Panthers vs. Jaguars: Full Carolina Game Preview

The Carolina Panthers open their regular-season slate this Sunday, travelling down the coast to take on their fellow ’95 expansion franchise, the Jacksonville Jaguars.

While road trips always pose a difficult challenge for teams, the Panthers at least get a bit of a break by opening their slate against Jacksonville, who finished last season with a 3-13 record.  That’s the third-worst record of any of Carolina’s opponents this season, with only the Tennessee Titans and Tampa Bay Buccaneers finishing worse last season.

As a relatively soft opening foe, then, the Jaguars are the perfect first opponent if you’re a Panthers fan.  Carolina is still recovering from some injuries, with Charles Johnson and Star Lotulelei having missed the entire preseason slate.  Couple the lingering injuries with the general issues teams have getting started in the first couple weeks of the season, and it’s certainly preferable for the Panthers to open their slate against the Jaguars rather than, say, the Seahawks or Cowboys.

The Panthers were installed as 2.5-point favorites over Jacksonville, which ballooned up to 3 or 3.5 points later in the week, according to Odds Shark.  The Panthers were significantly better than the Jaguars were last season, so that’s appropriate. 

The Jaguars finished dead last in Football Outsiders’ 2014 DVOA, with the second-worst offense in football.  The Panthers were only 24th overall, but had risen to 12th place in weighted DVOA by the time they were eliminated from the postseason, apropos of their late-season surge.  If past is prologue, the Panthers should be favored in this one.

Of course, 2015 is a new year and a new start, and last year’s record starts being meaningless once kickoff happens.  Anything and everything is possible.  Perhaps second-year quarterback Blake Bortles turns out to be the real deal with a year’s experience under his belt, and Jacksonville will make a playoff run.  That’s the beauty of a fresh NFL season—anything and everything is possible.

Being a road game against the other conference in Week 1, the actual stakes are low in this one for the Panthers, but the symbolic stakes are high.  Not only would it be good to get the season off on the right foot with a win, but proving they can beat the likes of Jacksonville, Tennessee and Tampa Bay on the road would go a long way toward proving the Panthers have what it takes to be the repeat NFC South champions, rather than fighting for a wild-card spot.  These are the sorts of road trips division champions win more often than not.

Can the Panthers get the 2015 season off on the right foot, getting their second consecutive Week 1 win? Or will they go back to their old ways, when they lost every opening week game from 2009 through 2013?  Let’s take a deeper look at their Week 1 matchup.

Location: EverBank Field, Jacksonville, Florida

Time: 1:00 p.m. ET

TV: FOX, with Chris Myers and Ronde Barber announcing.

Preseason Results and Recap

Mike McCarn/Associated Press

Cam looked sharp in preseason.

The Panthers finished their preseason slate at 3-1, beating the Bills, Dolphins and Steelers and losing only to the defending Super Bowl champion Patriots.

A number of players definitely stood out. Cam Newton finished the preseason 26-of-48 passing for 285 yards, with two touchdowns and an interception.  He looked sharper than that, as well, missing out on several other touchdowns thanks to drops.  He ended up as Pro Football Focus’ top-ranked passer of the preseason, and while you can quibble over the specific rankings, he definitely looked sharp.

Other standouts included rookies Cameron Artis-Payne, who rushed 30 times for 139 yards, and Daryl Williams, who provided solid protection at reserve right tackle, as well as fullback Mike Tolbert, who looked fully recovered from last season’s leg injuries.  Undrafted free agents Dean Marlowe and Brandon Wegher were impressive enough to earn roster spots, as well.

Not all players looked great, however.  Philly Brown—and yes, he’s back to being called Philly now—caught just two passes all preseason, dropping three.  That’s the worst drop rate of the preseason, per PFF, and one reason he ranked out as the worst wide receiver in its rankings.  The Panthers will also be happy to have Ryan Kalil back, as they had issues filling in at center after he missed time with a sprained knee.  A.J. Klein was also out-played by rookie Shaq Thompson and will likely lose his starting job there sooner rather than later.

The Jaguars, meanwhile, finished with a 2-2 record this preseason, defeating Pittsburgh and Washington while losing to the New York Giants and Detroit Lions.

Blake Bortles looked better than he did as a rookie, certainly.  He went 39-of-60 passing for 461 yards and a touchdown and, perhaps most importantly, no interceptions.  He looked solid, and that’s more than the Jaguars have had at the quarterback position for a long time.  His mechanics and footwork look better, and he’s not panicking as much in the pocket.  If that carries over to the regular season, the Jaguars should be better than 3-13 this season.

The Jags lost their first-round rookie, Dante Fowler, to injury in their first offseason minicamp, but they do have an interesting rookie on the defensive line.  Michael Bennett, a sixth-round pick out of Ohio State, had seven quarterback pressures and seven defensive stops, per PFF.  He may not get the start against Carolina, but expect to see him rotated in plenty.

News and Notes

Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

Philly Brown will be looking to forget the preseason.

Wide Receivers Still in Flux

Ron Rivera set his starting wide receivers on Monday.  Philly Brown—who has officially changed his name back to Philly—and Ted Ginn will be the starting receivers on Sunday against Jacksonville.  That leaves Devin Funchess, Jerricho Cotchery and Kevin Norwood as the reserves.

As mentioned above, Brown had serious struggles this preseason—struggles that do not look like the same player who was a pleasant surprise as an undrafted free agent last season.  It is worth noting that he bounced back in the last preseason game somewhat, catching his one target, but you’d hope for your starting receiver to have more than two receptions on 12 targets, especially when so many were catchable passes.

The night-and-day difference between last season’s Philly Brown and this season’s Corey Brown is what inspired Rivera to make the name change:

“I’m going to call him Philly.  Philly catches the ball. Corey is a nice young man.’’

Add in Ginn, and you have a very different starting corps than the Panthers expected at the beginning of the preseason. The idea was to have a set of the tallest receivers in the NFL, with Greg Olsen, Kelvin Benjamin and Devin Funchess serving as huge targets for Cam Newton to find.  Instead, the Panthers will go with two speedsters as starters.  It’s a significant change from the preseason plans.

Funchess is likely pushing the starters, but his nagging hamstring injury cost him valuable practice time.  When he did play, Funchess looked ready to start  He caught four of his seven targets for 75 yards, including a 34-yard reception, flashing exceptional body control, against Buffalo.

The lack of practice time is what’s keeping him on the bench in all likelihood at this point, but don’t expect him to stay there for long.  He should get decent reps off the bench, though it remains to be seen if he’ll be the third or fourth receiver, with veteran Jerricho Cotchery being the other option.  With Ginn and Brown being such similar players, however, it should only be a matter of time before Funchess gets fully up to speed and takes a starting role.

Concerns Remain Entering the Regular Season

The Charlotte Observer’s Scott Fowler listed his three biggest concerns entering the first week of the regular season—the three areas that are most worrisome both for Sunday’s game against Jacksonville and for the season as a whole.

One, of course, was the same receiving issue that we talked about in the previous news and notes section.  Until Philly Brown proves that this preseason was a fluke or Devin Funchess steps up and takes over a starting role, the receiving issue will remain first and foremost.

Fowler, however, is also concerned about the pass rush being inconsistent:

"

[Charles] Johnson has always been a gamer and has produced at least 8.5 sacks per season for each of the past five years. But you have to wonder much football is left in the body of the nine-year veteran. And Star Lotulelei’s surgically repaired right foot means the Panthers’ best interior defensive lineman may not play at all Sunday.

"

He points out that Kony Ealy takes over the right end spot, and that will be massively important.  If Ealy can replicate what he did in the last month of last season—as opposed to the struggles he had as a rookie in September through November—he can provide that secondary pass-rushing force that the Panthers sorely missed last year. 

Johnson stepped up and replaced a significant portion of the pass rush lost from Greg Hardy’s suspension, but no one stepped up and replaced what Johnson did as the secondary pass-rusher.  If Ealy can do that, and Johnson is still in top form, the Panthers should be all right—but those are two significant "ifs."

He’s also worried about the offensive line holding up.  This is a logical concern based on how poorly the offensive tackles performed last season, Michael Oher’s struggles over the past few years and Ryan Kalil’s knee injury.

Kalil, however, looks like he will play.   That instantly boosts the rest of the offensive line.  The problematic tackles from last year are also gone, with Nate Chandler demoted into a more comfortable role of backup tackle and Mike Remmers getting the chance to continue his success from late last season.

It’s also worth noting that the Panthers’ tackles looked good in preseason.  Michael Oher received a positive Pro Football Focus grade of +1.1, allowing only one quarterback pressure in his 90 snaps of action.  Even better was rookie right tackle Daryl Williams, who received the second-highest tackle grade among all players this preseason, allowing only two quarterback hurries in 159 snaps, as well as paving the way for players like Cameron Artis-Payne and Brandon Wegher.

I think “cautiously optimistic” is a fine place for Panthers fans to be right now in terms of the offensive line.  Yes, Remmers might repeat his poor performance from the Seahawks’ game last year, and Oher might revert to his poor form from the past few years in live action against the Jaguars, but there are enough positive hints and signals present to justify a bit of optimism.  At the very least, it shouldn’t be as bad as Chandler and Byron Bell were last season.

ESPN’s Game by Game Predictions: Panthers Repeat as Champs

With the regular season beginning, people everywhere are making their final, game-by-game predictions, with ESPN’s David Newton being the most recent.  Among other notes, he has the Panthers starting the season 4-0 going into their bye week, including beating Jacksonville this week by a score of 24-9, as Jacksonville is still “playing like an expansion team."

Then, he has the Panthers losing three out of their next four, only taking down the Philadelphia Eagles at home during that stretch.  He has the Panthers going 4-2 in the division, sweeping the Buccaneers but splitting the season series with the Falcons and Saints.  They clinch the division, in Newton’s predictions, by beating the Buccaneers at home on the last day of the season.

Newton basically docked the Panthers one win thanks to Kelvin Benjamin’s injury.  While he doesn’t list which game flipped, my best guess would be the Monday night showdown with the Indianapolis Colts in Carolina in Week 8. 

I’m a bit more bearish on the Panthers in general than Newton is, but I’ve got that game marked down as winnable, at the very least—the Colts may have Andrew Luck, but it remains to be seen if their supporting cast is strong enough to really propel them into the top tier of NFL teams.

Of course, the interesting thing about ESPN’s game-by-game predictions is that each team’s blog writer makes their own predictions, without consulting one another.  Thus, while Newton has the Panthers winning the division at 9-7, Mike Triplett has the Saints winning the division at 10-6, and both Vaughn McClure and Pat Yasinskas have the Falcons and Buccaneers trickling in at 8-8.   No one finishes with a losing record!

In fact, going league-wide and looking at all of ESPN’s predictions, you can see the league is predicted to go 285-227 against itself.  That’s amazing!  Somehow, at least 29 games will end up with both teams walking away winners.  Only eight teams end the season with a losing record, and the Panthers’ record of 9-7 not only doesn’t win the division, it doesn’t come close to a wild-card slot.

Obviously, this means everyone’s being a bit too optimistic about their team’s chances—that’s just how preseason optimism shows itself.  On average, each prediction is about one win too high.

In a vacuum, not knowing how well other teams would do, a 9-7 record would get a team into the playoffs about a third of the time, while the optimism-corrected 8-8 record would only get a team in about 10 percent of the time, historically.  You can probably up those percentages somewhat considering the relative weak state of the NFC South last season, but until we really know for certain how good Carolina’s divisional rival will be, we can’t say much more than that.

As for my game-by-game predictions?  Trying to predict who will win a game three months from now when you don’t know anything about injuries or surprise players is a fool’s errand, but we all do it anyway.  I’ve got five home games marked down as likely wins for the Panthers and five road games marked down as likely losses. 

It’s how the Panthers do in the other six games—road trips against poor teams like Jacksonville, Tampa Bay and Tennessee, and home games against good teams like Green Bay, Philadelphia and Indianapolis—that will determine how the Panthers finish this season. 

Win them all, and it’s hard to picture Carolina not winning the division for the third straight season.  Lose them all, and they’re almost assuredly sitting at home watching the playoffs on TV.

Injuries

Bob Leverone/Associated Press

Ryan Kalil looks on pace to play in Week 1

Excluding players on injured reserve—a major consideration, considering the Panthers have lost Kelvin Benjamin and Frank Alexander, while the Jaguars lost Dante Fowler Jr.—the Panthers seem to be coming into this one healthier.

Panthers Injuries

Player	Position	Injury	Wed. Practice
Teddy Williams	CB	Groin	Full
Nate Chandler	OT	Knee	Limited
Ryan Kalil	C	Knee	Limited
Josh Norman	CB	Concussion	Limited
Richie Brockel	TE	Shoulder	None
Star Lotuleleli	DT	Foot	None

Injury report courtesy of Black and Blue Review.

It’s good to see that Jerricho Cotchery, Charles Johnson, Charles Tillman and Colin Jones weren’t on the injury report at all.  They all seem poised to play on Sunday.  As for the rest of the injuries:

• Teddy Williams hurt his groin in the final preseason game against Pittsburgh, but he seems entirely fine now.  He’ll be the nickel cornerback if Josh Norman isn’t cleared by game time.
• Nate Chandler’s still recovering from offseason knee surgery, and it’s still acting up a bit.   He played in each of the last two preseason games, but Ron Rivera said that Chandler “struggled a little bit” with the knee, according to Black and Blue Review.  If he can’t play on Sunday, either Amini Silatolu or Daryl Williams would be first off the bench to replace Michael Oher, if necessary.
• Ryan Kalil sprained his knee against the Dolphins two weeks ago but remains on track for Sunday, with Rivera feeling good about his chances of playing, per Joe Person.  Expect him to start.  If he suffers a setback, Mike Remmers will likely move to center with Daryl Williams coming in at right tackle.
• Josh Norman remains in the concussion protocol after suffering the injury against Pittsburgh.  He returned to limited action in practice on Wednesday, and looks to be fine for Sunday, though there’s still one final stage to pass before he’s officially cleared, according to Black and Blue Review.
• Richie Brockel has been dealing with a sprained shoulder since the Dolphins game, and things aren’t looking good there.  He’s most likely out for Sunday’s game, though he was unlikely to see significant playing time anyway.  Brandon Williams would be the third tight end.
• The biggest question mark remains Star Lotulelei, still recovering from the stress fracture he suffered over a month ago.  He did not practice again, and the last thing the Panthers want to do is rush him back and risk making the injury worse.  He’s likely doubtful, at best, for Sunday’s game.  Kyle Love, Colin Cole and Dwan Edwards would serve as a rotation to replace him if he sat out.

Jaguars Injuries

Player	Position	Injury	Wed. Practice
Jonathan Cyprien	SS	Finger	Full
Toby Gerhardt	RB	Abdomen	Limited
Michael Bennett	DT	Ankle	Limited
LaRoy Reynolds	OLB	Knee	Limited
Marqise Lee	WR	Hamstring	None
Bryan Walters	WR	Hamstring	None
Julius Thomas	TE	Hand	None
Andre Branch	DE	Knee	None
Sen'Derrick Marks	DT	Knee	None

 Injury report courtesy of the Jaguars official website.

• Jonathan Cyprien missed most of the preseason with a broken finger he suffered in the Jaguars’ first preseason game.  He may have a small cast on but should start at strong safety.  Josh Evans is his backup should something happen.
• Toby Gerhart has an abdominal strain he’s been working through for the last couple weeks, as he’s missed the last two preseason games for the Jaguars.  He’s expected to play, though Denard Robinson might well have passed him as T.J. Yeldon’s primary backup.
• Rookie Michael Bennett looked good in preseason and will likely be a significant player on the defensive line this season.  He’s working through a knee contusion but is likely to play. Abry Jones will likely have to play more snaps if Bennett is out.
• LaRoy Reynolds was already replaced this offseason, with the Jaguars signing Dan Skuta to play ahead of him.  He also missed the last two weeks after suffering a knee injury against the New York Giants.  He practiced for the first time since then on Wednesday, and we’ll see if he can get it together to play on Sunday.
• Marqise Lee remains day-to-day with a strained hamstring he suffered back at the beginning of August.  It’s looking less and less likely that he’ll be able to play in this one, which hurts because…
• Bryan Walters is also dealing with a hamstring injury.  Walters says he should be available Sunday, according to Ryan O’Halloran, and rookie Rashad Greene will round out the receiving corps if Lee is absent.
• Julius Thomas underwent surgery on his injured finger on September 2, per Ian Rapoport of NFL.com, and will be out another month.  Marcedes Lewis and Clay Harbor will get more work in his absence.
• Andre Branch’s sprained MCL will keep him out for significantly more time.  Chris Smith and Chris Clemons will rotate at the LEO position until he’s back.
• Sen’Derrick Marks has been moved to the active roster, but he’s still recovering from the ACL he tore at the end of 2014.  He’s unlikely to suit up in this one.  Michael Bennett is his most likely replacement, assuming he’s healthy enough to go.

Key Matchups

Bob Leverone/Associated Press

Can Jonathan Stewart continue where he left off in 2014?

RB Jonathan Stewart vs. SS Jonathan Cyprien

Jonathan Cyprien had a solid rookie season for Jacksonville in 2013, recording 86 tackles (70 of them solo), a couple forced fumbles, an interception and six passes defensed.  The logical thought was that the second-round pick, with a year under his belt, would break into the big time in 2014. 

Multiple articles had him pegged as the next big potential strong safety, but he, like the rest of the Jaguars, didn’t look so great last season.  He dropped off in every significant statistical category and is looking for a bounce-back year in 2015.

There’s no doubting that Cyprien is a powerful tackler, with the ability to lower the boom on opposing ball-carriers—think of him as a sort of bargain-basement version of Kam Chancellor up in Seattle.  He’s also a very clean player, having drawn zero flags last season—so his solid hits are all legal.  His tackles only fell to 80 last season, so he can still seek and destroy in run defense.

The Panthers are going to have to lean on their running game, thanks one part to design and one part to bad luck.  With Kelvin Benjamin out and Devin Funchess not quite ready yet, it will be up to Stewart and the running game to carry the Panthers offense. 

That worked just fine last year—over the final seven weeks of the season last year, including the playoffs, Stewart averaged 5.2 yards per carry, picking up 704 yards on 135 attempts.  That will have to be the bread-and-butter of the offense, setting up the passing game as Cyprien and the safeties creep up into the box.

DT Star Lotulelei vs. OG Brandon Linder

Star Lotulelei has missed the entire preseason recovering from a stress reaction in his right foot.  He has yet to practice fully with the team since then, though he was working on the side on Monday with head trainer Ryan Vermillion, according to ESPN's David Newton.  If he can’t go, the Panthers will continue their defensive tackle rotation of Kawann Short, Colin Cole, Dwan Edwards and Kyle Love.

Waiting for Lotulelei if he gets back is second-year guard Brandon Linder.   Linder was one of the bright spots for the Jaguars last season; the third-round pick out of Miami was Jacksonville’s highest-rated offensive player according to Pro Football Focus, surrendering only 15 quarterback pressures and grading out solidly in run defense, as well.  Linder’s recovering from an injury of his own—a toe hurt against the Lions—but is solidly ready to go.  As the strongest link on Jacksonville’s offensive line, he’s key to collapsing the pocket and making Blake Bortles have a bad time.

OLB Shaq Thompson vs. RB T.J. Yeldon

Converting from a hybrid safety/linebacker to a full-time linebacker in the pros, first-round pick Shaq Thompson’s pass defense isn’t in any question.  Yes, he’ll have his rookie growing pains, but when asked to cover tight ends or running backs out of the backfield, he’ll be in his element.

It’s run defense that Thompson needs to continue to grow into.  He received a minus-1.6 run defense grade from PFF for his three preseason games, essentially all from some issues against New England.  That’s not bad at all for a rookie still adapting both to the NFL and a more traditional linebacker role, but it is his largest weakness at this point in time.

The Jaguars will also be starting a rookie in the run game—T.J. Yeldon out of Alabama.  It’s a great rookie-on-rookie matchup here.  Yeldon is a big, athletic back with moderate top-end speed who the Jags are counting on to be their first really solid running back since Maurice Jones-Drew left.  It’s a battle of the team’s top rookies—or at least, the top healthy rookie on Jacksonville’s side.  It’s always exciting to see two potential future stars clash for the first time.

Matchup X-Factors

Rob Carr/Getty Images

Will Charles Johnson be at full speed?

Panthers X-Factor: DE Charles Johnson

Charles Johnson missed the entire preseason with various injuries, first to his calf and then to his neck and shoulder.  That means his first game action of the 2015 season will be a live matchup, going up against Jacksonville’s free-agent acquisition right tackle, Jermey Parnell.

When under pressure last season, Blake Bortles had the lowest completion percentage in football at just 36.4 percent, according to Pro Football Focus.  He was victimized somewhat by drops, but not enough to excuse him.  Bortles was sacked more often than any other quarterback under pressure, and only Josh McCown and Drew Brees threw more interceptions under pressure than Bortles did.  Pressure him, and he falls to pieces.

Johnson is the best pass-rusher on the Panthers, so the job would of disrupting the quarterback would naturally go to him, but is Johnson at full strength?  He went the first full month of last year without a sack after missing most of the preseason with a hamstring injury, so he’ll be looking to get a faster start in 2015.  If he’s able to beat Parnell consistently, Bortles should have a long day in the pocket.

Jaguars X-Factor: DE Chris Clemons

Chris Clemons is the Jaguars’ pass-rushing specialist at the LEO position, where he’ll play mostly on third downs.  This will let the team limit the 12-year veteran’s snaps, keeping him fresh and effective for the most crucial pass-rushing situations.  With Andre Branch’s MCL injury, Clemons might get a few more looks on first and second down, but Chris Smith should get some of those snaps as well, keeping Clemons in his role as a pass-rushing guru in Gus Bradley’s version of Seattle’s defensive system.

The last time the Panthers faced a defense like Bradley’s was in last year’s loss to the Seahawks in the divisional playoffs.  Their LEO, Michael Bennett, had a field day with Mike Remmers.  While he didn’t record any sacks, Bennett was charted with five quarterback hurries and four defensive stops by PFF, as Remmers had by far his worst day as a pro. 

Clemons is obviously not the same sort of player Bennett is—otherwise, the Seahawks would have found a way to keep him in 2014, rather than letting him go as a cap casualty.  Still, Clemons had eight sacks last season, mostly at the beginning of the year when he was fresh.  He’s still capable of being a solid player when well rested.

He’ll likely be challenging Michael Oher in Oher’s first real test as a member of the Panthers.  Oher had a solid preseason, but will that go over into the regular season?  If Oher plays like he did last year, Clemons shouldn’t have too much trouble getting around him and causing havoc in the Panthers backfield on key third-down plays.

Prediction: Jaguars 20, Panthers 17

Stacy Revere/Getty Images

Will Blake Bortles and the Jaguars upset the Panthers?

So why, if the Jaguars have so many injuries and the Panthers were a much better team at the end of last season, am I picking the Jaguars to pull off a Week 1 upset?  There are a couple of reasons that leads me to be wary of predicting the Panthers to steamroll over Jacksonville.

There’s the issue of this being a road game, for starters.  The Panthers were 3-5-1 on the road last season, including the playoffs.  The Jaguars were a similarly poor 3-5 at home, but that includes every single one of their wins.  They were 2-1 at home after the bye week, as well.

There’s the fact that this is the first game of the season.  While the Panthers won last year’s opener against Tampa Bay, 20-14, they had lost the previous five openers by an average score of 25-13.  Carolina historically has started slowly under Ron Rivera, as well:

Games	Record	Win %
1-4	5-11	.313
5-8	7-8-1	.469
9-12	7-9	.438
13-16	13-3	.813
Total	32-31-1	.508

You have the uncertainty of the health of Charles Johnson and Star Lotulelei, hurting the defensive line.  That could give Blake Bortles more time to pass and T.J. Yeldon more room to run.  You have the injuries to Kelvin Benjamin and Devin Funchess, limiting what the Panthers can do aerially.

You have the fact that new starting left tackle Michael Oher has not played well in the regular season since 2009, and that Mike Remmers’ success comes in a very small sample size.  While both looked all right during preseason, regular game action is another matter entirely, and if both of them slip backward, you have the makings of Cam Newton having to run for his life yet again.

You have the potential for Blake Bortles to step forward in his second full season—quarterbacks often do make a significant stride forward as sophomores, though that’s far from guaranteed.  I’m also a big fan of rookie T.J. Yeldon.

But here, more than anything else, is the bottom line.

The Panthers, on their hot streak at the end of 2014, would have crushed the Jaguars, even on the road.  They’d win by at least a touchdown, covering the spread and moving on to the next team.  If you believe that the 2014 hot streak is something that will carry over through the offseason, then you should believe the Panthers will win this one handily, setting up the path for them to start 4-0 and squelching any of that “slow start” nonsense from the table above.

However, looking at the entirety of what the Panthers did in 2014, including their 3-8-1 start, the team would have struggled on the road at Jacksonville.  Are the last six weeks of last season more valuable information than Weeks 1-13?

The fact of the matter is, this isn’t the same Panthers team that finished the season on a hot streak.  Nor is it the same Panthers team that finished with a losing record last year.  It’s a new team with a new start and a lot of questions to answer.

Basically, I want to see the Panthers continuing their 2014 success on the field for at least one week before I crown them NFC South favorites again.  I want to see how much of their incredible ground-game success from the end of last season carries over and how much of Kony Ealy’s late-season surge last year was real and how much was just a small sample size.  I want to see Michael Oher continue his preseason success and Mike Remmers not fall back to his practice squad-level performance.  I want to see Philly Brown catch a football thrown in his general direction.

Even if none of that happens, they probably could still beat the Jaguars—we’re not talking about one of the top teams in football here.  I just feel that the outcome of this particular game is still in flux, considering all the unknowns surrounding the Panthers at this point.

Bryan Knowles is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report, covering the Carolina Panthers.  Follow him @BryKno on twitter.