Panthers’ Ejiro Evero sends a clear message after a rough Week 1 showing and now it’s time to see what changes for his unit
The Carolina Panthers defensive performance in Week 1 was beyond embarrassing and leaves a lot of questions for Ejiro Evero going into Week 2 to see how this unit actually improves.
The defensive performance shown by the Carolina Panthers in Week 1 against the Chicago Bears was embarrassing, and that hasn’t been a secret if you’ve been paying any attention to this team after Sunday’s game.
A lot of the blame falls on the shoulders of defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero, who had weeks to prepare for that individual matchup to start the season. Head coach Dave Canales told reporters earlier in the week that he had tough conversations with his coordinator about the plan going into that game and why it didn’t work, but that he still believes in this scheme.
“Those are conversations that we want to keep internal,” Evero told reporters on Thursday. “But, great dialogue in terms of what we need to do moving forward. And I will be better.”
How will the Panthers’ defense, and Ejiro Evero, be better in Week 2?
The good news is, it’s literally hard to be worse than that. Teams in the NFL always want to play their worst football in Week 1 so that there’s always plenty room to improve. The Panthers now go into Week 2 at rock bottom on defense. But, there’s no confidence lost inside the building despite how that unit played last week.
“There’s not a lack of confidence,” Evero said. “We didn’t play the way that we wanted. There’s a lot of areas we can coach better as well. But, we feel like there’s a lot of things that we can certainly improve on and a lot of things we can correct. That’s the goal.”
Everything this week starts with the plan being put in place by Evero. Last week, the plan was no where near good enough to defend against the Chicago Bears’ run game, which they knew going into it would be a major threat. After that, it’s on execution by the players during the game itself, which includes avoiding back-breaking penalties.
“We have got to play blocks better up-front,” Evero explained. “There’s certainly some things we can do better schematically. We gotta get better at conditioning. I think there’s a lot of factors there. But, we feel like they’re all correctable.”
I do believe things will improve defensively for the Panthers this week, and they’ll have another tough matchup when it comes to defending against Bijan Robinson. It’s easy to freak out after one play, but the defense is taking the right approach.
When you fall that bad, the only thing you can do is get up, brush yourself off, and learn from it. And for Evero, taking some personal accountability for that game is what really matters, and he showed that on Thursday.
“The best show and sign of leadership is I’m not always perfect,” Evero said. “I’m not going to get every call right and I’m not going to get every plan right. But, the effort’s always going to be there. I’ve always been a learner. If I do things well, that’s what I’m supposed to do. And when I don’t do things well, I gotta find a way to correct it, just like them.”
