Dave Canales Says Panthers Have to be More 'Consistent' on Defense After Loss to Bears

For the first half of Sunday's Week 1 matchup between the Chicago Bears and Carolina Panthers, it was a shootout between two teams that are coming off division titles. 

They exchanged touchdowns throughout and were tied at 31 with Chuba Hubbard's touchdown run. But then the wheels fell off for the Panthers as the Bears outscored the Panthers 28-6 to finish the game enroute to a 59-37 win. Chicago made history by scoring 59 points and racking up over 552 total yards of offense.

Led by Caleb Williams who had four total touchdowns and a rushing attack that saw D'Andre Swift rush for 124 yards and three touchdowns as well as Kyle Monangai's 100 yards a a touchdown, Carolina's defense had no answer for Ben Johnson's offense. 

It left head coach Dave Canales wanting more consistency from his side after the game. 

"Absolutely. (We) can't be streaky like that. Got to be consistent," Canales said after the game. "That's what we've been talking about. We'll get back to that and look at some of the things on film and make sure that we're down-in and down-out ready to go."

The Panthers need more consistency from all three phases of the game. Once the 9 minute mark of the third quarter hit, the Panthers faded. It wasn't like the Panthers saw anything they didn't expect from the Bears, either.

"It was execution. There was a couple little wrinkles, but most of the stuff fit within what they've done," Canales said. "They've done a lot in the last year or so. We had a ton of film to be able to watch and look at. Started off with the run game, and certainly on our side, on the offensive side, we didn't get the run game going either. We took advantage of turnover on downs to turn that into points. They had a fumble as well, so we were able to capitalize on some of those things, but it was certainly a collective group. That starts with me."

The good news for Carolina is that it's Week 1. There is plenty of time to clean these things up and it's a long season. 

But there's certainly some alarming things we saw in Week 1 that if they aren't fixed, it could make for a disappointing season in Charlotte.