The Carolina Panthers’ 2026 season opener turned into a shootout they couldn’t survive, and one of their newest defenders wasted no time calling it what it was.
After Carolina fell 59-37 to the Chicago Bears on Sunday, edge rusher Jaelan Phillips described the outing as “embarrassing.” The Panthers did plenty on offense, jumping out to a 7-0 lead and later battling back to tie the game twice. They scored five touchdowns against Chicago’s defense and finished with 37 points.
None of that covered for what happened on the other side of the ball. Carolina’s defense got lit up, and the 59 points allowed drew plenty of heat from fans and analysts around the league.
Phillips didn’t try to soften it.
“Many times, yeah, especially towards the end,” Phillips said. “I mean, 59 is an ugly, ugly score to put up as a defense, so it’s embarrassing.
But at the end of the day, you know, I do think that it’s a good opportunity for us. It’s a critical moment in the sense that, you know, getting beat this badly as a defense is really going to define us moving forward in terms of the urgency that we have to make corrections and to get better, so you know it’s all good, man.”
For all the mess around him, Phillips did show up as one of Carolina’s brighter defensive spots. He recorded a sack and added a few pressures, which is exactly why the Panthers brought him in.
The problem is, one strong individual performance didn’t come close to fixing the bigger picture on a day when Carolina’s defense had no answer.
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