The Carolina Panthers is a hard NFL football pick to figure out with an NFL preseason wager.
Will this year’s Panthers be improved in live football odds or will they be yet another .500 team? At 44-1, the Panthers are underdogs in NFL preseason probabilities to win the Super Bowl.
Carolina is posted as 6-1 by the NFL preseason betting numbers to win the NFC South following New Orleans and Atlanta. The Panthers could have some value in the preseason as they take on four good teams. They open up at Baltimore on August 12th in an ESPN televised game. Then they host the New York Jets in Week 2 and the Tennessee Titans in Week 3 before concluding at Pittsburgh in their final preseason match.
Carolina has a fantastic rushing duo of DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart, so they can be a enjoyable squad to follow. Their defense may not get any better lacking top defensive end Julius Peppers who’s now in Chicago, and they didn’t play a lot of it as it was.
The Carolina Panthers will depend on Williams and Stewart again in 2010 but to succeed they need quarterback Matt Moore to perform well. Carolina was a menace when he did that late last season. The Carolina Panthers have a great receiver in Steve Smith but not a lot of options around him. The Panthers may turn the offense over to Jimmy Clausen, who they took in the NFL Draft, if Moore can not replicate the results he had last season. The Panthers have a great offensive line and 2 very great running backs so they are still going to run the ball.
The Carolina defense is going to have difficulty. They were not quite good last year and they’ll be lacking their best player, linebacker Thomas Davis, who tore his ACL in June. The Carolina Panthers are going to have difficulty stopping other squads without Davis and Peppers. Davis was basically fantastic last year and the Carolina Panthers basically can not replace him.
The Panthers likely do not have the defense to stop New Orleans and Atlanta, even though they have enough talent to contend in the NFC South, which means they are destined for third place. The Panthers might have a little value in NFL preseason probabilities though, specifically if Clausen plays well as the backup quarterback.
The Panthers franchise has just been in existence for 15 years, being created and joining the NFL as an expansion squad in 1995. So far they have gathered a history of 115-121, which isn’t the sort of history your average NFL gambling fan is going to want to take a chance on. Nevertheless, maybe this is a potentially excellent squad who requires a few years to find their stride, given that they did manage to make an appearance in 2004’s Super Bowl.
The Panthers started out with a 0-3 deficit last season. They managed to turn that around into an even 8-8 record, but that’s still not the kind of performance that a squad is going to expect out of itself. There’s still a possibility for the Panthers to become contenders in the 2010-11 NFL season, but that will count on a better performance from its participants.
