I'm still trying to figure out exactly what the Carolina Panthers are.

I thought I was getting there before Sunday. Carolina had won two straight, Bryce Young was playing well and even a defense that had some rough moments earlier in the season seemed to be settling down. Then Tampa Bay came to Charlotte and beat the Panthers 43-13.

There wasn't one thing that went wrong, either. Carolina turned it over four times, gave up 258 rushing yards and allowed five sacks. By halftime, the Panthers were down 33-6 and the game was pretty much over. As I wrote in my three takeaways from the loss, the Panthers were bad on offense, bad on defense and even special teams got in on it.

Now they have to turn around and head to Lambeau Field on a short week. Maybe that's not the worst thing after a game like Sunday. I'm not sure sitting around thinking about that loss for seven days would've helped much anyway.

There are three things I'll be watching Thursday night.

1. What does Bryce Young look like after Sunday?

Young had his worst game of the season against Tampa Bay, finishing 14-of-27 for 163 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions. He also lost a fumble on a sack that Tampa Bay returned for a touchdown.

What made it so surprising was that we hadn't seen much of that from Young this season. He had thrown only two interceptions through Carolina's first five games before throwing two more Sunday.

I'm not putting all five sacks on him. The offensive line had a bad afternoon, too, and losing Taylor Moton to a broken fibula certainly doesn't make me feel any better about the group heading into Green Bay. But Young made some mistakes Sunday that he can't make again.

For me, this isn't about whether he throws for 300 yards or puts up some huge stat line at Lambeau. I want to see him take care of the football, make the throws that are there and not let one ugly game turn into two.

Young has played well enough for most of this season that I'm willing to look at Tampa Bay as one really bad afternoon. How he responds Thursday will tell us a little more.

2. Was the run defense we saw Sunday an exception?

This might be the one I'm most interested in because I thought Carolina had started to figure out its problems against the run.

The Panthers allowed only 213 rushing yards combined against Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia. Tampa Bay ran for 258 by itself. The Buccaneers ran it 49 times, tying the most rushing attempts ever by a Panthers opponent, and Baker Mayfield attempted only 11 passes because Tampa Bay never had much reason to stop running the football.

That's a pretty dramatic change from where things seemed to be headed. Before the Tampa Bay game, I wrote about how Carolina's run defense finally looked like it was turning a corner. The Panthers had held back-to-back opponents under 50 rushing yards.

Now Josh Jacobs is waiting for them in Green Bay.

I'd be surprised if the Packers don't test Carolina early. Why wouldn't they? Until the Panthers show that what happened Sunday isn't going to happen again, teams are going to make them prove they can stop it.

I don't expect Carolina to completely shut Jacobs down. I do expect the Panthers to make Green Bay work a lot harder for its rushing yards than Tampa Bay had to.

If the Packers can line up, hand the ball off and control the game without asking much from their passing game, Carolina is going to have a hard time winning at Lambeau.

3. What if Tampa Bay wasn't just one bad Sunday?

This is the bigger question hanging over the game for me. I'm willing to give a team a bad week because it happens in the NFL, and Carolina isn't good enough yet for me to expect it to play well every time out.

But that Tampa Bay game bothered me because so many of the problems showed up at the same time. The turnovers came back, the offensive line struggled, the run defense disappeared and special teams made mistakes. It looked a lot more like some of the problems we saw earlier in the season than the team that had just won two straight.

That's why I came away from Sunday wondering if the Panthers had shown us who they really are. I'm not ready to go that far after one game, but I don't necessarily need Carolina to beat Green Bay to feel better about this team, either. Going into Lambeau on a short week is a tough assignment, especially with some of the injuries the Panthers are dealing with.

What I do need to see is a team that looks a lot more like the one we were watching before Sunday. Protect the football, don't let Green Bay run it whenever it wants and don't spend another first half digging a hole that's impossible to climb out of.

If Carolina goes to Lambeau and does those things, I can live with Tampa Bay being one of those games you throw away and move on from.

If it looks anything like Sunday again, I'm going to have a much harder time doing that.