Frank Reich explains offense’s lack of deep throws in Week 4 loss

For the third straight outing under rookie quarterback Bryce Young, the Carolina Panthers had a problem pushing the ball downfield. So, what’s the issue about?

Head coach Frank Reich tried to explain that following the team’s 21-13 loss to the Minnesota Vikings, one where his passing offense amassed just 149 yards.

“Because of their alignment, because of the threat of the blitz, you had to build in some short stuff and be ready,” he said. “It’s kinda similar to what the Chargers did last week. They had 400 yards passing and most of it was just short dink-and-dunk.

“I’m not gonna go into all the strategy and all the reasons why that is. You gotta have a mix. We had some shots called. We had a few shots called. Some we had to check out of for various reasons. We got the one plenty on the one deep shot that we took. So, we just gotta execute better overall.”

In addition to stubbornly sticking to the run, which resulted in all of 83 yards on 31 attempts against a stout Minnesota front, the Panthers seemed intent on keeping it simple through the air. Carolina chalked up just two passing plays of at least 20 yards, both of which emanated from short throws.

Young finished his afternoon having completed 25 of his 32 throws for 204 yards, which was good enough for only 6.4 yards per attempt. Reich was then asked if it’s harder to get those deep shots while trying to develop a rookie passer.

“Yeah, it’s harder to do,” he said. “It’s definitely harder to do. But that’s what we gotta do if that’s what it takes. There’s opportunities. It’s just not shots, right? There’s the 40-yard chunk plays—we certainly wanna get more of those. I don’t know how many we had. We had a couple of those little in-routes to [Adam] Thielen today that we hit that went for 15, 20 yards. Those are nice chunk plays. You can win getting those.”

Alas, they did not win and they did not get much of those.