The Carolina Panthers left Lincoln Financial Field with a 25-14 win over the Eagles, but the final score only told part of the story. Sunday was messy, physical and at times self-inflicted, yet Carolina still found a way to close it out against a banged-up Philadelphia team.
The biggest issue was discipline. The Panthers were flagged 13 times for a franchise-record 149 penalty yards, and that sloppiness kept the Eagles hanging around much longer than they should have. Head coach Dave Canales didn’t dance around it afterward.
"We have to clean that up," he told reporters. "We gotta do better with our hands, in different situations-particularly, if you're not at the point of attack for a play. We gotta be smarter, we gotta be cleaner with our screens, o-linemen down the field, all that."
Right guard Robert Hunt, who entered the day leading the team in penalties, was especially costly. He was hit with two ineligible man downfield penalties, one of the clearest examples of Carolina’s avoidable mistakes.
Philadelphia wasn’t spotless either, drawing 11 penalties of its own. But the Panthers’ lack of precision was still jarring in a game they seemed positioned to control more comfortably.
Even on a day when Bryce Young didn’t have his sharpest stuff, he still gave Carolina enough. The NFL’s leading passer completed 20 of 39 throws for 281 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions, while the offense converted just seven of 17 third-down chances. Still, Young delivered when it mattered most, hitting Tommy Tremble on a 19-yard touchdown to stretch the lead to 11 late in the fourth quarter.
That performance also kept a strong early-season run intact. Young has now opened the campaign with five straight games of at least 280 passing yards, a stretch that underscores how far he’s come as the face of the offense. Facing a tough Philadelphia defense likely had something to do with the uneven parts of his afternoon, but he still managed to finish the job.
The ground game belonged to Chuba Hubbard. With Jonathon Brooks on injured reserve, AJ Dillon out and Trevor Etienne just back from a tweaked ankle, Carolina leaned hard on Hubbard - and he handled the load. After a rough first half, he finished with 120 yards and a touchdown on 28 carries.
Over the last three weeks, Hubbard has piled up 324 rushing yards and three touchdowns on 67 carries. That’s a big bounce-back from a 2025 season in which he managed just 511 rushing yards and one touchdown across 15 games.
For the Panthers, this was the kind of win that showed both their toughness and their warts. They got the result, but the cleanup work is obvious.
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