Thursday Night Football Recap - CAR vs HOU

 

After watching some highlights and listening to some postgame coverage, I have decided that last night's action between the Panthers and Texans wasn't as boring a game as I thought. It was the radio broadcast that was boring. Jake Delhomme had some moments, but overall Mick Mixon, Jordan Gross, and Jim Szoke were utterly forgettable.

Another announcer who doesn't establish the down, distance, and circumstances of the game. He did have one particularly idiosyncratic thing he did though – before important offensive plays or after long stretches of not talking about the game at all, he would zoom in on some aspect of Sam Darnold's body language. The one that jumps out in my memory was something to the effect of, “Darnold steps up behind center. Licks his fingertips. Slicks the saliva around.”

What the fuck?

This was not a well-officiated game. There were too many penalties, and too many of them were too ticky-tack. After Darold's 33-yard “scamper” (I'm not sure which of the guys it was, they all had the same voice as far as I could differentiate), one of them says about the penalties: “Sometimes I wonder why we even love this game.”

The other guys loled. I loled.

Overall first impression of the Panther's radio broadcast: If you're not a Panthers fan, avoid it. Unless the opponent is somehow worse.

Christian McCaffrey's Injury Bug

There's much ado to be made about how often CMC is injured. Coaches say that a player's best ability is his availability, right? But how much of CMC's unavailability is overuse early in the season?

Dude had more than 30 touches on Sunday, then comes in and he's their workhorse on Thursday. Is CMC's hamstring indicative that he's not conditioning his body properly – or that Rhule and Co. need to cool it on his touches?

On the Around the NFL Thursday Night Recap, Gregg Rosenthal points out that there is a correlation between 30+ touches and an injury within the next three weeks. Evidently Derrick Henry is the exception to that rule – but how much of that is a dude just playing hurt? Cus he will have up and down weeks, as far as how healthy he looks.

The Panthers have other good backs. I get that CMC is a difference maker and good in pass pro, but you've got two or three other good backs. You'll hear people say, “Well, the offense is less dynamic when he's not in it.” Sure. But they don't need to score every play, and you have dynamic wideouts in Robby Anderson and DJ Moore. Hell, even the tight ends were making plays. I don't know. It wasn't all that long ago we were talking about Royce Freeman in the same glowing terms as CMC – it wasn't all that long ago that they were both lighting up Fantasy Leagues.

You'd think that having a two-headed backfield would be as easy as Dallas is making it look.

Davis Mills and the Houston Offense

This game is high on my rankings this weekend, and I'm not sure it will have dropped much. The real problem with this game is that once Houston stalled on a scoring drive, once they were forced to kick a field goal, the game felt over.

The playcalling in the first half was so conservative, it felt like by the time Carolina started heating up their pass rush, Mills wasn't heated up yet. But, boy, does he look good throwing on the run to his right. He's not Tyrod, and the running game didn't really help him out much – to say nothing of his offensive line – but he made the game interesting.

Honestly, I thought Mills made a pretty good case for keeping the job if Tyrod gets healthy in the next few weeks. Neither of them is the Savior. But Mills looked like a career backup – a guy who could easily transition into a placeholder-type starting Qb.

S-Darn looked like a veteran

And well he should have. What is this, year three? You see some chatter that there isn't much separating Darnold and Baker Mayfield right now in their play. And that's kind of how it should be.

The talk about Darnold coming out of college was that he was young and fumble prone. The fumbles showed up tonight (twice). But they're the same kind of fumbles that Lamar had two weeks ago and the same as the interceptions that killed Jameis Winston and the Saints last week, even Carson Wentz's ankles: he's trying to do too much. Just take the sack.

Live, as they say, to fight another down.

That was the biggest revelation to me as far as what makes TB12 TB12: he was talking, like a decade ago, about how he had to learn how to fall with a sack. How to take the loss without actually taking the punishment to his body.

Looking back, I have to give Tannehill credit where it's due: behind those terrible offensive lines, he took way too many sacks – but he took the sacks instead of forcing interceptions and giving up fumbles. Sure, he had plenty of those too. But fewer than Darnold and the other QBs I mentioned.

Darnold, though, you hear a lot of comparisons about him. So many people want to compare him to Andrew Luck. But, apparently, Luck actually was a phenom. Darnold reminds me of pre-Tomlin Big Ben. With a good running game and open targets to throw to downfield, he can use his speed and power to make things happen. Without help, though, he's just a developing prospect.

Alright! We'll see if anything else crosses my screen today that gets stuck in my teeth. Otherwise, thanks for stopping by – I'll see you tomorrow with my game rankings and predix.