Can Panthers fans really expect joy from watching football?
Welcome to our weekly game pick series where I will attempt to guide you through picking every Carolina Panthers game of the 2024 season. A rare early season win last week against the Las Vegas Raiders has fans buzzing about an offense that fits in “the modern NFL” The Panthers are now bringing that offense back to Charlotte to show off in front of a home crowd against the Cincinnati Bengals.
The Bengals are a team that has seen recent success. They are also a team that has started 2023 as an 0-3 team and are desperate for a win. Ostensibly, the Cincinnati is a team the Panthers could beat in a shoot out, even after the loss of Adam Thielen. If we can trust the performance we saw last Sunday against the Raiders and extrapolate that against a reeling team coming off of a short week then there are some reasons for confidence. Or at least for hope.
That’s why my FanDuel pick for Week 2 is the Cincinnati Bengals. Hope and joy are strangers to the subject of Carolina football right now. This, to be exceedingly clear, is not objective analysis. This is almost 30 years of Lucy pulling the ball right before we kick it talking. It’s going to take more than one flashy game authored by a 36-year old quarterback to get me to risk actual dollars on the idea that the Panthers are less of a shambling wreck than some other, professional organization.
I’ll sell you some optimism come Monday, but for right now I’d put money on the Bengals. Or, better yet, put it on the Packers. They play Sam Darnold’s Minnesota Vikings and it is Week 4. The wheels on that bus are due to come off.