The Athletic has one devastating word for Carolina Panthers' awful preseason start

The Carolina Panthers were an absolute mess in Saturday's ugly loss to the Houston Texans. They could not generate anything whatsoever on offense, and the defense had another rough outing, with even the starters yielding points this time.

Preseason games don't matter to teams because records mean nothing and they reset after three weeks anyway, but it's never good to look this bad. One insider from The Athletic had an accurate but painful one-word assessment of Carolina's performance.

Panthers get ripped to shreds over dreadful Texans loss

The Carolina Panthers lost 20-3 against the Houston Texans on Saturday, taking even a step back from their opening loss to the Cleveland Browns. They at least scored twice, and the first-team offense looked good. That wasn't true on Saturday.

"Yikes," Joe Person, The Athletic's Panthers reporter, wrote. "The first-team offense finished with minus-2 yards over two series in Saturday’s loss to the Texans, while the defense resembled the same porous unit that was the NFL’s worst in 2024. The Panthers have been outscored 50-13 in two preseason losses."

It has been pretty ugly, though that ultimately might not matter. It might not be a surprise, either. The Panthers went 5-12 last year and 2-15 the year before. It's not going to be fixed in one offseason, especially on defense.

The offense is perhaps a little bit more troubling, because even against good defenses, Bryce Young and company were able to have success a lot of the time last season. They scored 27 points on the Kansas City Chiefs. They were a dropped TD away from beating the Philadelphia Eagles.

So the fact that they looked so bad on Saturday is definitely worrisome, especially after the good drive to finish off the first unit's day in Week 1. It can be easily explained away as a good defense versus an offense not having a good day and a very tiny sample size (three plays), but it still isn't an ideal outcome.

With the starters sitting next week to close out the preseason, that was the final chance for Carolina's starting 22 to make an impression, and they made a pretty awful one.

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