Offensive line failed to establish familiar identity

“We didn’t do a great job. And that starts with me,” Wilks said. “In preparation, thought we were ready, we didn’t go out and execute today in so many different fashions. . . . On the offensive side of the ball, we couldn’t create any momentum. Didn’t establish the running game. But we’ve all got to do a much better job in our protection and giving Sam the opportunity to be able to go through his progressions and get down the field. Third down was horrendous, to say the least, on both sides. . .

“So it’s nothing we can do about this game. This is behind us.”

Wilks also used his pull-no-strings approach when he talked to his team.

“He’s going to tell us what happened. We didn’t execute today; we didn’t win the line of scrimmage,” left tackle Ikem Ekwonu said. “We didn’t do a lot of the things that we wanted to do, things we knew we’d have to do to win. That’s a thing we respect. He’s always going to call it how he sees it, not going to sugarcoat anything. It helps us to refocus and know what we’ve got to work on.

“It’s not hard to hear. We’re all feeling pretty bad coming off this loss; we don’t want to get a ‘you tried.’ We’re all competitors, we want to hear what we did wrong, how to fix it, and I think coach Wilks did a great job of that.”

He’s delivered this message before. When the Panthers were feeling better about themselves early in his tenure, a home win over the Buccaneers was followed by an overtime loss at Atlanta. Then came the Bengals game, which got off the rails early and never returned. But in a short week, they responded by beating the Falcons on Thursday night in the same style which had become their custom. At least until Sunday.

“You have no option but turn the page,” said right guard Austin Corbett, ahead of Saturday’s visit from the Lions. “Short week, you have to focus on your body, get that right, turn it over and get to as close to 100 percent as you can. There’s no time to dwell on it.

“That is what it is. We put that out there. That’s who we are right now. So we have to go out there and change what’s on tape to re-establish who we are.”