Smiles have been in short supply around the Panthers the last couple of years, but there were plenty of them in Las Vegas on Sunday afternoon.
Andy Dalton threw for 319 yards and three touchdowns in his first start since the benching of quarterback Bryce Young and the Panthers rolled to a 36-22 win over the Raiders. The team picked up more yards than they did in their first two games combined and Dalton’s veteran presence under center had the impact that the Panthers were hoping to see in the wake of the quarterback change.
Dalton called it “a heavy week” because of that change, but Sunday’s win lifted the weight off of a lot of shoulders.
“I mean, it shows what we can do,” Dalton said, via the team’s website. “And I think that’s for us, it’s like, all right, we showed what our standard is now, we know what we can do and the goal is to be able to prove that each week. And for us, this was a big win, first one of the year and now it’s like, OK, let’s go. We know the possibilities out there. We’ve got to go play to that standard.”
Dalton will welcome his first NFL team to town next weekend and the key to beating the Bengals will be to build on Sunday’s success while holding onto the calm, confident approach that the team brought into the game. The quarterback should be a plus to that effort, which is a welcome change to the landscape in Carolina.
