Coming off back-to-back ugly losses, the Panthers are back in Charlotte with a brutal assignment in front of them. Denver comes to Bank of America Stadium for the first time since 2022, and the Broncos arrive tied for the most wins in the AFC at 6-2 entering Week 9.
Carolina, meanwhile, sits at 3-4 and looks dangerously close to unraveling. The biggest problem has been up front, where Bryce Young has spent much of the season under siege behind an offensive line that has struggled to hold up.
That’s why Sunday feels like a long shot for the Panthers - but not an impossible one. If Carolina is going to pull off one of the weekend’s bigger upsets, it has to get three things right.
First, the Panthers have to do something different with the offensive line. If they roll out the same starting five, that’s bad news for Young. Carolina has given up the fourth-most pressures and 23 sacks in seven games, and it’s also missing one of its better pieces in Taylor Moton.
That’s a dangerous setup against a Denver front that knows how to get after the quarterback. The Broncos rank eighth in team pressure rate, and Nik Bonitto has been one of the league’s most disruptive rushers, sitting sixth in pass-rush win rate.
Walker and Luke Fortner have been especially rough spots. Both lead their positions in pressures allowed, with Walker giving up 31 and Fortner 18. Against a defense built to punish shaky protection, Carolina may have no choice but to shake things up.
That’s where Monroe Freeling and Sam Hecht come into the picture. The Panthers need to see what they have at left tackle in Freeling, who has played right tackle all season but was drafted for the work he did at left tackle at Georgia.
At center, Hecht is another option worth testing. Carolina took him in the fifth round, and at Kansas State he logged more than 850 pass-blocking snaps without allowing a sack.
The NFL is a different world, but Fortner has already been the worst pass-blocking center in the league, so the bar is not exactly high.
The other major issue is keeping Bo Nix from turning the game into a scramble drill. If he gets outside the pocket and starts making plays with his legs or off schedule, that’s a bad sign for Carolina. The Panthers have already had a hard time stopping the run, and if Nix gets comfortable early, it could snowball fast.
Jaelan Phillips won’t be available again, so Carolina has to find another way to rattle Nix. Devin Lloyd and Bobby Okereke both have shown they can be disruptive blitzers, and that may be the best route to forcing the Broncos quarterback into mistakes.
And while Denver does have Patrick Surtain II patrolling the secondary, this pass defense has shown cracks. The Broncos are 20th in passing yards allowed per game at 227 and 25th in total pass yards allowed this season. That opens a window for Young, who before Week 7 led the league in passing yards per game.
If Carolina can give him time, he has to cash in. Young has shown he can carve up defenses with a clean pocket, and that has to be the plan again on Sunday.
In Other News...
Panthers May Finally Shake Up The Line In Front Of Bryce Young
Carolinas protection issues have become impossible to ignore, and Dave Canales said the team is weighing changes up front after a rough stretch for the offensive line. The Panthers have been forced to absorb more pressure than any team in the league at multiple spots along the line, a problem that has made life far more difficult for Bryce Young and the offense as a whole.
One possible answer is Brady Christensen, who was designated to return from a hamstring injury and has been a full participant in recent practices. The sixth-year veteran has not yet made his regular-season debut, but his return gives Carolina another option as it tries to stabilize a unit that has struggled to hold up and may be due for a shakeup soon. [Read more 🡒]
Panthers Trade Deadline Debate Comes Down To One Tough Decision
The trade deadline has a way of forcing front offices to choose between urgency and patience, and for the Panthers, the conversation is already centered on where the biggest upgrade might come from. Cornerback and edge rusher remain the obvious areas to watch, which is why the names floating around the league have such different levels of appeal. Some potential targets fit the roster need cleanly, while others are tied up by cost, team control or simple trade logic that makes them far less realistic than they sound on paper.
Riq Woolen, Josh Downs, Damien Lewis, Josh Sweat and Vita Vea all surface for different reasons, but not every fit is created equal. Connections matter, positional value matters and so does the reality of whether another team would even consider moving a player the Panthers could use right now. For Carolina, the real challenge is sorting through the plausible options from the long shots, because the deadline usually rewards the team that knows when to push and when to walk away. [Read more 🡒]
Panthers Head Into Denver Seriously Shorthanded On Both Sides
The Panthers are heading into Sundays trip to Denver with a thinner roster than theyd like, and the injury list cuts across both the front seven and the offensive line. Outside linebacker Jaelan Phillips, guard Damien Lewis, linebacker Bobby Okereke and cornerback Will Lee have all been ruled out for Week 9, leaving Carolina to patch together key spots against a Broncos team that will be looking to take advantage of the absences.
Phillips has already been dealing with a hamstring injury for the past three weeks, so his latest setback only adds to the uncertainty around a defense that has had to adjust on the fly. Okerekes status is notable for more than just the immediate game plan, given his background and contract history, and the Panthers now have to find answers without one of their more established pieces in the middle of the defense. [Read more 🡒]