Matt Rhule fell to 10-24 as the Panthers head coach with Sunday’s 26-24 loss to the Browns, but he tried to focus on the positives during his Monday press conference.
Rhule said he and the rest of the team is “disappointed, but we’re not discouraged” by the result, which came after the Panthers came back from 13 points down to briefly take the lead in the fourth quarter of the game. Rhule tried to focus on the way the team bounced back from a bad start and figuring out how the Panthers could get that kind of effort on a more consistent basis.
“Every coach is upset with the result of the game,” Rhule said, via the team’s website. “At the same time, to play that badly on offense in the first half, and still came back and had a chance to win the football game. On defense, so many plays we want back and still have a chance to win the game. So we have to have a really good week, and we have to play much better. I think who we were in the fourth quarter is who we’d like to be. We just have to do it for 60 minutes. When we do that, we’ll be a good team.”
The Panthers have a road game with the Giants in Week Two and a more cohesive performance would be a good way to keep others from becoming discouraged about the direction Rhule is moving the team in his third season.