Panthers vs Lions: 5 Questions with Pride of Detroit

Week 4 of the young 2026 NFL season already has the Carolina Panthers and Detroit Lions trending in different directions. The Lions are playoff contenders and quiet Super Bowl hopefuls. Your 2025 NFC South champions, on the other hand, are just hoping that there are fewer injuries in the 13 weeks after their Week 5 bye than there were in the four weeks prior to it.

That doesn't mean that Lions fans are taking this week for granted or that the Lions themselves haven't struggled with their more fair share of inuries. Ryan Matthews from Pride of Detroit answered five of my questions about the Lions to try to give us their side of this story. These answers were the sober, attentive reflections of a fan whose team has only very recently known success, at least relative to their history. In short, they did not fill me with confidence and optimism in the Panthers chances of catching Detroit in the midst of a cat nap.

The Carolina Panthers are quite literally half the team they expected to be when they started training camp. How are the Lions faring with the injury bug this deep into the 2026 season?

The Lions' 2026 roster has bites going back to 2025 that have really put them in a bind on the backend of their defense. Kerby Joseph and Brian Branch, once considered to be the top safety duo in the NFL, suffered season-ending injuries last season, and they're still on the PUP heading into this Week 4 matchup. Detroit's secondary has been lit up three straight weeks in a row, and while the cornerbacks haven't been playing their best ball, missing both Joseph and Branch in their respective safety positions has made for some tough viewing when the Lions defense takes the field.

Avonte Maddox, a veteran defensive back, was re-signed to compete for a spot in Detroit's secondary. He earned it in the summer. Maddox played some free safety, box safety, and in the slot as a nickelback to start the season, but he suffered an injury in Week 2 that put him on injured reserve for the foreseeable future. Thomas Harper is another player who played his way into a spot in the secondary, but he, too, suffered an ankle injury in Week 2's game against Buffalo that put him on IR as well. That leaves Chuck Clark, a veteran on his fourth stop in as many seasons, to hold down the single-high safety looks for the most part, and safeties coach Jim O'Neil trusts him in that role. Alongside him is Christian Izien, a player who looked like he was shot out of a cannon in his season debut last week against the Jets. Izien had a groin injury crop up at the end of training camp, but he's a guy who many expected to play the Branch role: box safety, in the slot, up near the line of scrimmage. Izien led the Lions in tackles (11) and finished second in defensive stops (4) against the Jets in Week 3.

Unfortunately—or fortunately depending on how you're looking at it—Panthers fans won't get to see the return of Cade Mays this weekend in Carolina after he had a freak wrist injury near the beginning of camp. Otherwise, the Lions have been pretty fortunate with injuries!

The Lions are already on their second offensive coordinator since Ben Johnson left for the Chicago Bears. What are your hopes and worries three games into the Drew Petzing era?

For all the "Dan Campbell is a Ben Johnson merchant" and "Detroit sure misses Ben Johnson" talk, Drew Petzing's offense has hung 31 points in three consecutive weeks. After a bit of a slow start in terms of opening drives and third-down efficiency, the early returns on Petzing are pretty promising. Jared Goff looks comfortable in the offense, getting into favorable checks and commanding the group. The offensive line dealt with some injuries in the first couple of weeks to their starting left guard—Christian Mahogany—and starting right tackle—rookie Blake Miller—but they looked like a really solid and steady unit when they returned in Week 3.

Some mild concerns for me, and they're admittedly a bit nitpicky, are play calls near the goal line. Last week, nearing the end of the half and the Jets with just one timeout remaining, Detroit called a designed rollout for Goff on first down that he effectively threw away and a fade route to Amon-Ra St. Brown that did result in a touchdown. It left the Jets with 1:36 on the clock and a timeout still at their disposal, but would've liked to see the Lions get to their bread and butter by running the football, forcing the Jets to burn their timeout, and playing with their aggressive, four-down approach on offense. Which seems to run counterintuitive to my second nitpick about the offense: the number of run plays on second-and-10. Petzing's explanation referred back to Detroit's four-down approach on offense, but against the Bills, it felt like Buffalo knew it was coming, but Detroit still stuck with it, leaving them in plenty of third-and-long situations.

Again, early results are trending in a positive way, those concerns are mild at most, but the Lions feel like they're in a much better spot on offense than they were a season ago.

What's with barely beating the Saints and the Jets? I thought y'all were supposed to be a good team.

Is the suggestion here that the Saints and Jets aren't good football teams? Because New Orleans went into Baltimore and took home a victory, and then they nearly pulled out last week's game against a 3-0 Las Vegas Raiders team. The Jets are some clock mismanagement away from being a 2-1 football team themselves, so I think Detroit has actually played some pretty tough teams that will challenge for the playoffs in their respective conferences.

A rain game where one team is looking to establish a struggling rushing attack against another team that surrendered almost 300 yards in their last home game doesn't sound like a good time. Any chance Jahmyr Gibbs is on vacation or enough of a Wizard of Oz style witch where he isn't allowed to get wet?

Jahmyr Gibbs figures to be available come rain, sleet, snow, or such poor field conditions that the NFLPA has to file a grievance .

You're going to predict a Lions win, there's no doubt or shame in that. The interesting question is how big of a win do you think the Lions will have and does that differ from the expectations of the broader Lions fanbase?

There's no way Dan Campbell will have this Lions team overlooking this Panthers team, and I'm not going to either. Their passing attack is explosive, their run defense against running backs has actually been pretty solid the past two weeks, and they're likely getting Devin Lloyd back for this one. While this one could very well become a shootout—weather permitting—it should be a more tightly contested game. It wouldn't surprise me if the Lions win by less than one score, and it wouldn't shock me if the Panthers pull off the upset as home underdogs coming off a disappointing loss in Week 3.