Trouble brewing for the Patriots? Barnwell on five important Week 3 losses and their aftermath

For the second time in three weeks, the opening window of the Sunday afternoon slate of NFL games delivered a delicious bowl of chaos. While Week 1 served up a record number of points, Week 3 brought upsets and heartbreaking defeats for teams that had lofty expectations heading into this season. Five teams that made the playoffs in 2025 lost games in crushing fashion. Three of which -- the Chargers, Panthers and Texans -- held leads in the fourth quarter but couldn't hold them. A fourth -- the defending Super Bowl champ Seahawks -- lost to an 0-2 Commanders team that was down to its backup quarterback. And a fifth -- the defending AFC champ Patriots -- were blown out and appear to have secretly replaced their MVP candidate QB from a year ago with a startled, overwhelmed facsimile of Drake Maye. (The Rams also blew a 16-0 lead to the Broncos on Sunday night, but that was a narrow loss on the road to a team that also made last season's playoffs.) Subscribe: 'The Bill Barnwell Show' Today, I'm going to break down those five losses from teams that expected to be winning most of their games this season. Which defeat was most painful? Which raised the biggest questions about what happens next? I'll go from most crushing to least ominous, starting in Duval County, where the Jaguars (another 2025 playoff team) had no trouble stomping all over the Patriots. Jump to: Chargers | Panthers | Patriots Seahawks | Texans New England Patriots On one hand, there's nothing unrealistic or shocking about the Patriots losing to the Jaguars in Jacksonville. On the other, unlike the other four games I'll talk about here, this loss wasn't particularly close. While Mike Vrabel & Co. might feel like they played better than the final score indicated and lost 10 points on sloppy play in the red zone and a missed field goal, the Patriots aren't building on what they put together in 2025. They look like they've gone back in time to the first half of the 2024 season, when Drake Maye was a rookie, Vrabel was out of football and a half-dozen dismal plays per game typically doomed them to losses. Since A.J. Brown went down in the second half of the Week 1 loss to the Seahawks, the Patriots have looked like a completely different offense. Maye was playing well in that game, continuously taking checkdowns and small profits. With Seattle quarterback Drew Lock being summoned to play on short notice with Sam Darnold's early injury and the Seahawks struggling to score, that would have been a logical way for the Patriots to try to win. Instead, Maye threw three interceptions to turn that game, all on throws he never should have considered making. He was better against the Steelers in Week 2 but badly underthrew a pass to Patrick Queen on a crosser for an interception, one play after he had escaped pressure and found Romeo Doubs on the sort of scramble drill creation Maye had excelled with last season. And on Sunday against the Jaguars, Maye continued to put the ball in danger in spots where it wasn't needed. His first interception was a disaster -- a throw offensive coordinators try to pry out of their quarterbacks after they turn pro. Booting to the right on the same fast-to-the-flat concept so many teams are running these days, Maye's first option, running back Rhamondre Stevenson, was taken away. Under pressure from Foyesade Oluokun, Maye realistically should have thrown the ball away on a third-and-goal situation and either lived to try on fourth down or picked up three points. Instead, he threw against his body to Hunter Henry, and Travis Hunter made the interception. It was the wrong risk at the wrong time. Maye also had the ball slip out of his hands in the middle of a dropback for a fumble, an issue he attributed after the game to a bloody football. He lost another one at the end of a scramble, costing the Patriots another drive that ended inside the 5-yard line. And while his second interception might have been more on wide receiver Kyle Williams (who didn't offer much physicality on a contested catch situation on the sideline), it certainly feels like Maye is pressing or trying to make too much happen. Still, Maye does have stretches where he's playing well. He was fine for most of the game against the Seahawks and made several important plays, mostly with his legs, late in the contest to get the Pats back in a position to tie or take the lead before his final ill-advised pick. And there were multiple third downs in this game against Jacksonville where Maye was pressured, escaped, reset and delivered a ball that either hit his receiver in the hands or went through them. Mack Hollins taking a taunting penalty after a 9-yard catch on third-and-10 down 28-3 in the fourth quarter isn't on Maye and probably wasn't a great idea (even if that's a score that might feel comfortable for Patriots fans). Is it just the fact that the Patriots are playing tougher opponents than they were in 2025? I think that's certainly part of the issue. If you go back to 2025, Maye wasn't turning the ball over this often against top-tier competition. Including the postseason, Maye played nine games against top-15 defenses by DVOA last season, and he threw eight interceptions in those nine games. We don't know if the Seahawks, Jaguars and Steelers will finish as elite defenses in 2026, but he now has six picks in three games and might have been lucky to leave Jacksonville without adding even more to that total. I would say more specifically that Maye was not punished anywhere near as often for putting the ball into dangerous situations a year ago. Remember that he had multiple wideouts run remarkable catch rates over expectation last season, with Kayshon Boutte, Stefon Diggs and Hollins all coming in 10-plus percentage points ahead of expected. I'm not saying that Maye was careless, but when he did take risks, he typically came out unscathed. Maye completed 47.7% of his tight-window throws in 2025, which was 11.4 percentage points better than his expected completion percentage on those attempts. He threw four picks on 88 tight-window attempts. This season, he has more interceptions (three) than completions (two) on tight-window passes, going 2-of-9 there. And after running a plus-9.0% completion percentage over expectation across all his throws in the 2025 regular season, Maye is at plus-2.4% this season. The offense around him hasn't been as effective, in part because of injuries. The Patriots were the sixth-healthiest offense in the league last season by adjusted games lost. This year, they've already lost Brown to a high-ankle sprain and right guard Mike Onwenu to a fractured ankle. They miss Diggs, who was one of the NFL's most efficient receivers on a per-snap basis, even if the Patriots only used him for about 50% of their offensive snaps. Hollins has instead been their unlikely lead receiver, as Doubs has been inconsistent. (Doubs' drop against the Seahawks before a Maye interception looms in the memories of Patriots fans.) The word that keeps coming to mind when I watch this version of Maye, though, is inexperienced. That ability to calibrate decisions? To know when and where to put the ball in danger? To be a quarterback who both simultaneously makes the best possible decision within a play and the broader context of the game situation? It's tough to watch Maye and say he has a great handle on that part of the job right now. And that's not completely uncommon for a QB in Year 3. But Maye was perhaps able to cover over those issues last season while playing from ahead so often against teams that couldn't make him pay. The Patriots might consider acting accordingly now. They're already calling designed runs on first down nearly 57% of the time this season, the ninth-highest rate in the NFL. Could they lean even more into the run on early downs? Could they up the play-action rate to create easy completions for Maye when only four offenses run play fakes less often? Or should the Patriots just stick it out and trust that Maye will get right? After all, the guy who finished ahead of Maye in the MVP balloting last season is a lot more experienced than his younger predecessor, and Matthew Stafford has four interceptions in three games, too, including a pick-six that helped the Broncos back into things Sunday night. With games against the 3-0 Bills and Raiders on the way, though, the Patriots can't afford to watch Maye learn on the fly given their expectations heading into 2026. Los Angeles Chargers If not now, then when? If the Chargers were ever going to turn around their season amid a brutal slate of opponents, wouldn't it have come in the sort of game we saw Sunday afternoon in Buffalo? A Chargers defense that had looked like a sieve through two losses to start the season suddenly lurched back to life against one of the league's best offenses, forcing five turnovers. A moribund Chargers offense that hasn't been able to sustain drives got to start three inside Buffalo territory. Receiver Ladd McConkey was back for a full complement of snaps after being limited last week, and the Bills lost top cornerback Christian Benford to an in-game toe injury. But the Chargers still lost. Across Jim Harbaugh's career with Stanford, Michigan, the 49ers and the Chargers, he had gone 11-0 when his team posted a turnover margin of plus-four or better. The Chargers lost with a plus-four margin Sunday -- and they needed a field goal with 1:59 left to even get within one score. They started the fourth quarter with a three-point lead and immediately got the ball after strip-sacking Josh Allen for their fifth turnover of the game. They ended it relying on an onside kick to even have a shot at winning. Some of this was a disastrous day from Harbaugh, who appeared to respond to his team's 0-2 start by turtling up and going 25 years into the past. After going up 7-0 and getting the ball back courtesy of an Allen interception, the Chargers made their way into the red zone. Facing a third-and-5, the Chargers chose to run the ball with Keaton Mitchell, who picked up 2 yards. You can understand why. Offenses are more willing to run the ball on third-and-medium because they're open to going for it on fourth-and-short; that opens up the playbook on third down. Defenses have to respect the run in those situations, which only frees up the passing game in the process. Nothing new here. Well, all that made sense until Harbaugh sent out his kicker and went up 10-0. There were anecdotal arguments for kicking -- Tom Brady noted the benefits of making it a two-score game and locking in points early -- but analytical models weren't impressed. ESPN's model had the decision to kick as a 1.9 percentage point swing. Playing for a two-possession game in the first quarter against the Bills, who can move the ball and score at will, was naive. Even worse, it signaled a disconnect between the head coach and offensive playcaller. Mike McDaniel is the guy in charge of the offense, and when he was the head coach with the Dolphins, he could call a run on third-and-5 knowing that he'd have the final say on whether to go for it on fourth down. Here, while McDaniel is the playcaller, Harbaugh is the head coach and the guy who decides what to do on fourth down. That gap led to what was clearly a suboptimal combination, where the Chargers didn't do the thing on third down that maximized their chances of getting a first down on one play, then kicked on fourth down when that also hurt their chances. Harbaugh then doubled down with an even worse decision. Facing a fourth-and-goal from the 3-yard line with the score tied in the third quarter, Harbaugh again sent out Cameron Dicker to give the Chargers the lead. ESPN's model saw this as an even bigger swing, with the decision itself costing the Chargers 5.8 percentage points of win probability. Los Angeles would have been better off going for it if it had believed its chances of converting were merely 25%. Between those two calls, the Chargers' chances of winning dropped by nearly eight full points. Again, doing this against the Bills and their offense is even worse. While Los Angeles was able to hold off Buffalo by forcing takeaways, the points inevitably came for the Bills, who punted only once all game. Buffalo produced 55- and 80-yard drives at the end of the first half for 10 points, then scored touchdowns on back-to-back drives in the fourth quarter to take over the game. Managing the score in the first quarter or even the third quarter against a high-powered offense is shortsighted. When a team is in position to score touchdowns against a great offense as a significant underdog, it needs to take them. Yes, there's risk in failing, but as the Chargers showed here, you can kick field goals and still find a way to fail. And by the end of the game, having turned down fourth-and-short twice, they had to try to convert a fourth-and-10 to extend the game with 5:14 to go. They failed. While this was comfortably their best performance of the season, I would be very hesitant to draw significant conclusions about this being something closer to the Chargers many people expected heading into the season. There's no question that the defense played better, but L.A. can't count on forcing (and particularly recovering) three fumbles every game. Safety Genesis Smith had two picks, and while one was a nice job of jumping a route as a quarters safety, the other came on a contested catch where the rookie had the ball land on his stomach as he was falling and rolling on the ground. If Smith has those sort of hands, the Chargers should move him to wide receiver! Speaking of which, another Quentin Johnston drop conspicuously led the way in a messy day for the offense. This was the Chargers' best game on the ground so far, with Mitchell and Omarion Hampton combining for 108 yards on 24 carries, but there was still little hint of the explosiveness McDaniels' run game was supposed to produce. The offense scored 16 points, and 10 of those came on drives that started in Bills territory after takeaways. Even those needed some extra help, as the Bills produced roughing the passer penalties on both possessions to push the ball forward for the Chargers. When the Los Angeles did produce a pair of long drives? One ended with a missed kick by Dicker. The other landed at the 1-yard line before a pair of false starts bumped the Chargers back to the 11, where a checkdown and that second Harbaugh decision to kick a field goal saw the Chargers end up with three points. The execution from this team continues to be remarkably sloppy. Herbert went 20-of-34 for 226 yards and a passing touchdown that came on a tap pass to Mitchell. Sixty-nine of those passing yards came on the final drive of the game, when the Chargers trailed by 11 points and the Bills were in prevent mode. Herbert threw an interception from just outside the red zone to C.J. Gardner-Johnson on a third-and-5 to cost the Chargers points, and while he dealt with drops from his wideouts yet again, Herbert also benefitted from the Bills dropping at least one more would-be interception. Winning in Buffalo wouldn't have fixed what's wrong with the Chargers. But it would have given a team that feels like nothing's going right some reason to believe that it can pull out of an awful rut. Now, after their third frustrating loss of the season, the Chargers have to travel up north and play the defending Super Bowl champs in Seattle next Sunday. And speaking of the Seahawks, they'll also be cranky about what they put out in Week 3 ... Seattle Seahawks The Seahawks might have felt invulnerable. The champs were riding a 12-game winning streak and hadn't lost in 314 days. They had survived Sam Darnold's hip injury to beat the Patriots and Cardinals, and they were getting their starting quarterback back in the mix against the Commanders, who were going to be without arguably their three best offensive players in Jayden Daniels, Laremy Tunsil and Sam Cosmi. While the Seahawks were banged-up at safety, this would have been a game they expected to win. Instead, the Commanders got their season back on track, sealing the win with a pair of runs to burn the Seahawks' timeouts and the clock. Facing a third-and-9 and an all-out blitz look from Mike Macdonald with less than two minutes left, Commanders offensive coordinator David Blough handed the ball to Rachaad White, who picked up 19 yards to start squeezing Seattle. Then with a third-and-7 and a chance to end the game, Blough dialed up the quarterback run game and had Mariota read DeMarcus Lawrence, who crashed inside to take the running back. Mariota kept the ball on his first and only designed run of the game and beat the Seahawks to the sticks to seal up a critical victory. Losing to an 0-2 team with a backup quarterback is never going to feel great, and I'm sure this wasn't a pleasant flight back to the Pacific Northwest for the Seahawks. It also doesn't feel like a disastrous performance. Mariota's arguably the best backup quarterback in the league. The defense limited the Commanders to 2.6 yards per carry on the ground and 4.0 yards per play overall. In his return to the lineup, Darnold threw for 379 yards and four touchdowns, and the Commanders weren't able to sack him even once. What the Commanders did create, though, was something we haven't seen from the Seahawks offense in a while: turnovers. Between the Week 18 victory over the 49ers that clinched the top seed in the NFC, their three-game playoff run to a Lombardi Trophy and the first two games of the 2026 season, the Seahawks had turned the ball over just once across their past six contests. During Macdonald's time in Seattle, creating multi-takeaway games has been the way to beat the Seahawks. Since the start of 2024, the Seahawks are 9-9 when they turn the ball over two times or more, but they're 20-1 when they either go turnover-free or turn the ball over just once. Everyone's better when they protect the football, of course, but the Seahawks are virtually unbeatable when they do so. Instead, the Seahawks turned the ball over three times on Sunday. Those plays produced 21 points for Washington. Jadarian Price fumbled on his own 21-yard line in the first quarter, with the Commanders scoring a touchdown four plays later. Darnold has a pass tipped at the line and picked off by dynamic rookie Sonny Styles at the Seattle 42-yard line, with the Commanders needing three plays to score this time. And an attempt by Darnold to check down on a naked bootleg was read and picked off by Kain Medrano, who was taking the first defensive snaps of his career in this game after Leo Chenal was injured early. Medrano returned Darnold's errant throw himself for a pick-six. Interceptions are part of life with Darnold, who can bunch picks together at times. Even while playing the best football of his career over the past two seasons, he had two multi-interception games in 2024 for the Vikings and three a year ago for the Seahawks, including six across the two regular-season games against the Rams. The tipped pick Sunday wasn't really his fault, but every QB runs into a few unlucky interceptions. Darnold has run relatively hot avoiding picks in his past few games, including the Super Bowl, where the Patriots were aggressively trying to chase him into throwing one early on. The other guy who made a big impact on offense in the Super Bowl is also conspicuous by his absence. Trading away Geno Smith and signing Darnold in free agency in the 2025 offseason was a masterstroke for general manager John Schneider, but while the jury's still out on his decisions from the 2026 offseason, there might not be a Seahawks fan alive who doesn't wish that Seattle had re-signed running back Kenneth Walker III. In part, that's because Walker has looked fantastic with the Chiefs. Playing in something closer to a full-time role after splitting time for most of his Seahawks career, Walker leads the league with 360 rushing yards through three games. He's averaging 5.5 yards per carry on the ground while making life easier for Patrick Mahomes, who looks utterly revitalized and relieved to finally have an explosive run game. After Chiefs backs had a league-low 10 explosive runs in 2025, Walker already has eight through his first three games in Kansas City. The Seahawks, meanwhile, are struggling to replace their former starter. Schneider used a first-round pick to select Price, who has looked explosive as a runner at times but has also now lost fumbles in consecutive games. Price was a rotational back behind Jeremiyah Love at Notre Dame, and after leaving the Week 2 win over the Cardinals with a chest injury, the Seahawks are going to be careful about expanding his workload too quickly. One of the places they don't really seem to trust Price is near the goal line, where new coordinator Brian Fleury has instead used the combo of Emanuel Wilson and George Holani. It's not going all that well. Running backs typically convert about 49% of their carries inside the 2-yard line into touchdowns. During his time in Seattle, Walker scored on 11 of his 26 attempts inside the 2, which was below average but still a pretty reasonable 42% figure. Yet Wilson and Holani are 0-for-6 to start the season, picking up a combined minus-2 yards in the process. Wilson tried to bounce outside away from an unblocked Chenal and lost 2 yards early in the second quarter, and after a penalty gave the Seahawks a new set of downs, Javon Kinlaw split through a pair of blockers to stuff Holani for no gain. Darnold hit Jaxon Smith-Njigba for a touchdown after Holani was stopped, but the Seahawks had little interest in running near the goal line again. When they got the ball back, Darnold drove the Seahawks to the 2-yard line at the two-minute warning of the first half, only for Fleury to dial up three straight pass plays. In a situation where teams typically want to run because it's both efficient and forces the opposing team to either let the clock bleed or use their timeouts, the Seahawks threw on second down, threw on third down and threw on fourth down -- all of which went incomplete. The Commanders took over with 1:40 on the clock and improbably had time to launch two drives before halftime. While the first was stopped with little progress and led to the Seahawks kicking a field goal, the second allowed the Commanders to get into field goal range themselves, where Drew Stevens hit a 57-yarder that proved to be very crucial in a game that would be decided by two points. All winning streaks eventually come to an end. The Seahawks will be fine in the big picture, and five of their next six games are at home -- although that run includes the 49ers, Broncos, Chiefs and Bears. They'll hope to start a new winning streak next Sunday against the Chargers. Houston Texans "We've done it before" is always good to hear, but proof of concept doesn't always guarantee that you'll get what you want. The 2025 Texans started 0-3 and still made it to the postseason, a feat only one other team (the 2018 Texans) has managed to pull off during the NFL's 32-team era. That's a little easier in a league that has 14-team playoffs these days, but last season's Texans didn't sneak in as a seventh seed. Instead, they went on a 12-2 run, were the fifth seed in the AFC and advanced to the divisional round for the third consecutive year. If the Texans want to try to advance past the second round of the playoffs for the first time in the C.J. Stroud era, they'll need to pull out something equally as impressive in 2026. For the second year in a row, a narrow loss to a divisional rival has dropped the Texans to 0-3. Last year, the Jags held the Texans to one lone touchdown in a 17-10 defeat. This time, the Texans weren't able to hold a lead. After going up 17-16 on a Woody Marks touchdown run with 1:48 to go, DeMeco Ryans' defense needed one stop to finally land their team a victory. This was their best defensive performance of the season, with Will Anderson Jr. producing nine pressures and running over Colts right tackle Jalen Travis for a pair of strip sacks of Daniel Jones, who also threw an interception while in field goal range in the third quarter. Jonathan Taylor had been held to 64 yards on 21 carries, and the Colts had scored just three points on four drives in the second half. One more stop would land a much-needed win for the Texans and likely knock the Colts out of the playoff picture before the end of September. The Texans could not get that stop. Given time, Jones was able to hit Laquon Treadwell on a 20-yard dig, getting the Colts on Houston's side of the field in two plays. Indy coach Shane Steichen proceeded to get the ball into Taylor's hands for two consecutive carries. Ryans was excoriated after the game for not using his first timeout after Taylor's 5-yard run got the ball to the Houston 40-yard line until about 35 seconds had passed. Frankly, I'm not sure it was the worst decision. The Texans were staring down a 58-yard field goal attempt at that point from Spencer Shrader, who had injured his groin during warmups. The Colts running clock, keeping the ball in Taylor's hands and settling for an extremely long field goal attempt wasn't such a bad thing. After the Texans stopped Taylor and used a timeout, however, Jones was able to find Keenan Allen for a 6-yard completion against soft zone coverage on third-and-7. And while that didn't move the sticks for Indianapolis, it made Shrader's ensuing field goal try much more comfortable. The 27-year-old hit from 53 yards out, and the Colts were back on top for good, breaking what had been a 10-game losing streak going back to their 2025 bye. The Texans were able to overcome their 0-3 start a year ago by fielding one of the league's best defenses over the ensuing 14 games of the season. And as I wrote last Thursday, this year's defense has not yet been on that level. Even after their impressive performance against the Colts, the Texans are 17th in EPA allowed per play and 20th in points against per drive through three games. Frankly, they did enough to win. They forced three turnovers and held the Colts to one touchdown on three red zone trips. Limit the opposing team to 19 points on 10 drives and set your offense up with two short fields after takeaways, and you've held up your end of the bargain (even if you did allow that 20-yard completion on the final possession of the game). With the Texans, though, there's an overwhelming reliance on the things the team does right to overcome their weaknesses. The defense has to compensate for the offense. Stroud has to overcome an absent running game. Ryans has to overcome his own predilections for conservative decision-making and game management, and when he does get brave enough to go for it on fourth-and-short -- as he did for the second consecutive week -- the Texans have to deliver. Again, they did not, with David Montgomery stuffed on a fourth-and-1 rush attempt after sixth lineman Blake Fisher failed to get any push. I already covered the Texans at length last week, and the issues we saw in this game weren't much different than the ones we saw over the first two weeks of the season. Things will be better on offense once receiver Nico Collins returns from his hamstring injury. The defense looks like it's rounding back into form. What might be cause for alarm for other teams is business as usual for the Texans. I'm just not sure Houston's strengths are really all that strong at the moment. The defense hadn't been at its dominant best until Sunday. Stroud had an impressive opener against the Bills, but he has a 44.7 Total QBR without Collins on the field over the past two weeks. Yes, we know the Texans can get themselves out of this hole. Doing it once, though, isn't a guarantee in pulling it off a second time. Carolina Panthers Injuries continue to plague the Panthers, who came into the season (alongside the 49ers) as the league's most banged-up team. Things have only gotten worse. One week after he came up with two interceptions, two tackles for loss and a sack, linebacker Devin Lloyd missed this game with a calf injury. Starting safety Nick Scott also missed it with a rib injury, while rotational back Jonathon Brooks hit injured reserve during the week. Carolina lost several more starters during the game, including wideout Jalen Coker and cornerback Mike Jackson. The injuries played an essential role on some of the most important snaps of Sunday's defeat. The Panthers went just 4-of-15 on third down and then 0-for-3 on fourth down. The Browns, meanwhile, converted two fourth downs, including one for a touchdown, before failing on an attempt to seal the game up three in the final minutes. On a fourth-and-3, left tackle Rasheed Walker was driven back into Bryce Young's lap by Browns edge rusher Jared Verse, leaving Carolina's QB with no way to see Darren Waller come open on a crosser as part of a mesh concept. Young was sacked by Mason Graham to end the play. Walker might not be in the lineup if not for injuries to 2025 starting tackles Ikem Ekwonu and Taylor Moton, which forced first-round pick Monroe Freeling to play right tackle and kept Walker in on the blind side. The Browns, meanwhile, converted a fourth-and-3 in the second quarter when KC Concepcion came in motion and was too fast for cornerback Akayleb Evans on a speed out. Evans entered the lineup after Jackson went down with a groin injury in the first quarter and did not return. Deshaun Watson hit Harold Fannin Jr. for a touchdown pass on fourth-and-goal from the 2-yard line at the end of the quarter after the tight end ran away from safety Zakee Wheatley, who was in the lineup for Scott. Let's fast-forward. Carolina scored to take the lead with 4:25 to go in the game when John Metchie III (playing in Coker's absence) caught a touchdown. But leading by five, the Panthers failed to convert on the ensuing two-pointer. Left guard Damien Lewis was dealing with a balky elbow and couldn't block Graham, who helped slow down and tackle Chuba Hubbard short of the end zone. The Panthers were unable to get their lead to seven. Nearly three minutes later, the Browns made them pay. Facing a third-and-10 with 1:55 on the clock, Watson hit Fannin for his second score of the game. The Panthers were able to defend initially, but when Watson extended the play, Bobby Okereke tried to chase down the quarterback, leaving Tyrel Dodson (making his season debut for the injured Lloyd) to match to Fannin. Neither linebacker got where they needed to go, leaving an easy throw for a touchdown. I won't claim to know how the Panthers pattern match their zone coverages to route distributions on scramble drills, but that's going to be tougher to do and more subject to mistakes with two guys who only signed with Carolina at the end of the preseason. There are also the issues that the injuries might have impacted more subtly. Free agent edge rusher Jaelan Phillips was on the sideline for that play, but would the Panthers have been able to keep Watson from extending if Tershawn Wharton (out after neck surgery) and Nic Scourton (done for the year with a torn ACL) were healthy enough to play? Would Brooks have helped spell Hubbard and AJ Dillon, who had a 30% success rate on the ground? What about Coker? Young has been excellent generating big plays over the first two weeks of the season, in part because Coker's emergence has given him a second big wideout to call upon down the sideline. Over the first two weeks of the season, Young was 7-of-11 for 238 yards on deep passes, which NFL Next Gen Stats defines as passes traveling 20 or more yards in the air. Coker already had three deep completions this season, including a 51-yard touchdown against the Bears. This week, Young went just 2-of-6 for 81 yards on deep pass attempts, and one of those completions came against a prevent defense late in the contest. While Metchie scored a touchdown in his expanded role after Coker left the game, and Brycen Tremayne caught four balls for a team-high 81 yards while helping fill in for Coker and Xavier Legette, Young has been a different quarterback without Coker on the field. Since the start of 2024, Young has a Total QBR of 64.0 with Coker out there and a 40.5 mark without him in the lineup. That's the difference between being 10th and 30th in QBR. It's incredibly tough to overcome this many injuries in such a short period of time. The good news for the Panthers, I suppose, is that there's some rest coming up soon. After playing the Lions on Sunday night next week, the Panthers will get an early-season bye in Week 5. The NFC South remains wide open given that the Buccaneers and Saints both lost in Week 3, but Carolina needs to get healthy -- and fast -- if it wants to have any shot of playing meaningful football in January.