Ask The Old Guy: Learning about who they are and who they aren't

CHARLOTTE — When you reach a certain point in your development, big reactions tend to seem like overreactions.

That's not just about getting old; that's about building a certain depth of perspective. And for the Panthers, the response to an ugly loss to the Bills has been kind of instructive.

There's not a lot of freaking out, inside the building or out (I bow to your Buddha nature, Mailbag readers). That 40-9 loss to the Bills was ugly, sure, but it was also enough of an outlier that it's hard to attach too much greater meaning to it. Allowing seven sacks and letting James Cook run for 216 was obviously bad. But the fact that they hadn't given up more than three sacks in a game all year, that they had allowed 131 rushing yards in the last three games combined, and that Cook broke a fran