss versus the New Orleans Saints (entered 5-4)
- Week 12, 2025: 20-9 loss versus the San Francisco 49ers (entered 6-5)
- Week 15, 2025: 20-17 loss versus the New Orleans Saints (entered 7-6)
- Week 17, 2025: 27-10 loss versus the Seattle Seahawks (entered 8-7)
- Week 7, 2026: 43-13 loss versus the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (entered 3-2)
From the team that brought you “can’t have a winning record in back to back seasons” you can now enjoy their new hit “can’t have a winning record in back to back games”. It’s become a Sisyphean task to maintain a winning record.
I’m not sure what the answer is, or who made a deal with what devil, but this is a trend that Canales must figure out how to eliminate. We’re approaching levels of statistical ineptitude not seen since the reign of Matt Rhule’s record when opponents score more than 17 points.
Speaking of 17 points, that’s the average margin of defeat among those 6 games. That’s a touchdown’s worth of points more than their average points scored in the same contests – specifically 10.8 points per game.
There are very few things that could go have gone worse for the Panthers. Thankfully, it still only counts as one loss and they won’t have to wait long for their chance at redemption. The Panthers are up again on Thursday night versus the Green Bay Packers – so until then, keep pounding.
