My 2026 NFL gambling tactics are simple. Let Vegas decide what the lines are, either for or against Carolina on the win, then bet against Carolina whether they are favored or the underdogs.
This past week I think that Carolina's actual true colors showed though, and not only did they not beat the then 1-win team in Tampa Bay (Carolina was favored by 3) but the Panthers got absolutely destroyed... embarrassed, in front of their home fans who probably once again had gotten false hopes from a few moments of excellence that Carolina has shown so far this season.
Against Tampa Bay, they looked like the worst team in the NFC South and perhaps one of the worst teams in the nation, which is what I always suspected of them anyway.
Here we get yet another angle of just how tiny 5'10" / 190 lb Bryce Young actually is compared to the guys that are in charge of bringing him to the ground. That dude, whoever he is, has arms that are bigger than Bryce's legs. He has leg-arms. Bryce is lucky he didn't snap him like the skinny twig that he is.
Now a lot can (and should) be said about Carolina's offensive line and how abysmal they performed over the weekend, and the stats are there to prove it.
With only a single passing TD to speak of, Bryce managed to stack up 2 interceptions and got sacked 5 times in the game. You can't put it all on Bryce, because an offensive line needs to give QB's more than a second and a half to figure out what to do with the ball. When your QB is the size of a high school quarterback, you probably need to give him more time than most. Bryce was so terrible that something that rarely happens in mid-season NFL games when there is no injury, The head coach took Bryce out of the game and allowed backup quarterback Kenny Pickett to finish out the game.
Pickett had an impossible job at that point as Carolina was trailing 43-6 when he got the nod to go into the game. He did do better than Bryce, which honestly isn't saying much, but he completed 75% of his passes and actually put up 15 rushing yards as well. Honestly, I wonder how much chat is going on in the offices in Charlotte about cutting their losses (more than $100 million worth) on this tiny QB experiment and just go back to the drawing board.
The Buccaneers are not a good team ya'll. They have gotten completely worked in all but one (now 2) of their games and their position near the bottom of ALL teams is deserved. But they didn't look that way against Carolina over the weekend, that is for sure. But this is because Carolina is just that bad. Lightning strikes every now and then for them, just like basically every season in recent memory, but they are not a team you put any confidence behind.
Across the history of the NFL, the average amount of points score per quarter by a team around 5-7 points. It is considered "exceptionally rare" for a team to score more than 20. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers scored 26 points in the 2nd quarter against the Carolina Panthers yesterday.
Now you can't put that on Bryce, but Bryce did essentially nothing on offense and while I did have the feed muted, I would expect some of the home fans were booing their own team out of frustration.
Next week Carolina faces off against Green Bay which is a good team that is struggling this year. The Packers are favored by 4 and as always, I am going to bet that Green Bay wins the game by more than that.
In other news I recently wrote an article about how there were only 3 teams remaining undefeated. Kansas City and San Francisco both experience shock upset defeats so now the only remaining team without a loss is the Minnesota Vikings - a team that is still getting zero respect from the press despite being the only team without an "L" in their 2026 season.
