Panthers' Crumbling Defense Leaves Door Wide-Open in NFC South

Last year, the Carolina Panthers strolled to an NFC South title with a seven-game lead over the Atlanta Falcons. This year, sitting with a 1-3 record after four weeks of play, they will face an uphill battle just to get into the playoffs.

Now two full games behind Atlanta, with the Falcons holding a head-to-head tiebreaker, we need to reassess the NFC champions' chances of getting into the playoffs. According to Odds Shark, Carolina opened up as +850 (bet $100 to win $850) favorites to win February's Super Bowl, tied with the New England Patriots atop the NFL.

As of now, you can find the Panthers as low as +1600, almost double the value after just a month of play, which would have ranked the squad as the ninth-most likely team to win the big game. That's telling, as Vegas tends to adjust slower than public perception.

The questions now are: 1) Why is Carolina losing? And 2) Is it something that can be adjusted midseason?

The answer to the first part of that conundrum is simple: The defense doesn't look the same. One of the better defenses of 2015, Carolina is now 28th in the league in term of points allowed per game as of Sunday night.

In four games this year, the Panthers have already allowed 27 or more points twice. Last season, over 16 games, they only allowed opponents to score 27 or more points just three times.

Those games were to quarterbacks Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees and Eli Manning, who all have championships under their belts. Carolina's first four weeks of the 2016 season featured passing from Trevor Siemian, Blaine Gabbert, Sam Bradford and Matt Ryan, who have a combined zero Super Bowl rings.

Allowing a 29.5-point average to that group of quarterbacks is problematic moving forward, as they still have Brees twice, Carson Palmer, Derek Carr, Russell Wilson, Philip Rivers and Ryan on their schedule, established quarterbacks who lead some of the best passing offenses in the NFL.

Over four games, Carolina has forced just five interceptions and nine sacks, a worse production pace than its 2015 season. What might be the most telling, though, is how many sacks its starting 4-3 defensive linemen have through four weeks: two.

The rate at which the Panthers are able to get home on pass rushes with their starting line is worse than defensive tackle Kawann Short's production in 2015 by itself, as he was able to average more than a sack every other game on his way to his breakout 11-sack season.

A lot of the Panthers' assets on the defensive side of the ball were spent on adding depth to their defensive tackle position, as starters Short and Star Lotulelei enter the end of their deals. In response, Carolina hedged their contracts by adding former Falcon Paul Soliai on a two-year, $7 million deal and drafting Louisiana Tech's Vernon Butler in the first round.

Here's the problem: The Panthers had massive holes at cornerback and defensive end heading into the draft.

Last season, defensive end Jared Allen, a future Hall of Famer, was acquired from the 0-3 Chicago Bears in late September, leading to a 12-start season on the edge in Carolina. Allen retired at the end of the year, ripping off the bandage that the Panthers had applied to head coach Ron Rivera's defense.

The edge defenders in Carolina are Charles Johnson, Kony Ealy, Mario Addison, Lavar Edwards and Larry Webster, far from the Von Miller, DeMarcus Ware, Shane Ray and Shaquil Barrett unit that Denver steamrolled Cam Newton with in last year's Super Bowl and Week 1's rematch.

To put their talent into perspective, Johnson, a 30-year-old, signed a one-year, $2 million contract this past spring, making him the 41st-highest-paid defensive end in the league this season, per Spotrac—and he's the team's primary pass-rusher. Edwards was waived by the Buffalo Bills two weeks ago, and Webster was just activated off of the practice squad this past week.

In that group, Edwards and Addison are the only ends to record a sack, a pair between the two. There are 29 players in the NFL who have more sacks than the Panthers' primary pass-rushing unit. That's where their problems stem from.

With Short on fire last season and Newton forcing teams to play from behind, Rivera's squad was able to hold up in a two-high safety defense. With those two safeties playing 10 to 15 yards off the line of scrimmage, it's hard to get them into their run fits quickly, but with the Panthers' front seven, they were able to hold up well against the run while the safety duo made the lives of their cornerbacks easier.

That's one reason why Carolina must have felt like allowing All-Pro cornerback Josh Norman to walk this offseason was a solid decision, as he was in some ways a product of the Panthers defense. No one expected the front seven would regress so quickly, especially in the pass-rushing department.

Now, with the extremely weak pressure unit, two of the team's top cornerbacks are rookies. Last year, James Bradberry was playing for Samford, an FCS school. The other first-year defensive back is Daryl Worley, who ran a 4.64-second 40-yard dash at the combine in Indianapolis, which, according to Mock Draftable, is in the seventh percentile for cornerbacks.

There is the problem. If you're going to play two safeties far off the line of scrimmage, you'll be at a disadvantage in the running game, and if your pass rush can't get home, it doesn't matter how good your defensive backs are in zone coverage.

The answer to the Panthers' pressure problem is to send more blitzes against the pass, but they have liabilities at cornerback that can't hold up in man coverage either. This is the rock and the hard place that Carolina found themselves between as Falcons receiver Julio Jones racked up 300 receiving yards in a 48-33 Atlanta win on Sunday.

Be it backed up in his end zone or in long-yardage situations, Ryan never looked uncomfortable in the pocket, throwing lasers to his receivers late in downs. If his man wasn't open, he waited for the Panthers' edge defenders to run wide, slow arches and then stepped up through the vacant space they left.

The team simply had no answer for Jones, who at the end of Ryan's drops could have as much as a five-yard cushion on his cornerback in man coverage.

The biggest moment of disappointment for Carolina was when Atlanta was in a 3rd-and-17 situation. They only sent three receivers out on routes past the line of scrimmage, with Carolina dropping seven defenders into coverage, but Ryan was able to complete a pass of over 50 air yards late in the down with little to no pocket movement needed.

The Panthers had the numbers to shut down that play, but they simply don't have the horses to stop a runny nose against some of the NFL's better passing offenses. You can point to youth at defensive back, but unless some of those cornerbacks shave off two-tenths from a 40 time with age, teams will continue to test them deep, plus Carolina isn't exactly youthful at pass-rushing positions.

Some of the mistakes Carolina made, like leaving a tight end open by more than 10 yards, can come down to mental lapses, but if you think Ryan's 503 passing yards all came off of blown coverages and not blown tires, you're mistaken.

Even in the ground game the Panthers lack the interior penetration from Short and Lotulelei that they once had, allowing for the easy climbing to their linebackers, who had previously been mentioned among the best in the NFL. In the end, Carolina's scheme worked with better execution, but with the regression of the defensive line and the defensive backfield, they're going to struggle through the remainder of the 2016 season.

As long as they lack some type of pass-rushing force that sets a timer in a quarterback's head, there's nothing this squad can do to keep up with a high-flying offense from a defensive perspective. If you're getting burned with a four-man zone shell over the top of an offense, there's not much more you can do from a schematic standpoint.

The Falcons have a two-game lead over everyone in the NFC South, with direct tiebreakers over both the New Orleans Saints and the Panthers. Along with Carolina, New Orleans and Tampa Bay also sit at 1-3 on the season.

Heading into the New York Giants' matchup against the Minnesota Vikings on Monday Night Football, there are eight NFC teams with just one loss, meaning that the Panthers' path to winning the South is as easy as getting into the musical chairs of the wild-card race at this point.

The problem in Carolina isn't one which revolves around coaching, but personnel. If this Panthers defense turns around, it almost surely will come via Short, Lotulelei, Ealy and Johnson stepping up as the squad heads into autumn.

If not, Carolina has as good of a shot as any of the other NFC South teams to finish last in the division this season.