Studs and duds from Panthers' Week 4 win over Lions - Panthers Wire

Despite coming in as underdogs, the Carolina Panthers stunned the Detroit Lions—winning a slugfest at home on Sunday night by a score of 32-26.

This wasn't the game for fans of hard-nosed defense. Offense, offense and more offense was the theme of the evening. The Panthers were led to victory by a sensational performance from starting quarterback Bryce Young, who looked as sharp and confident as a passer as we've ever seen him at this level.

Headlined by Young, here are our studs and duds from the Week 4 victory . . .

When a quarterback sees as much pressure as Young has this year, his numbers usually suffer. And somehow, Young is thriving.

Offensive coordinator Brad Idzik definitely deserves some of the credit, but Young’s decision-making and aggressiveness are light years better than in previous years. He dinked and dunked, sliced and diced and dropped long-range bombs on the Lions’ league-worst pass defense from start to finish. He began by completing his first 11 passes and stayed hot all evening.

Young ended the game having connected on 29 of his 41 throws for 329 yards, two touchdowns, no turnovers and a 110.7 passer rating.

Similar to what we saw last week in Cleveland, Hubbard got off to a slow start—at one point, averaging just 3.3 yards per carry. But for the second straight game, Hubbard exploded out of the locker room in the third quarter.

Hubbard broke off several big runs—breaking tackles and making defenders miss all over the field. He wound up dominating the Lions in the second half, finishing the game with 122 yards and two scores on 20 carries.

Carolina’s offensive line has been disappointing all season—and unsurprisingly, the absence of starting left guard Damien Lewis didn’t help. On the Panthers’ first drive, starting right guard Robert Hunt committed another bizarre penalty and center Luke Fortner got blown up—as did Corey Bullock, who replaced Lewis at left guard.

On the critical last drive, a basic procedural penalty on Stone Forsythe, who replaced an injured Monroe Freeling at right tackle, wiped out a huge catch by wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan.

In-between, the Panthers continued to give up constant pressure on Young—who was exceedingly quick getting the ball out, but still took 11 QB hits and three sacks.

With Jalen Coker and Xavier Legette out, the Panthers desperately needed their WR1 to play like a true WR1—and that’s exactly what they got. Before the first quarter was even over, McMillan already had a game-high four catches for 52 yards.

He kept making explosive gains all night, including a 32-yard touchdown in the second quarter on a gorgeous ball from Young. He wound up catching 14 of 15 targets, totaling 192 receiving yards and two touchdowns.

It will probably come as no surprise, but Carolina’s lackluster pass rush did not find much success against Detroit’s vaunted offensive line. More often than not, quarterback Jared Goff was free to stand still in the pocket and break down defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero’s unit.

Goff took just three total hits and was only sacked once all night, inside the two-minute warning.

After a week off, Lloyd was back to making a huge impact for the Panthers' defense. Evero has embraced using Lloyd as a pass rusher and run blitzer and it's paying off in a big way.

Lloyd was in the Lions' backfield throughout the game, disrupting tons of plays and helping limit star running back Jahmyr Gibbs to just 3.1 yards per carry. He posted nine tackles, second only to the next guy on the list . . .

As Cris Collinsworth said on the broadcast—God bless him, he's trying out there.

Normally a special teams ace, Evans was forced into the starting lineup thanks to the absences of Jaycee Horn and Mike Jackson. More often than not, he was simply overmatched, especially when asked to cover wide receivers Jameson Williams and Isaac TeSlaa.

Evans did manage one nice pass breakup in the end zone just before halftime, but surrendered a ton of yards in coverage.

Every point counts when you get into a shootout with a team as talented as Detroit—and Carolina lost a couple of important ones on special teams that could have cost them dearly.

Fitzgerald missed a pair of extra points. There's just no excuse for this, especially when there's only 2 mph winds.

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