Carolina Panthers are sneakiest team in NFL after four weeks

The Carolina Panthers are surprising people this season after starting 2-2.

Not many people gave the Carolina Panthers much of a chance in the 2020 season and it’s not hard to see why. They have a first-year head coach in Matt Rhule, who left his job at Baylor to come to the NFL and coach the Panthers. They said goodbye to both Cam Newton and Greg Olsen while also losing Luke Kuechly to retirement.

The only true, proven threat the Panthers had in 2020 was Christian McCaffrey and, if you had told people that he’d be injured after the second game of the season, most would have said the Panthers would have a hard time winning games. But that hasn’t been the case at all.

Teddy Bridgewater signed with Carolina prior to this season and has done well for them as their quarterback through four games. Offense hasn’t been hard to come by for the Panthers an,d while the defense looked shaky early on, they’ve rebounded in recent weeks to look like a decent unit and one that could deal teams fits.

While the Panthers started off 0-2, they made a game of it against the Raiders in Week 1 with that game going back and forth between the two and the Raiders eventually winning it 34-30. Both defenses were suspect that week but it was Week 1 after having no preseason games nor a full load of offseason activities.

Carolina couldn’t handle the Bucs’ high-flying offense in Week 2, but they did score 17 points and lost 31-17, which isn’t as bad as some might have saw that score being when it was all said and done.

The Carolina Panthers are much more dangerous than expected so far.

That was the last time Carolina recorded a loss, however, as they’re currently riding a two-game win streak and are tied with the New Orleans Saints for second place in the NFC South. Who would have thought that’d be a possibility?

Yes, it’s still early, but the Panthers defeated both the Chargers and the Cardinals in back to back weeks. The Cardinals win in particular was an impressive one, as Arizona had been dubbed as a dark horse playoff contender this year and was playing well early on. But the Panthers put 31 points on them and did so without McCaffrey in the fold.

Part of why the Panthers have been able to stay in all of these games is because of Bridgewater being the quarterback. He played well for the Saints last year when Drew Brees went down for five games and led them to a 5-0 record during that time.

He’s a solid quarterback, who also doesn’t make many mistakes and when McCaffrey went down, he continued to show that he could lead this Carolina offense.

While we’re only four games into the season and Carolina has some tough games ahead of them on their schedule, it’s hard to argue that they’ve been a pleasant surprise so far and they very well could be a trap game for a lot of those tougher teams down the stretch.

Don’t sleep on the Carolina Panthers, folks.