Takeaways from the Carolina Panthers' confusing preseason loss to Houston Texans

Young wound up going 0/2 on his pass attempts and took a sack, finishing with a 39.6 passer rating for the afternoon. 

There’s always a case to keep your franchise quarterback in bubble wrap during the preseason, but given how much Young struggled the first two games of last year this does raise questions about what exactly Canales was thinking. Perhaps he’ll change his mind about not playing his starters in Carolina’s preseason finale next week against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Andy Dalton suffers elbow injury

The quarterback situation did not improve from there. Andy Dalton entered the game in the second quarter and threw four pass attempts, completing two of them before he went down with an elbow injury and had to be taken out of the game and was quickly ruled out to return.

Dalton ended the game 2/4 for 22 yards and a 66.7 passer rating. The good news is that Dalton was spotted on the sidelines just after chatting with Young and Jack Plummer, and didn’t appear to be seriously injured.

Run game stuck in neutral

While their quarterback situation was in flux, Carolina found that they could not lean on the thing that they hung their hat on last year. Every time the Panthers tried to get their run game going, they were unable to make any progress against a lethal Texans defensive front-seven. At halftime they'd only managed 21 total yards on nine carries. Even when they could break off a good run, they got called back due to holding penalties.

In the end starter Chuba Hubbard could only post four yards on two carries, their highly-touted new backup Rico Dowdle (who had over 1,000 yards last season) had just two yards on two carries. The top performer was rookie Trevor Etienne, who ran better than his stats suggest but still only ended up with 18 yards on seven carries.

Jack Plummer takes off, crashes

After a promising start to his day including several completions in a row, third-string undrafted quarterback Jack Plummer came plummeting back down to earth. Plummer's performance against the Texans peaked with this lazer up the seam to tight end Tommy Tremble in the third quarter.

Unfortunately, that was literally the only highlight for Carolina's offense the entire game. Plummer wound up throwing two interceptions and was unable to produce a single touchdown drive, even going against Houston's scrubs on defense. Plummer finished with a line of 10/14 for just 82 yards, two sacks and a 46.4 passer rating.

Panthers rookie flashes

Considering the circumstances Carolina's defense did an admirable job of keeping the entire house form collapsing in on itself. Still, there wasn't much to celebrate on this side of the ball, either. The one player who did flash was rookie edge rusher Princely Umanmielen, who made some nice efforts in run defense and came close to a couple sacks.

When the game mercifully came to an end, Umanmeilen had three tackles and two quarterback hits.