After spending the season “looking for us,” the Panthers are having a hard time explaining the loss

Veteran defensive end Jadeveon Clowney said last week that the Panthers would learn from each other over time. And that’s a difficult assessment because that day saw the Panthers move into seventh place on the league’s all-time points list.

But he also didn’t point fingers or question the efforts, instead saying he wanted to be here to help set things right. But he said they “missed too many tackles” and made other palpable errors. He was in the training room when Canales addressed the team, but when asked what could be said after a game like that, he summed up his coach almost verbatim.

“We have to finish,” Clowney said. “We weren’t like that and you all know we have to get back to work and prepare. We’ve got another week where we’ll still be trying to find out about the boys and tell you about them.”

So in my eyes they are evaluating, and I want to be on the positive side of the evaluation. So I can go out there and play hard. No record, no score, none of it actually matters to me. I’ll play hard; I will do that.

Again, the effort didn’t matter, although Woods admitted early in the game that they were “flat” as the Bucs scored on their first five possessions. But aside from a few brief moments late in the year when they got a few stops at home against the Chiefs and Bucs and on the road against the Eagles, this defense consistently ranks near the bottom of the league.

“We didn’t give ourselves a chance,” Woods said.