Panthers know they have to find answers for the run game up front

To Hunt’s point, the run game did get clicking late in the third quarter, carrying over into the fourth. After registering a mere 18 yards on the ground in the first half, Chuba Hubbard (who finished with 19 rushes for 82 yards) and AJ Dillon (four rushes for 16 yards) both picked up chunk yardage on respective drives to put the Panthers in field goal range, which Ryan Fitzgerald cashed in on.

Then, Hubbard had three straight touches for 30 total yards that helped put Carolina just outside the red zone. A couple of chunk yardage passes later, Young found John Metchie III for the Panthers’ only touchdown drive of the day.

“Finally we were able to kind of settle in towards the end of the game and really the feature of that touchdown drive was the run game, the play actions, the offense that we know,” said coach Dave Canales.

But, also to Hunt’s point, it might have been too little too late.

“We get the run game going a little better, I guess that would look good, and that’s me saying that from an O-line standpoint,” said Hunt. “I mean, it’s probably everybody else will have their own opinions on what they think, but, for us, I think we just get it going because it was there.

“And we saw it later on. We saw what it could look like. We just had to get it going. So we just can’t be slow, man. That’s kind of what happened. We started slow, but also we finished with a, . . . we tried to finish anyway, but it just didn’t go our way.”