As we head into Week One of the NFL Season, the NFC South has made their 53 man rosters final, to a point, and will be looking ahead to their week one match ups. Here’s your weekly Through the Spy Glass: NFC South.

Notable Panthers cut

Over the weekend, the NFC South, along with the rest of the NFL, were forced to trim their rosters down to 53 men. Often times this means cutting ties with players that were previously considered valued assets. That was the case this year for the Panthers and defensive end Daeshon Hall.

Hall was a third round pick in last year’s draft. He was touted as a true pass rusher who would at least be a part of a strong defensive line rotation. However, after a year where he made zero impact in 2017, Carolina decided they were done trying to develop the former 77th overall pick.

While the Panthers do have a strong front seven, one which would be very difficult to move up the depth chart, this move was still surprising. An early third round pick is a valuable asset and for them to give up on Hall so quickly certainly raised some eyebrows.

The Saints add a running back

As I’m sure we all know at this point, Saints running back Mark Ingram is suspended for the first four games of the year. This put second year running back Alvin Kamara, who some questioned his ability to be the every down ball carrier, in a position where he’d have to take more on his shoulder than he did as a rookie. In order to ease some of that burden, New Orleans has added Mike Gillislee to be Kamara’s back up.

Gillislee has been a journeyman in his short career, now with his fourth team since 2013. However, he’s been pretty effective. For his career he averages 4.8 yards per carry. He has 16 career rushing touchdowns and a career high of eight in 2016. He’s a perfect fill in for Ingram and he gets into time just in time for game week vs the Bucs.

High flying Falcons?

Last year the Falcons offense failed to live up to expectations. This seems to have carried over into the preseason in 2018. If Atlanta isn’t careful then we could quickly see it become a trend in the regular season as well.

The Falcons open their season in Philadelphia; defending champions and a very strong returning defense. Then the host Carolina who has one of the best defensive front seven in the hand. This is a very difficult start to the season, particularly for an underwhelming offense. If the Falcons don’t start playing up to expectations then the could find themselves in an early season hole.

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