Holy crap, Carolina actually won a game

Just like the sports odds suggested, I went into this game expecting a Carolina loss as is tradition. It was NOT an impressive display on the part of the Panthers but they did just enough to pull off their first win of the regular season to garner a season W/L ratio of 1-6 on the season. I guess a week off did them some good.

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_{I'm surprised they even had that graphic prepared for the jumbotron}

Things started out as you would expect with the Panthers basically rolling out the red carpet for an easy and early TD for the Texans and for the pessimists like me this looked like it was going to be more of the same of the Panthers getting rolled over by their opponents. The Houston Texans aren't exactly a powerhouse in the NFL with a records of 3-3 going into this, but the bookies still had them as 3 point favorites as well as -175 favorites on the money line straight bet.

After that first Texan TD, which occurred in the first 2 minutes of the second quarter no less, the Panthers somehow remembered how to play football. A series of completed passes on an impressive drive resulted in very rare territory for the Carolina side as they actually scored a TD on their own and not just from their usual rare intercepted pass returned for a touchdown. We were on cloud nine and then they actually missed the PAT (the kick that happens after a TD that almost ALWAYS is successful for all teams.)

Leave it to Carolina to always disappoint.

The real winners here was the Carolina defense, because for the rest of the game they kept the Texans out of the red zone. To be fair Houston basically did the same thing but I don't know if kicker Eddy Pineiro was doing his penance for missing that PAT because he absolutely nailed 3 field goals in the remainder of the game including one with just 3 seconds remaining that gave Carolina the win at the last second.

To give you an idea of how little faith the sports world has in Carolina have a look at this real time win prediction that is updated throughout the game

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Even when Carolina was ahead in throughout all of the 3rd quarter, the oddsmakers were still predicting that Carolina would screw it up... which is something they have a bad habit of doing. It wasn't until the final moments of the 4th quarter that the AI or whoever it is that makes these things did the odds actually turn into Carolina predicted victory.

Pre-game bets certainly reflected the lack of faith that NFL fans have in the Panthers and honestly, had I bet on this game I would been putting my money on the Texans as well.

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Something bad that was seen on the field and is a sign of things to come in the future was the amount of big hits that Carolina QB Bryce Young was taking even when he managed to complete passes. He was sacked, pretty brutally, 5 times in this game and as I have mentioned before, Bryce is not a big guy in comparison to other QB's and certainly not compared to the average defensive lineman. These hits are going to take a toll on him and I fully expect him to be plagued with injuries very soon, it could even be this year.

The Carolina offensive line needs to do a much better job of protecting him because it seems like on virtually every snap he has to scramble in order to prevent having a helmet-rattling hit put on him. No QB can take this sort of abuse for a very long period of time and especially not a guy that probably weighs less than your average friend at the bar does.

So I guess you could say that I am happy that the Panthers finally pulled off a win but my pessimism remains the same and I fully expect that the rest of the season will be loss after loss after loss. The next two weeks will be very telling because they will face off against the Indianapolis Colts followed by the Chicago Bears and these two teams are regarded as being rather sub-par as well. However, the Panthers have the worst record of any team in the NFL at the moment, and will certainly be the underdogs going into both of these games. This is well-deserved also.

Carolina fans, enjoy your W. Now let's get back to presuming that the rest of the season will be depressing as I predict this will be our only moment of glory for the entire season.