It’s an interesting comparison in an off-season where everything went totally right for one team and totally wrong for the other.
The Panthers and Texans were in similar boats (Panthers were slightly better off it appeared) and approached the off-season very similarly.
(Focusing on offense)
The Texans drafted CJ Stroud without moving up and he is having an all-time great season and Tank Dell who is on pace for 1200 yards as a rookie and is a legit receiver. I’m free agency, they picked up Dalton Schultz who is on pace for 800 yards and is playing like a TE 1, Shaq Mason who is playing like a top 10 guard, and Devin Singletary who seems to have taken the RB1 position.
These moves legitimately moved the Texans up 15+ spots in the power rankings. An all-time great offseason (so far).
The Panthers spent a ton of capital on BY (jury still out but certainly wouldn’t be the top pick if there was a re-draft), drafted Mingo who has not been useful and Zavala who is currently the worst pass blocker in history lol. In Free Agency, they got Chark and Thielen (one good, one bad), Sanders who has been demoted to RB2 and Hurst who is a bad TE1 at best.
An all-time gross off-season.
This is why I always argue that:
- the GM is so much more important than the coach and the Panthers problems are basically all roster problems right now (can’t figure out if the coaching is any good with this terrible of a roster)
- the people pointing out “the Panthers were better last year with mostly the same roster so it must be coaching” or “nobody was saying the Texans were a good spot last year” are incorrect. It doesn’t take that many changes to make significant different. Each team made a handful of large moves and they worked out as well as possible for the Texans and as poorly as possible for the Panthers.
The Texans off-season made them 15+ spots better in the power rankings and the Panthers got 5+ spots worse (they were already fairly low to begin with). The bright side is that things can change quickly. The downside is the front office has not been promising.
Side note: I’m a Colts fan mainly and they actually went from terrible offseason to great offseason in back to back years that watched them fall probably ~20 spots in 2022 and the go back up 10+ spots in 2023 (depending on how AR pans out) just by failing at and then improving at QB, 1 WR spot, and two OL position.
I definitely agree with OP. I thought the Athletic Football show a week ago on Wednesday really had a fair critique on Texans and Panthers with Chase Daniel, who does some nice breakdowns on the Athletic Podcast each Wednesday as well NFL Media stuff.
He really felt that the film on open receivers was like night and day. Although the Texans did not sign any true speed guys, Schultz, N. Brown, and Dell knew how to at least give Stroud a clean window to throw the ball even if they were not “wide open”. With the Panthers, you can go through 10-12 offensive plays where except for Thielen no one is ever open. The same can be said about the pass blocking.
Regarding Reich, Daniel has worked with him for several seasons, and he always felt that he put together good game plans, but the Panthers roster really cannot run any of the offense the Reich generally called in Philadephia, San Deigo and Indy.
After hearing his explanation of Reich’s offense, I had less confidence in the entire front office, but I do feel that you need to give Reich a chance to turn the roster over.
Hope everyone enjoys the weekend.
Youtube link below
https://youtu.be/D4STgzftoCQ?si=5jfstY6q\_Utb3BJk