This week on a Happy half Hour. I know it sounds like a cop out or sounds like the easiest thing to say, but sometimes the best thing to do with one that gets off the rails like that one did is just process tape, go through the talking points on Monday, learn the lessons everybody except their role in what went wrong. Keep it moving.
That's the how it.
It's time for the Happy half Hour with your friends. Darren Ghant and Cassidy Hill. Hello, friends, and welcome to the Happy half Hour. And I swear to God it's going to be happy at some point eventually. But right it has to be. It's right there in the title. I think we're contractually obligated. We're also contractually obligated to say. The Happy half Hours presented by Southern Star, an official bourbon partner of the Carolina Panthers, celebrate the spirit of
the Carolinas. That makes you happy or you know, maybe drown your sorrows, whatever works. That was a week.
Huh.
That was something.
It was Uh, we're both so Southern that we immediately responded with that was something.
Uh huh. That was something. Bless it's heart. It was a real thing that just happened to us. It was, uh, we are not going to spend all that much time dwelling on that thing. And it's almost like you can't even call it by name. But yeah, that started about his own which will be named. Yeah. I mean it started out bad and it kept getting worse and worse, and it did it in a hurry, and you know,
it's one of those things. It I think because there was so much new We talked about this in the mailbag a couple of weeks ago, because there were so much new new GM, new coach, you know, forty percent of the roster, you know, people in jobs they've never had before. It's a short step from new to hope. And because that had been created by all these fresh faces and all these new people and all these exciting developments.
You know, when a fourty seventy ten game lands in your lap, and it lands in a hurry, you know, it's seventeen nothing after the first quarter, ten nothing after three minutes, you know, then people are reeling. And I think it's because of the expectations and because it was so out of line with everything everybody was kind of expecting to see from a new and improved offense that it just kind of rattled a lot of people.
Yeah, that's a great point, because, I mean, as you said, all of a sudden, it was seventeen nothing. They were drinking from a fire hose a little bit. And you know, you hear coaches say you just got to take it one play at a time, one play at a time, But when you're down seventeen nothing in the blink of an eye, you really can't take it one play at
a time. You lose a lot of your run game when you get down that quick, that early, and a lot of this offense is sort of predicated on the run game being able to open things up a little bit for Bryce, and you know, when you're the defense and you get down that early, I mean, they were on the field for my goodness. I want to say it was not quite double the amount of plays, but it was. It was almost a full quarter more than
the offense was. Defense was on the field for thirty six minutes and thirty nine seconds versus offense, which was twenty three minutes. Yep. That's almost a full extra quarter of football field.
And one of the things we've talked about over and over in this space for the last two or three years, it seems like is when it happens like that, usually it's one side of the ball. The good news about this one was it was every side of the all the you know, the offense obviously struggled to move. Bryce turned it over a couple of times. Jonathan Mingo fumbles. Defense gives up one hundred and eighty on the ground to a team that we didn't think was going to
be a dominant running team this season. Special teams gets a plot block, some big returns. Now Johnny Hecker's on the injury report, and we'll see how that goes the rest of the week. But this thing got sideways fast. And I like to say once avalanches start going downhill, they very seldom stop and turn around and go back up. And it just kind of kept going that way the whole day, and it was the whole thing. It was systemic. It was all three phases, as the football people like to say.
Jordan Matthews made I thought an interesting point, which I'll be honest, if anyone else had made it, I probably would have scoffed. But Jordan Matthews has been around a long time and he's a very smart man, so I listened when he says stuff, and he said, all three phases are walking around here with egg on their face.
And it almost makes it a little easier to move forward because you don't have anybody at all that's walking in here with their head held hide and saying, well, I did my job where I messed up, because then you get a little bit of okay, now this person's moving forward to this person's not, and it just creates at tension. He said, everybody needs to move forward together because we all showed badly.
Yeahly, I mean. And again we've seen it in the last couple of years cases where the defense can say, hey, we're doing our part. We're trying to hold up our end when the offense can't move the ball and we were out there all day. This stuff's going to happen. That's been a thing, whether anybody said it out loud or not, that is a real thing. And this time nobody can point fingers at anybody because it was all bad. And so one of the things that thinks come through
in the last couple of days. And you know, I sort of when I'm trying to get big picture perspective on things, there's certain people I like to talk to, including Jake Gloom and Luke Keigley, because they've been around and they've seen some things. And I was talking to Luke the other day, as you can read on Panthers dot com, and I said, Luke, what's that plane ride
home like when you take one like that? Because Luke was a part of a fifty one thirteen beating at San Francisco that was an even worse beating and an even longer flight home. And Luke, in his very Luke Keighley way, said well, you know, I'd sit there and I talked to Colin Jones for a little bit, and me and Khalil would talk, and then I'd wander up to the front of the plane talk to JJ and DA and Greg the boys, and Cam's usually taking a
nap by that point. So then I would come back and I would sit down in my seat, and you know, eats my ice cream as.
One does as one does, and I mean I also draw my sorrows in ice cream.
Lukey c Yeah. So Luke, he's just like the rest of us. But I think his greater point was you have to recognize that this was a bad one, but it was one and especially now that it's one of seventeen instead of one and sixteen as it was a lot of the time when Luke was playing. You kind of have to compartmentalize the whole thing and turn it off. And Luke's point was, you don't freak out about it
on Sunday night because you can't get ahead. You come in Monday, you look at film, you take what you can learn from the film, you put it in the rear view mirror. You show up to practice on Wednesday. You practice that getting the things better that you learned
about on Monday, and then everything's forward. And so I know it sounds like cop out or sounds like the easiest thing to say, but sometimes the best thing to do with one that gets off the rails like that one did is just process the tape, go through the talking points on Monday, learn the lessons everybody except their role in what went wrong.
And keep it moving and don't let it beat you twice yep.
Because that's the thing that's important is you've got a serious opponent coming in this weekend. After giving up one ad on the ground against the Saints. Oh congratulations, here's a Jim harball team. Guess what they're going to try to do.
Run it straight down off the throat, and.
That is the way they're built. They've got Bradley Boseman in the middle of the line, so he's the guy people here know well. And they're serious about straight ahead running in a way that we have seen before. So it's definitely something they've got to get buttoned up in a hurry. And oh, by the way, you've got to
get it buttoned up without Derek Brown. And I think that's the thing that's probably as problematic as any because there can be some emotional carry over there, because as Dave Canalis said the other day, it's not just replacing one guy, it's replacing that guy.
You look at this game and regardless of the time of the score, it's pat or it's field goal, and Derek is rushing with full effort the whole time. It's the spirit of what we want to be about with the finish.
And I mean, that's it. Derek is more than just a really good football player. He's the guy who's out there leading all the lines, running sprints before practice and OTAs. He's the guy showing up and doing extra He's the guy who you know, just got a one hundred million dollar contract this offseason, but he doesn't act like it. He's still Derek. He's still wandering around looking the same as he looked before he got the big contract and working the same way he worked before he got the contract.
And honestly, that's why you get contracts like that by being that player who works that way. So it's been it's been tough at an emotional level for these guys too.
I think the biggest thing that you have to do there, Darren, is understand that essentially you can't replace Derek Brown. You're just going to have to make up for his absence. And I think there's a difference in that mindset because if you're trying to replace Derek Brown, you're asking people to do things that aren't necessarily in their wheelhouse, and so it's not going to look the same. But Okay, how can we make what it is going to look
like work? And that's going to take some stepping up from Shy Tunnel, from Mashawn Robinson, everybody in that front seven, you know, do they play the linebackers closer to the line just to kind of help with some of those run fits. Those run fits especially, are going to be something that they have to be really really sharp on.
This week.
Nick Scott told us yesterday he said, you know, the thing with the Chargers in their run game is essentially they can lull you to sleep, because he said, you know, they were averaging two point five yards of pop for most of that game, and all of a sudden in the fourth quarter they break off two fifty plus yard runs and they really start running down their throat from that point, he said, So, you know, we're just we've got to be super super disciplined in our run fits,
not get bored, and not try to force anything. Don't try to chase a tackle for loss, you know, because then if you're chasing a tackle for loss and they get by you, JK. Dobbins is gone.
Yeah, you know. And one of the things that people who say football words like to say is you got to play run defense with all eleven. You know what, as good class to the ball, as good as that one guy is, you know, he can be as good as he wants to be. But if one other part breaks down, that's when you see runs getting gashed down the field. To your point, cast and so you can play sound run defense with people who don't have to be Derek Brown, but everybody's got to be buttoned up.
It cuts into your margin of era obviously, and you know you're taking one of the best run defenders in the entire NFL out of the lineup for the next seventeen weeks. And now you've got to figure it out. And so they brought in Deshaun Williams to the practice squad this week. Could see him elevated this week, depends on how ready to go he is. But they've got
to count on a Shawn. They've got to count on Shy Tuttle and Nick Thurman and Lebrin Ray and Jaden Peevie because it has to be a collective thing and it's not just those front line guys. I mean, the linebackers are going to play a big role in this, and I believe that that was one of the biggest problems last year. But when the run defense struggled, you didn't have Shaq Thompson in the middle after Week two, and they were trying to turn Frankie Luvu into something
he was not. They were trying to figure out how to get defenses called without you know, their longtime captain oldhead, you know, provider of veteran wisdom, whatever you want to say, Shaq. And it was a mess. But now Shaq's back. There's a Josie Jewel there. I believe even though Trevin Wallace didn't get a defensive snap in last week, we are going to see more and more of him as the season goes along, just because I think you have to
mix some things up. I think, you know, it's not alike for like comparison to say he's like Frankie Luvu, because very few people are like Frankie Luvu. But I think Wileace has the opportunity to be that kind of wild card type player on defense where you can put him in a lot of different spots. And they didn't do that last week. But I think his season goes on, it's just going to be natural that you start to see more and more of that guy as they try to come up with some answers on defense.
A little he plays a little bit with his hair on fire too. Yeah, he actually doesn't have much hair because he keeps his shaved close. But what he does have, he plays with it on fire. We talked to we will talk to Everro today and I'm sure he's not going to give away his game plan, but I am interested to hear what he has to say about you know, could they go a little heavier in that front or you know, I can't imagine he would ever play like a fifty hunder or anything, but you know, just kind.
Of look load saying football words.
I've picked up a few things here and there, but like, I can't imagine they would do that. But you know, do you do you lean that way a little bit here and there just because you don't have Derek Brown there who could take on double teams, who could who could recolle Ligne and maybe just kind of replace him with more than one body.
Yeah, it's going to be a challenge, There's no doubt about that. And and that's the thing. I mean, it's you've got to figure out some answers. And the good news is that EJ has proven over the last couple of years, whether it was his time in Denver his experience here, if there's anything the guy has proven himself capable of doing, it's adjusting. Yeah, I mean, he he had a lot of injuries in Denver. You know, they traded his best pass rush in the middle of the
season a couple of years ago. Things have happened around him that's forced him to adjust, and he's done a pretty good job of adjusting.
So I just secretly love this sort of stuff. I mean, you don't not you don't love an injury though, don't say that, but you love the challenge of it.
Yeah, I mean they tend to enjoy things that make it harder because then it's like, all right, what can we come up with? What can I scheme up to fix this? I mean, you know, if you had a dozen Derek Browns, defense would be easy.
Right, get a flag for having twelve men on the field, but still.
One of them would be one of them. One of them would always be in charge of making sure there's eleven because there you get Eric's conscientious that way. But yeah, it's it's going to be a challenge. It's going to be a challenge in all phases. But that's both sides of the ball. I mean, we talked a little bit about the special teams. They're breaking in a lot of new people this week. You know, Lonnie Johnson, Mike Boone get their call ups to the fifty three after being
practice squaad promotions a week ago. So those two are key parts to what Tracy Smith's trying to put together in the Special team's room. It's it's constant change on that side of the ball anyway, especially with the roster turnover here lately. In talking of all those new people in new roles, you know, it gets magnified for special teams because everything is geared toward putting your best eleven
on the field offense and defense. Special teams coaches have been making soup out of, you know, whatever's left over in the fridge for years, and Tracy Smith's jobs even more ambitious. I don't know if that's the right word for it. Complicated is probably a better word, because you know, they did claim six guys off waivers in week one. They are shuffling guys in and out already this season, so having guys like Lonnie, having guys like Mike Boone
can have a stabilizing effect on that. But it's going to take some time for some of that stuff to get settled down. Because they did they allowed some big returns the other week there. You know, it just wasn't a tight operation. But I don't know that you can fairly assume a tight operation, given the circumstances they've got to work with.
I'm curious too, how much of those big returns had to do with this really being the first time. Know greented people on special teams were playing in the preseason, but this is the first time you're really seeing teams pull out what they're going to do with this new kickoff rule. I'm curious as the season goes on if we'll see some of that get tightened up, not just here but around the league.
Yeah, things tend to regress to the mean, so to speak. I think that was Archimedes law or Murphy's I don't know. That was part of the pre show meeting the show within the show here at the happy half hour.
I tried too hard. I philosophy too close to the sign. Murphy's law is a basic one. I tried to get fancy.
Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna discuss full crumbs on next week half a half hour. That's really gonna goose the ratings.
It'll be a bonanza, which philosopher said, give me a full Groman, I can move the world.
That was archamedie. Is it really there?
You go? Okay?
So it's uh might have been more of a mathematician than a philosopher. But anyway, so we uh, we will have a lot to talk about next week. I mean that that match up against Chargers is going to be so curious because there's going to be a lot of expectation. I mean, if there was anything good about that game last week, it was that it was in another place and the home fans didn't have to endure that one.
So I think there's going to be a lot of anticipation when people come into Bank of America Stadium on Sunday looking at the forecast. Could be a little damp, oh, could be a little messy, could be And you know, frankly, I think that kind of plays into the game because
you know, a Jim harball team wants to run. You know that the Carolina Panthers would prefer to run, and especially in the aftermath of that game last week, I think they're going to want to take some stuff off Bryce's plate, make it easier for him, allow him to settle in. I mean, have that steady diet. You know, when the first pass of the game, first play of the game gets picked off, you're behind the eight ball immediately,
and it's hard to run with intent. It's hard to run stubbornly, as Dave Canalis likes to say, when you're down ten oh in the first three minutes of the game. So give us some wet conditions, give us two teams that want to run the ball. Let's play a good two hour and forty five minute football game and see what happens.
If that first past had not been picked off, that I would have loved that opener, because you come out first play of the new season, new head coach, yard lay caller. Let's throw it down there, Let's let's light a fire. But then, of course it got dast very quickly. You know, yeap, Hindsight's twenty.
But as the wise men Luke Keighley and our comedies tell us, it is one game. Let's eat some mike and move on. So anyway, what else we got this week and week two? We gotta we have to revisit our our newest happy half hour tradition, the happy half hour jukebox. H I listened to your girl, Taylor Swift there, what was the name of that song? Right where you left, right where you left me? Yeah, she's complicated that one. Huh, Right,
that's a that's a lot. I am not a big consumer of the Taylor Swift product, as you may be aware. And I listened to that three or four times through on a couple of different occasions last week, and Yeah, she's she's got some issues unpacked there, doesn't she?
That one. I think that's why I like that one too, because I mean, she does this in a lot of her songs, but that one's a really good example where she just like takes a first breath, starts in, and then doesn't let up until the song is over.
Yeah, she opened a vein there and just led all over the place. It was the one thing I do enjoy about her. And I was kind of aware of this in a you know, atmospheric way without diving deeply into her catalog. She is obviously an incredible writer, right, you know.
And that's what you know. One of my cousins is a very very talented musician. That's what he went to school for. It's what he does. And he likes to post these tiktoks with where he like rewrites the music to pre existing songs, and he did our Taylor slipt on this week, and I kind of made a joke on it like, it just proves that she can write
a song that can go in any genre. All these musicians that follow him wanted to come after me and be like, anybody can write a four chord progression, and I'm like, I don't really care about the music part of it. I'm a writer.
Yeah, I want to know.
I want a lyric that's going to reach into my heart and squeeze good.
Yeah, And it did that that song. Good songs are usually either stories or poems, and that one was a poem because it was it was tight, it was evocative, and yeah, I was kind of I wanted to give her a hug at the end of that song because it's like, it's gonna be okay, Tita, we gonna get through this and be okay. I handed you a story song you did.
Very much a story. A song that I had heard before.
Me Jo and Lefty, written by Towns van Zant, popularized by Willie Nilson and Merle Hacker.
The Willie Nelson and Merle Hagger version is the version that I've grown up listening to. So it threw me for a loop a little bit the first time it got to the chorus, and that all the Feeder, and it wasn't the voice I was used to hearing that in And so then I like had to start the song over because I'm like, Okay, I need to listen to this with like a fresh mind. But beautiful song, I like I said, it's one of those songs that I've known for a long time, so it's just like
kind of lived in my conscious. But since I was purposely like listening to it a little closely this week, or more closely than normal, I really started to pay attention. Did Lefty sell him out? And that's how Pancho got killed? Like? Is that the story?
Is that what happened?
That did he sell him out? And that's how he got the money to move to Ohio?
You know, I mean, some people just do what they have to do, and that what it says in the song. So it's it is quite a journey that one. Now, yeah, you listen to Towns van Zant. Did you check out any of the alternate versions?
I suggest I saved the other one, you said, but I kind of kept listening to the Towns Vanzana because the one that I clicked. I didn't even realize that at first, but it ended up being a live version, and I love a good live version of a of a storytelling song. You know, it's like one of those I love that the Eagles have never recorded Seven Bridges Road in a studio, they only do it live.
Yeah, that's probably for the best. It's Yeah, that is one of my favorite songs of all time, of all categories, and I love it when people from different backgrounds do it because when you hear you know and again Townsvan's Ant's one of the great songwriters of American history. He has influenced so many people that I love listening to. And when you hear his songs performed by an Emmy
Lou Harris, it takes on a different tone. When you hear it performed by an English punk rock singerrate Frank Turner, it goes a different way. So, I mean, that's what I love is when you take a song like that that is timeless and give it about three or four different treatments, you hear something different every time.
You know, what it made me think of is actually another Willie Nelsons song. And so I've been walking around for the past three or four days singing there were seven Spanish Angels.
Yeah, there's never a bad time for Willie. So all right, what do you got for me this week? What is my assignment? What am I listening to?
I went back and forth a lot because I was like, do I want to stray from Taylor? Do I want to stay with Taylor? And then I was like if I do, what kind of what genre of Taylor? Do we want to stay in? You, like you said, are a story teller at heart, like myself, So I think we're going to stay in that vein hit me and go with Ivy Ivy.
All right, I will listen to Ivy a few times this week and report back to you. I was, I had probably planned on giving you something else, but just to kind of bring up, I went to see one of my favorite bands, Shovels and Rope last night at the Neighborhood Theater. An incredible show. But as an old I would like to suggest that we start having concerts at like six o'clock.
You know, these like nine o'clock concert things that.
Started at nine on a weeknight or a little tough for an old cat like me. But Shelson Rope always give good show. They did not play this last night, and it's kind of an off the menu sort of hit. But they have a song called mary Anne and One Eyed Dan love it and if that don't get you off to a good start, nothing will. It's it's a little more upbeat than what I made you listen to and Poncho and Lefty last week. So yeah, that's great.
Ivy's not more upbeat, So have fun? Would that?
There you go? Well, let's just send ourselves into a deep dark depression. No way, we did that already. This was supposed to be the Happy half Hour. That's why I gave you a little something to go out on that's got a little more pep in your step. So listen. As Luke Keigley says, it's one week, let's eat some ice cream, move forward and we will see you next week on the Happy half Hour.
Thanky