The Carolina Panthers are, as they say, one year removed from an appearance in the Super Bowl. But during that year, there was quite a “removal” indeed. And in many ways, this is a team that has to re-focus its efforts. That starts at the quarterback position, where obviously Cam Newton, who was the Most Valuable Player in the league two years ago, hopes to get healthy enough to go full speed by the season opener. VietBet customers will be watching this situation closely.
Newton had surgery on his rotator cuff in March, and in many ways he is still trying to get back to normal. Last season was something of a downer for him, as he threw 19 touchdown passes and 14 interceptions. So naturally, the skeptics were appearing again. They were out there right after the Super Bowl, when Newton committed a comedy of errors, and then didn’t do himself any favors in the post-game press conference. Now we imagine he’s been stripped of some of that arrogance, and just hopes to lead his team back toward the playoffs.
They stumbled out of the starting blocks in 2016, losing five of their first six games, and never put together a winning streak of more than two. The 6-10 final result indicated there was much work to be done.
Carolina Panthers – Asian NFL Futures:
As it stands now, the Panthers are priced at +2950 to win the Super Bowl in the NFL futures betting at VietBet, and their over-under for wins is 9.5, with the under priced at -156 (the over at +136).
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Newton has been brought along rather slowly. He has been held out of some practices, and has talked about dealing with some soreness in his shoulder. Head coach Ron Rivera has indicated that is not necessarily anything unexpected, and that they had planned some rest days for him. He won’t be overextended in the preseason, but since this is the kind of surgery takes a while to come back from, we have to wonder about his ability to throw down the field once the opening bell rings.
Carolina is going to need some support from the ground game. They ranked 18th in rushing last season, and Jonathan Stewart returns again, but there is a potentially explosive component in Christian McCaffrey, the first-round draft pick from Stanford who can do a little bit of everything. As far as the air game is concerned, Curtis Samuel was drafted on the second round at Ohio State, and he could be very useful teaming with Kelvin Benjamin, who caught 63 passes for 941 yards after missing the previous campaign with a knee injury. Then there is old reliable tight end Greg Olson, who went for over 1000 yards.
Defensively, the Panthers ranked 29th in the league in passing yards allowed, and no doubt that losing Josh Norman to free agency had plenty to do with that. The Panthers had two rookies starting in the secondary most of the time, and those players – Darryl Worley and James Bradberry – simply need to develop some more. Captain Summerlin, who played for the Minnesota Vikings last year, was added as a free agent.
We’d have to have a lot of confidence in Newton, not only that he could come back from injury but that he could be extremely effective again, to support going “over” on this proposition.
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By Charles Jay