Carolina Panthers

Disaster! Cam Newton's Panthers dynasty was toppled before it even started

Published Nov. 15, 2016 1:56 p.m. ET

Chris Chase

What happened?

Last year was supposed to be the start of an NFC dynasty. The Carolina Panthers were led by the most dynamic player in the league and had one of its most fearsome defenses. In an era in which fly-by-night teams ride a wave of good fortune to the Super Bowl and then collapse the following year thanks to higher expectations, a tougher schedule, attrition and a declining team chemistry (with great success comes great contract demands), Carolina was destined to be an outlier. It wasn't a question. There was never any expectation Carolina wouldn't put up a double-digit win season, win the NFC South and be one of the two or three Super Bowl favorites entering January and then repeat the following process through Newton's prime and beyond.

Fast forward six weeks and, by record, the Carolina Panthers are one of the three worst teams in the NFC. (Carolina, Chicago and San Francisco all share matching 1-5 records.) Baffling doesn't begin to cover it.

The Panthers aren't 1-5 bad. They're not on the same level as the pathetic Bears or a 49ers team that basically has Steve Spurrier as head coach and the worst quarterbacking situation in the NFL. Records aren't merely deceiving in the NFL, they're completely unreliable gauges of the teams in the fat part of the curve, the ones that finish between 6-10 and 10-6. If either of Carolina's last two opponents had missed a last-second field goal, the game would have gone to overtime and the Panthers could easily be an acceptable 3-3 right now. But Carolina wasn't supposed to be one of those teams in the middle. (And, technically, I guess they're not.)

So what is it? Cam Newton gets all the credit when Carolina wins (as his deserved 2016 MVP award demonstrated) but how much does he deserve when they lose? Ask anyone to quickly name the Panthers' problems and they'd almost certainly say two things: Newton and the defense. Oddly though, Cam's numbers as compared to the opening six-game stretch of the 2015 season are remarkably similar.

2015, first six weeks (six starts): 212 passing yards per game, 55.8% completion, 9 touchdowns, 7 interceptions, 78.4 rating

2016, first six weeks (five starts): 216 passing yards per game, 57.8% completion, 8 touchdowns, 6 interceptions, 81.2 QB rating

Forget similar, they're virtually indistinguishable except for the fact that Carolina was 6-0 at this point last year. But if there's one telling statistic for Newton's 2016 it's his rushing yardage. He's had a lower total in almost every successive game this season: 54, 37, 26, 30 and, Sunday against the Saints, one yard on two carries. One. A single yard. As in three feet more than zero. It was the worst rushing performance of his NFL career. Coming off a concussion that kept him out the previous week, the self-preservation was, and is, a necessity -- but losing the weapon of Newton's speed - or even the threat of it - changes the offense. Unlike, say, the Vikings, who can thrive without Adrian Peterson because they aren't compelled to run their offense through him, the Panthers need Newton's rushing ability precisely because they don't run their offense through it. Most of the time, it's a freelancing bonus.

The defense, which was the second-best in the league in 2015, is an obvious mess. They're giving up an average of 35.3 points per game this month. Having no defender within 15 yards of Brandin Cooks on his 87-yard receiving TD from Drew Brees on Sunday wasn't surprising on any level. It's the norm. The team even allowed a rushing touchdown to a tight end. And if you think that's all because of Josh Norman, then it should have been he, and not Newton, who was the nearly unanimous MVP last year. The excuse about trouble adapting to a post-Norman secondary was fine in Weeks 1 and 2 but now it's frivolous. Teams lose players all the time, even All-Pro talents, and find ways to survive. Nobody should be blaming a guy Carolina willingly let leave for the awfulness of a defense that's given up 500 yards of offense twice in the first six weeks of the year.

Carolina still scored 38 points on Sunday. They also put up 33 against the Falcons and, in their lone win, dropped 46 on those lowly Niners. Because of that, you could be forgiven for still believing all isn't lost for the Panthers, that these games were an aberration, the team didn't go the wrong way at that fork in the road after the Super Bowl and they can be saved this year and beyond.

Maybe the latter is true, even if it's looking more and more like 15-1 was the exception. If there were betting odds, the clubhouse favorite would be Carolina being an above-average NFL team who contends for the playoffs most years but is hardly an NFL power. NFL powers, after all, don't start 1-5. The former? No shot. One and five. Unless the Atlanta Falcons collapse, it's possible for Carolina to finish the season 9-1 and still miss the playoffs. One and five. The record itself isn't necessarily an indictment of the Panthers -- giving up 523 yards to the Saints is. Losing to Jameis Winston is. Letting Julio Jones become just the sixth receiver in NFL history to haul in 300 yards in a game is.

There's no more excuses to make and rationalizations to offer. Losing two of three games decided in the final seconds (as Carolina has) is coming up on the wrong side of probability. Losing all three is symptomatic of a larger issue. The Carolina Panthers are a bad football team. Get used to it.