Wars are won by soldiers, not magic tricks—and football games are won and lost by the very large men who work on the front lines. After Sunday, the Carolina Panthers can attest to that.
Their 21-18 loss to the Cleveland Browns was a case study in what happens to an otherwise talented team who can't win at the line of scrimmage. Nobody would argue that the Panthers have a better offensive line than the Browns, even though they're paying far more for their own unit than any other team.
However, the way that Carolina's trench got dominated by the Myles Garrett-less Browns defensive line was the greatest deciding factor in the Week 3 matchup. For almost the entire 60 minutes, the Panthers struggled getting any push in the run game and they allowed
far too many pressures on quarterback Bryce Young.
Late in the fourth quarter, they were able to spring a few big runs by Hubbard. But by then, the damage had been done.
Head coach Dave Canales talked about the group's struggles following the defeat.
"Yeah, we didn't handle the movement well up front, and it was . . . we're looking at it schematically and structurally—the runs looked fine, we missed some blocks up front," Canales told reporters. "We knew that the challenge of this group is that they're quick. They move at the point. They do different things and we didn't handle that well early.
"Finally, we were able to kind of settle in towards the end of the game and really the feature of that touchdown drive was the run game. The play actions, the offense that we know.
"The Browns did a great job covering us, making it challenging—some of the rush patterns—creating a little bit of pressure for Bryce, so he had to get the ball out a little bit earlier than he needed to, so some things to work on, some things to look at. But I've gotta give a lot of credit to those guys for executing a good plan."
The simple fact is that the Panthers have to play better on both sides of the line, and it's not going to get any easier. Up next is a Detroit Lions team that prides themselves on winning in the trenches.
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This article originally appeared on Panthers Wire: Panthers HC Dave Canales comments on OL struggles in loss to Browns
