The Carolina Panthers offensive line was distraught with their performance in their preseason opener against the New York Jets.
From veteran offensive lineman Cameron Erving to some of the young bucks in the room, the unit felt like they let their quarterbacks down, as well as offensive line coach James Campen. Speaking with the media afterwards, Erving kept it real, not sugarcoating the way the unit performed.
“Camp called us in, and we just talked. We had to keep it real with each other; the s— wasn’t good enough,” Erving said, via the team’s website. “Top to bottom, it doesn’t matter if it was preseason, regular season, or offseason. The s— was not good enough at any level, from any position, myself included, especially myself. All we can do is come back, try to regroup, and f—ing fix it.
“We know we did not play to our standard. So all that needed to be said was that s—‘s not good enough. It’s not about who’s in it or who’s called it; it just needed to be said and was said. … We’ve got to just attack it. A lot of things on tape we’ve got to fix. So that’s the goal going into next week.”
Erving certainly isn’t alone in that sentiment. Center Bradley Bozeman decided against holding his tongue as well following the team’s performance.
“Yeah, just wasn’t good enough today,” Bozeman said. “We’ve got to get it cleaned up. Just got to fix it. That’s on us.”
Nevertheless, veteran guard Justin McCray has played for Campen at multiple stops, believing in his vision, so he knows that the standard is much higher than that of which was shown against the Jets.
“He’s disappointed for sure because we did not do the things we needed to do today,” McCray said, regarding his coach. “He’s all about work. So we’re going to get back to work on Monday, and he’s going to be extremely hard on us because we should be hard on ourselves. We know that isn’t our standard at all. He’s going to be working us hard like he always does. We’re just going back to the drawing board.
“At the end of the day, you can tell Campen loves his players, loves his guys, but if we’re not doing the things he’s coaching, and we’re not performing the way he knows we can and should, then, of course, he’s going to be a little upset. So we try to keep him as least upset as possible by just doing what he asks you to do, playing hard, and finishing. His main thing is finishing, and we’ve got to do a better job of doing those things.”
Thankfully it was only the first preseason game, and Carolina has a ton of time to fix their offensive line play. Still, it doesn’t feel good for the Panthers to get dominated the way they did by the Jets defense on Saturday.
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