Dave Canales on what led to blowout Panthers loss: ’We lost in all the critical areas’

When asked a variation of the question on everyone’s minds — “what went wrong on Sunday?” — some Carolina Panthers players didn’t know where to begin.

“Everything went wrong,” starting safety Xavier Woods said, for instance.

It’s true. The Panthers, after all, endured a 47-10 shellacking on Sunday to the Saints, an NFC South opponent that didn’t have all that great of season expectations prior to Week 1. Carolina’s poor showing came thanks to a pass game that saw more turnovers than touchdowns, a run game that could never get going and a defense that gave up big plays early and often — “everything,” according to the veteran Woods, going “about as worse as we can get.”

Still, first-year head coach Dave Canales helped spell out what specifically led to Sunday’s outcome — distilling the lopsided loss into potentially fixable fragments.

“To speak specifically about this game, the one thing I will say: ‘We lost in all the critical areas,’” Canales told reporters Monday. “We turned the ball over three times. They turned it over once. The game was gone by then, when we recovered that punt, so I can’t even count that one toward our turnover ratio. ... That alone was enough.”

Canales then added three other ways in which the Panthers were outplayed statistically:

▪ The Panthers lost in the explosive plays department. (An explosive play is any rush that gains 10-plus yards or any pass that gains 20-plus yards.) The Panthers only had four of such plays; the Saints had 12.

▪ The Panthers went 1-for-2 in the red zone; the Saints were perfect in their four trips.

▪ And the Panthers went a combined 2-for-13 on third and fourth down, whereas the Saints were 54%.

“So in all of these, if you just win one of these critical areas, you got a really good chance of winning,” Canales said. “We lost all four. And that’s when it gets lopsided. And the loss margin ends up that way because of that. So that’s our focus. Let’s hone in on these focuses. We’ve been crazy about the ball. We’re going to take it up another notch.”

Canales acknowledged there were other parts of the game that were concerning. And no doubt there were. The biggest instance, perhaps, was the fact that Bryce Young was sacked four times for 26 yards on Sunday. Canales said the coaching staff “didn’t do enough to give our guys simpler solutions” when faced with third-down pressure packages. “We had a plan; he had counters,” Canales said of Saints head coach Dennis Allen’s defense. “So we got outcoached in that regard, and I take that personal.”

But in the end, it came down those four critical areas: turnover margin, explosive plays, third-down conversions and red-zone efficiency — all of which the Panthers lost.

“You only have so much margin to really pour into and draw from, from your team,” Canales said. “And I felt like if our attention can just go to getting the football right. If our attention can just go out to go out and playing good, clean ball. ... Most of the time, we were in great position. Most of the time we executed at a high level. That’s really where the energy needs to go. Can we take care of the ball? Can we secure it in traffic? Can we do those things that are important?

“So I just have to be really cognizant of what I’m asking our team to do. ... The best response is, ‘Can we just get our football right?’”

‘A wake-up call’ to the NFL for Ja’Tavion Sanders

There were a bunch of plays from the season-opener that Panthers fans might remember for the wrong reasons. Among them is the one in which Chase Young, the Saints’ talented defensive end, bulldozed rookie Ja’Tavion Sanders on an inside run.

Sanders, the rookie tight end who got the nod to start with Tommy Tremble listed as out with a hamstring injury and Ian Thomas being moved to the injured reserve, called that play in particular “a wake up call” when asked about it.

“Honestly, it was a run play, and Chase Young just ran straight through my face,” Sanders said. “That was my real wake-up call to the NFL. Just knowing that you can’t out-muscle every guy. That these are all grown-ass men and they’re all strong as hell. So just trying to get stronger and better every day.”

Outside of that play, Sanders largely played well on Sunday. The fourth-round draft pick graded out OK in the run game, his coaches told him, and caught his only target for four yards.

“Definitely still got a lot of things to work on,” Sanders said. Among those things was his blocking technique, he said.

Xavier Woods explains why Sunday was ‘embarrassing’

A survey of Canales and rookies and veterans all point to the same thing: The Panthers are taking accountability for Sunday’s loss. Woods, the team’s veteran safety, was blunt about his assessment on Monday — clarifying that this team isn’t like last year’s 2-15 squad, even if the scoreboard didn’t show it in Week 1.

“Communication, scheme-wise, missed tackles,” Woods said. “A lot of missed tackles, a lot of errors on the defense. Everything we can correct, too. It’s nothing that we can’t correct. But definitely everything went wrong. I’m not just speaking for the defense. I’m speaking for three phases, offense and special teams as well. I think this is about as worse as we can get.”

He added: “I think everyone in this locker room, me included, has to look in the mirror. I mean, that loss, it was embarrassing. And just coming off the way we came off last year, not to speak on last year — we definitely wanted to come out and put on a better performance than we did this year. So everyone’s going to talk about this year’s team is last year’s team. But this is a new team this year.

“As far as the outside people, which we try to keep out, they’re going to say this is the same team, just because this is what we’re putting on film back to back.”

Quick hits

▪ The news of Derrick Brown’s potentially season-ending knee injury — one that circulated an already somber organization on Monday — hit different players in different ways Monday. TE Jordan Matthews said there are “certain names” that catch the league’s attention when something like this happens, and “Derrick Brown is one of those names.” Offensive tackle Ickey Ekwonu said he’s heartbroken that Brown won’t be able to fully showcase the work he put in this offseason. Canales said that Brown is seeking a second opinion Monday afternoon, and that the team will know more in the coming days.

▪ The Panthers ran the ball 20 times — only 16 of which were planned — after an offseason of the team’s playcaller saying the team would be “stubborn” about running the ball. Canales said the play distribution was less a product of what the Saints did and more a result of getting down so early and needing to be more aggressive.

▪ The Panthers announced Monday that they waived tight end Feleipe Franks, who was signed to the active roster from the practice squad on Sunday. Franks recovered the Saints’ muffed-punt fumble late in the game on Sunday, one of Carolina’s few bright spots in the game.