Studs and duds from Panthers’ season-opening loss to Browns

Panthers RB Christian McCaffrey didn’t see his usual workload on Sunday. But when he was on the field, he made a noticeable difference.

Sunday’s game was a harsh fallback to reality for what has been a poor last few seasons for the Carolina Panthers and head coach Matt Rhule. Thoughts of revenge and enthusiasm were dusted and downed as quickly as they came up, with the team imploding far too early on in the afternoon.

There were a lot of lessons to be learned from this loss. And while there were certainly a lot of failures to be had, there were also some bright points on both sides of the ball.

Here is some of the good, as well as the bad, from Week 1 defeat at the hands of the Cleveland Browns.