A half-dozen notes from Monday’s media availability at Bank of America Stadium.

 

1.) Glass Half Full Ron

 

It’s understandable if your Monday was particularly dreary given the Panthers’ current place in the standings, but an NFL head coach can’t be all doom and gloom. So while “we’re not in a bad spot” may not be the best phrasing, Ron Rivera will keep searching for ways to salvage the season.

“The easiest thing to do is quit, but shoot, we’ve got 10 games to play,” he said. “Atlanta lost last night. So heck, we’re not in a bad spot. What we’ve got to do is take care of our business and doing the things we’re capable of. That starts now.”

 

2.) Realistic Ron

 

Because Rivera skews positive while refusing to toss his players under the bus, grains of salt are needed when he praises guys despite obvious struggles.

The pass rush hasn’t been much of one all season, yet “they’ve done good things” whenever the topic’s come up. But after six games, Rivera’s finally willing to come clean.

“Probably the biggest disappointment is we haven’t had the production we would have liked out of the front,” he said. “We’ve done a good job stopping the run, but that’s not what’s killing us. The thing that we have to do is find that productivity.

“We’ve got to find other ways to create those opportunities for us to put pressure on the quarterback.”

Defensive end Kony Ealy has been especially disappointing, but the slow-starter wants everyone to stay tuned.

“The more successful you are as a group — and we’ve been successful the past few years — it’s going to be harder and harder,” Ealy said. “Quarterbacks realize that. They know going into the game, ‘Hey, the Carolina Panthers are a defensive front that can disrupt a lot of plays.’

“We’re going to keep working and our pass rush will come alive.”

 

3.) Hand-in-Hand

 

“Everything starts up front” is a cliché for a reason, and for the Panthers, the pass rush is a house of cards. If it’s not working, the secondary is ripe for the picking. That’d be the case even if the four corners who played Sunday would’ve had more than one combined career start.

But that doesn’t take the secondary off the hook. Because the Saints knew that group was exploitable, they further alleviated the Panthers’ pass rush by:

• Using play-action on first and second down
• Chipping defensive ends and putting six, seven and even eight men in protection on 3rd-and-long situations

“I’ve been around football long enough to know that to send a blitz into those type of schemes is going to put the coverage out there and I don’t want to do that,” defensive coordinator Sean McDermott said. “So we decided to play coverage and we need to play better coverage when we’re in those windows.”

But how soon can the young secondary grow up?

“It’s like being a first-time parent,” McDermott said. “I’m hoping I’m a lot better parent with the second child and the third child than I was with the first. You make some mistakes early on and that’s experience.

“There’s no substitute for experience, so some of these young guys are going to make some mistakes. We’ve got to learn from those mistakes and we’ve got to grow. That process, unfortunately, doesn’t always happen overnight.”