Granted, there isn’t a rich history to draw from in terms of “quality football” on Thursdays, but you have to think that this being an actual Sunday Night production, coupled with the fact that we actually haven’t had a real game in what feels like decades, I’m pretty sure I would have been enamored if it was the Vikings playing against the Titans (which we’ll actually receive this Sunday! Wooo?). That being said, the game was actually pretty good on the scale of Graham Gano to those muscles in your arm that benefit the most if you’re throwing a penalty flag. (I mean, there were so many flags this game, it felt more like a United Nations summit, amirite?) Both teams looked sluggish throughout though, which was probably to be expected in the first game of the season. The Broncos and Panthers burned a lot of timeouts too, each for their own derpy reasons. For Denver, they seemingly forgot to count and had multiple downs where 12 men were on the field. For Carolina, five total timeouts from both halves were wasted because of terrible clock management by Newton (though I’m pretty sure Jerry Richardson was only upset with three-fifths of them). In fact, Andy Reid probably uploaded all these timeouts to his PornHUB account. That being said, I have to add that I found myself pretty frustrated with the continued non-calls on what were some brutal hits to Cam Newton. There were at least three blatant roughing the passer calls that were missed (or ignored?), and the last hit, late in the fourth quarter that actually drew a flag (you can see it after the jump), which was a helmet spear of all things, was offset by an intentional grounding. Oh, okay then, that makes sense. But the game was close throughout and quite entertaining, and due to the fact that Trevor Siemian flirted between the lines of profoundly mediocre and downright awful, the Panthers had a chance with seven seconds to win the game with a 44-yard field goal attempt in altitude… so yeah, we know how that turned out. Congrats to your 0-1 undefeated Panthers! Wait a second…