4 key questions Carolina Panthers need to tackle after Chicago Bears loss
Early on Monday morning, less than 24 hours after the Carolina Panthers were dealt a 59-37 loss to the Chicago Bears, head coach Dave Canales stood in front of his players and offered them some hope.
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Sort of.
“I said, ‘Look, I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I felt like we didn’t have the pieces that we have right in this room,’” Canales told reporters Monday. “A true statement to those guys. But we need to collectively come together and play way better football than that.”
It’s hopeful because there’s belief in the talent. It’s urgent, though, because that talent didn’t show up for all four quarters on Sunday — particularly on the defensive side of the ball, where the Panthers invested the most in the 2026 offseason.
How best to “play way better football than that” begins with several questions the Panthers need to address in Week 2 and beyond this season. Here are four of the most pressing queries.
This feels like the ultimate primacy problem that the Panthers have battled since 2024. But instead of chickens or eggs, the question is this: Which is actually at fault for the scars the defense suffered Sunday — the defensive players or the defensive scheme?
Canales offered his thoughts on the question after his team gave up 550-plus total yards and a franchise-most 59 points on Sunday.
“As a coaching staff, we gotta take responsibility,” Canales said. “Not just putting it on the players for execution, but: What did our plan look like? Did we have too little? Did we have too much? We gotta ask all those questions so we can get our guys executing at a high level.”
People not in those team meetings won’t know if the Panthers coaches overburdened their players. But there’s plenty of universal truths that were evident Sunday. The big one: the Panthers didn’t fare well as a run defense.
The Panthers rarely won the line of scrimmage in the run game; D’Andre Swift cut through the defense like a knife in warm butter in the second half and didn’t have his path impeded until he was often a yard or two downfield. And in this scheme, as Canales explained, if the backs burst through the line too quickly, then the safeties and cornerbacks won’t be able fill their run-fits in time, and then it thus becomes “an open-field tackling drill” as it was for too much of Sunday.
Defensive lineman Bobby Brown posited that he didn’t think the Panthers got any tackles for loss that weren’t sacks on Sunday. (The Panthers technically notched two — one from Bobby Okereke and one from Trevis Gipson — but the sentiment spoke volumes.) While the veteran said “Coach E already told us he didn’t get us in the best call all the time,” he added that the defense rarely made plays when they were in good position.
Canales said he and defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero “went down that path” of if they overcomplicated the defensive gameplan on Monday. Said Canales: “We know we can execute better, but why didn’t it happen?”
Canales reiterated, though, that he has full confidence in Evero’s 3-4 scheme. He loves the way the secondary moves around, how it presents opportunities for disguises, how it forces opposing quarterbacks to dissect on the fly. It does, however, put a lot of pressure on the front seven — and when they fail, the system fails, too.
“We gotta be really connected on that front-seven to make sure that those runs are getting bottle-necked into alleys that our guys can show up in,” Canales said.
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Bears star Caleb Williams is one of the best quarterbacks in the league. He’s especially mobile, too, which caused headaches for the Panthers all day. One key question for the Panthers moving forward: Will they have troubles with this later this year?
“We certainly could’ve done a better job of re-containing,” Canales said of defending Williams, who ran for 60-plus yards and two touchdowns Sunday. “He was able to get out on the perimeter. He was able to escape through the middle, and that’s where we have to collapse that quicker. And then, there’s always somebody who’s got to have their eyes on him in a zone, when they’re dropping back in coverages.
“And we gotta get off blocks. We have to rally up or those types of plays happen.”
The Panthers have a slew of mobile quarterbacks they’ll have to face this year. But they also have a reprieve at the moment. The Panthers will likely face off against Cooper Rush, who started for the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday after Tua Tagovailoa went down during the week with an oblique injury, who is “week-to-week.”
“I’m glad we had a challenge like that Week 1,” linebacker Princely Umanmielen said, “because down the line, as we play other quarterbacks who aren’t as mobile … or even more mobile — we got Lamar Jackson coming up (Week 11) — I think having this challenge Week 1 is really going into these upcoming games.”
Canales made clear that the offense was not beyond reproach of criticism after Sunday’s game, despite their 37-point output.
“For the offense, it felt like a group that understands what we’re doing, what we’re trying to get done,” he said. “I was encouraged by that. It was still a little bit sloppy for my liking. And the guys know that. We talked about it just now. We can clean up some things in all phases there.”
Canales appeared to be specifically alluding to the “17 points off of turnovers” — referencing to the Jimmy Horn Jr. muffed punt that turned into a field goal, a failed fourth-down conversion attempt that turned into a TD and the Tetairoa McMillan fumble that turned into a TD.
The Panthers have several roster-related items to monitor, including a pair of injuries that exacerbated some issues.
The two main ones:
Jalen Coker, the star of the Sunday’s show for Carolina, appeared in a boot on his left foot in the locker room on Monday. The receiver who notched career highs in receiving yards (138) and touchdowns (two) told reporters that he rolled his ankle in the first quarter and played through the injury on Sunday. He said he that “the plan” is to practice Wednesday.
Bobby Brown is also struggling through a back injury. He told reporters that the lineman is dealing with a bulging disc, which flared up twice in the game and forced him to get help with the training staff.
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Said Brown: “Just taking it day-by-day.”
