2022 Week 4 Game Recap: Cardinals 26, Panthers 16 (by Ross Jacobs)
Some people are billing this as a get-right game for the Cardinals, but it absolutely was not. They look like complete crap and only won this game because the Carolina offense is so dysfunctional. Both these teams are bad, the Cardinals just slightly less bad. They probably go on to win 6-7 games and the Panthers are going to be at the very bottom. They are just done. Rhule has lost this locker room and will be fired very shortly.
Will things get better when Rhule is gone? I doubt it. That's not going to fix this team's issues because the problems go much deeper than just Rhule. The playcalling is horrendous. The offensive line can't block anyone. The receivers aren't getting much separation and constantly drop passes. Baker is being scapegoated too and although I think his issues are being overblown, he's definitely part of the problem.
When Rhule is fired I expect the Panthers to do what every NFL team does when they fire a head coach...immediately go hire someone that's the opposite of the guy they just fired. That means no hot young offensive coach or college coach. They'll hire some old-school, veteran coach with a “strong” track record. Sean Payton is the prize but he feels destined for Dallas unless they miraculously make a deep playoff run. If they can't get Payton (why would Payton want to go to Carolina of all places when he has his choice of jobs?) then they'll settle for some retread like Dan Quinn, Raheem Morris, Vance Joseph, Leslie Frazier, or Mike Caldwell (notice how they are all defensive coaches?).
Carolina does have the core of a strong defense so I'm sure whichever of those guys lands here will get some solid early results on the back of a good defense and heavy run game to CMC, but as is always the case, unless they can find their elite QB it will all be for nothing and we'll be right back in the same place 3-4 years from now.
*RC NOTE: semi-Lock of the year, 2023…the Panthers new head coach will be: Brian Flores. Ross is on the right track of the new coach profile.
Fantasy Player Notes:
– The narrative surrounding Baker Mayfield (22-36 for 197 yards, 1 TD/2 INT) is completely out of control. Otherwise smart people are saying he's a terrible QB and blah blah blah. I'll repeat it until I'm blue in the face, Baker is not a bad QB. He's not the best but he's top 20 or so. You can win with him in the right circumstances. The trouble is he's surrounded by lackluster talent at WR, an atrocious offensive line that constantly has him under pressure, and utterly garbage playcalling. He's doing the best he can in this situation but everyone is being blinded to the obvious issues that plagued the Browns the last couple of years and now the Panthers. Contrary to popular belief it is NOT all about the QB.
Baker does occasionally fire too high or off target, that is true, but the biggest thing hurting his game right now is that he's short and NFL defenders have realized they can just jump and knock down a ton of his passes. Every single game he is getting 4-5-6 batted down at the line or tipped into the air for INTs. That's what happened in this game as well. The turnovers really aren't on him for the most part.
Either way it doesn't matter because, as usual, the entire NFL media and the fans have collectively decided that he is the worst and cannot be tolerated. For some reason Jameis Winston and Sam Darnold are given a million chances to fail but actually decent QBs like Mayfield and Nick Foles are tossed to the side like used garbage. Makes no sense to me, but you know I'm right about this because the media is ALWAYS wrong about these things. They have the worst QB sense in the world and that fact has been proven over and over and over again by RC.
But the story has been written so Baker's career is effectively over. No coach will want to touch him after this for fear of losing their own job because nobody in this industry has any courage or conviction. He'll go on to be a nice veteran backup for the next 8-10 years. It's yet another sad ending for a promising player that simply fell victim to bad luck and bad franchise decision making.
Things have gotten so bad with Mayfield and this offense that I suspect he'll be benched for Darnold as soon as he's healthy. Think about that. The guy that failed so spectacularly so many times and got destroyed by Mayfield in a training camp battle is now being talked about for ANOTHER chance and the media is already trying to make more excuses for why this time it might actually work. Unbelievable. I hope I don't need to tell you that you should move off any Carolina receivers if you still have them. They have no trade value so it's fine to just cut them or take whatever trinket you can get for DJ Moore.
– Remember my prediction from last week that we would see more Laviska Shenault over Shi Smith because Shenault actually scored a long TD and Shi is terrible? Yeah, no, that didn't remotely happen because NFL coaches are allergic to success and it's not like Rhule's job is on the line or anything. A sane person would be throwing every crazy idea in the book at this team to try and create a spark but not NFL coaches, never.
– The only player in fantasy worth having on this sinking ship of a team is Christian McCaffrey because his stats are not beholden to the rest of the offense. RBs can function just fine for fantasy even if they are on putrid offenses. He's not going to be 2019 CMC scoring 15 TDs but he's going to get yards and he's going to get catches (Baker finally figured out how to check down to him this week and we know Darnold is a master of the checkdown). Also, for all the injury fears on him every week he's still getting out there, playing all the snaps, and he looks just fine. I have no worries about CMC this year. He's a locked in top 3-5 RB.
Ok, let's talk about the Cardinals...
– We warned you about Kyler Murray (23-32 for 207 yards, 2 TD/1 INT, 12-26-1). He salvaged his fantasy day here with a couple of late TDs gifted by the Carolina offense, but until that point he was doing jack squat. Arizona is back to the BTO (baby throw offense), just a ton of short checkdowns and screen passes that the defense can sit on. DeAndre Hopkins is eligible to return in a few weeks but I don't see his presence changing anything.
Kyler looks disinterested in sitting in the pocket waiting to get hit behind a bad offensive line and is just throwing to the first semi-open thing he sees which is usually a short cross to Ertz or a predetermined fade to Brown or screen to Rondale. That's it. He did start scrambling more in the second half here but immediately headed for the sideline every time. He got his money and now he wants no part of trying to hang in until the last second and throw a laser down the field. He's going to take his easy throws, pump up his buddy Hollywood to get him paid, and get out just like we told you would happen.
If you still have him for whatever reason, please, use this decent stat line to get out. Trade him sideways for Burrow or Cousins or anyone you think has a better chance (and get some trinkets thrown in for Murray's name value) because I don't see a turn coming for him. It's just going to get worse when they start losing more games. This whole thing is due to implode any day now (assuming the Eagles don't just physically knock him out this week).
– We had high hopes for James Conner repeating his 2021 season this year but with the added bonus of no competition for touches...well, bad news but that dream is dead. Conner looks sluggish again. Watching the game it felt like he was rotating with Eno Benjamin and Darrel Williams (and both look more explosive than Conner) an awful lot but when I checked the snap counts it wasn't as bad as I thought. But the offense is just dysfunctional so he's not getting all those juicy inside the 5 carries that led to all his TDs last year. They also aren't throwing him nearly as many passes, probably because he is so slow right now. I'm assuming he's still dealing with injuries because he looks much less spry than last year.
*RC NOTE: Conner may be dead situationally, but I think some of Conner’s issue the last two weeks is a foot injury he’s playing through. I can only hope he gets a lot of dump passes for PPR, as I had planned, ahead to make his numbers.
– Rondale Moore finally returned from his injuries and looks like just another guy. Seriously, Greg Dortch should probably be starting over Moore. He looks like the better player to my eyes. It doesn't help that everyone knows Rondale only runs screens, shallow crosses, and sweeps so the defense just jumps up any time the ball is headed his direction. He never has room to operate.
The only things working in this offense (for fantasy purposes) are Kyler forcing the ball to Marquise Brown and Zach Ertz. Ertz is on his last legs but is still a decent back-end TE1 option on volume alone. Hollywood actually looks like a pretty decent receiver right now I must admit. He seems to have cured his drops problem from his Baltimore days. He's currently the WR6 overall and WR8 in ppg. We'll see how things change when Hopkins returns but Brown stands a decent chance of maintaining his usefulness even then.
IDP Notes:
– I'm going to keep mentioning him every single game because he's turned into such a good player now, but Frankie Luvu is just on fire, definitely Carolina's best player outside of Brian Burns. 11 tackles, 1 tfl, 1 pd, and a pick 6. He just keeps making plays every week.
Snap Counts of Interest
71 = Hollywood
65 = Rondale
27 = Dortch
62 = Ertz
32 = McBride
23 = Maxx
50 = Conner
16 = Williams
11 = Eno
50 = Moore
50 = Anderson
39 = Shi
4 = Shenault (just to make a point about how dumb these coaches are and how they deserve their fate)
45 = CMC
24 = Ricci
22 = Tremble
15 = Thomas
