Midway through the 2020 NFL campaign, the Carolina Panthers have been a lot more competitive than many would have predicted before the season.
But despite a three-game winning streak after an 0-2 start, the Panthers have lost three-straight and hold a 3-5 record with eight games remaining.
“I think Bill Parcells said it best: ‘You are what your record says you are,’” head coach Matt Rhule said.
After Carolina's Thursday night loss to Atlanta, Rhule had a long weekend to sit down and take a look back at the first eight games to find the good, the bad and what the team has evolved in during the first half of the year.
What he found didn't line up with owner David Tepper's goals of being a consistent team.
"When you look at this year, to lose the first two, then to win three and now to lose three, we don't want to be a team of streaks," Rhule said. "We want to be a team that's up and down. (We're) trying to fix the football but trying to make sure we have the same mentality week-in and week-out and day-in and day-out and how we can do that better?"
On the field, Rhule saw two main components that have to be fixed in the second half of the season: More consistent offense in the second half and being better on third-down offense and defense.
The way to fix the offense is more consistent offensive line play. In the last three games, Carolina has given up eight sacks 14 quarterback hits.
"When the quarterback has been under duress, we haven't been the team we want to be," Rhule said. "You have a game like Thursday night and it kind of puts you back at the drawing board in terms of hey we got to get this fixed. When we protect the quarterback, we have been really good.
"When Teddy Bridgewater is upright, he’s playing like one of the best quarterbacks in the National Football League so we’ve got to protect our quarterback.”
On the bright side, Rhule believes there has been a lot of improvement on defense even with the plethora of injuries the last few weeks.
"I think the biggest area that we've improved in has been our red zone defense," Rhule said. "Even the other night, getting key stops in the red zone, holding people to field goals, forcing people to kick field goals and keep us in the game, that's one of the areas that I've seen growth in.
"The other thing on defense is getting pressure on the quarterback ... I think our pressure is getting better and better each week. Especially the four-man rush."
Bridgewater on the other hand wanted to keep some of the first-half notes the team has taken "in-house" but said the team is doing all they can to be a better team each-and-every week.
"We've done so many things well these first eight games but we've also done some things not so well," Bridgewater said. "This was a good weekend for us to self-scout, reevaluate some things and come up with a plan moving forward for the second half of the season.
"We just want to make sure we're trending in the right direction."
The schedule only gets more difficult to start the second half of the season and the Panthers will travel to face the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday.
The offense should get a boost with All-Pro running back Christian McCaffrey looking like he'll return after missing the past six weeks with an ankle injury and defensively, cornerback Rasul Douglas was activated off the reserve/COVID-19 list, which should help Carolina's secondary that has over 400 yards passing in the two games he missed.
"There are time where we've thrown flashes of being an elite offense," Bridgewater said. "If we could just be a more consistent and better second-half football team, I think we'll take the right steps to be a good football team, a great football team. When all 11 guys are doing their job, it looks like a well-oiled machine. When we get out of character sometimes, that's when things go wrong."