The Carolina Panthers didn’t do much on offense in kicking off the Frank Reich era this afternoon. But that was largely by design.
Reich spoke to reporters following his team’s listless 27-0 loss in the preseason opener against the New York Jets. When asked how he’ll put the listless performance into perspective, he . . . well . . . kinda said he wouldn’t.
“You don’t like getting shut out and getting beat 27-0,” he said. “But I have a lot of years in this league that tell me that preseason scores aren’t the most meaningful thing. And not that we’re not accountable for that. We are. But it’s not the most important thing right now. It’s just not. We’re tryin’ to evaluate our team.
“Listen, this is by design. I mentioned this the other day. We’re very generic now. We did nothing in our scheme. Nothing. And that’s not an excuse. I expected us to do a lot. So, we kept it simple so that we could do a lot, so we didn’t have to think much, so we could evaluate one-on-one play. So, we need to do better there. But as a coaching staff, we weren’t tryin’ to put the guys in the best position the whole game, really, in any phase.”
Carolina amassed all of 199 total yards on Saturday. And if you eliminate the garbage-time production in the final minute of the fourth quarter, that total trickles down to just164.
As Reich alludes to, however, this is just the beginning—for a coaching staff, an offense, a season and an entirely new chapter of Panthers football.
