It’s time for the woeful Carolina Panthers to start a new QB Sunday at Arizona

The Carolina Panthers have a complicated long-term commitment to Sam Darnold, one that will be addressed in full this offseason.

But their most important short-term commitment is to their other players, and their fans, and the idea of winning games at this moment.

And that’s why Darnold, for both his own good and the good of the team, must be benched against Arizona on Sunday in favor of backup quarterback P.J. Walker.

Darnold’s three-interception performance in a 24-6 loss to New England on Sunday was horrendous. He looked the opposite of confident, like a sixth-grader at his first middle school dance. His only TD pass went to Patriots cornerback J.C. Jackson, on an 88-yard pick-6 going the wrong way.

If I’m Panthers head coach Matt Rhule, I watch that tape and decide I can’t look my own team in the face Monday at the team meeting and tell them Darnold is still the right quarterback.

Maybe in two weeks he is. Maybe in two months he is. But right now, Darnold still is nursing some sort of shoulder injury, he’s making the worst decisions he has all season and he needs at least a one-week sabbatical. Let Walker start, as he probably should have Sunday (Darnold, straight out of the concussion protocol and also with a somewhat injured throwing shoulder, was a surprise starter).

If Walker stinks it up in Arizona, that’s no big loss.

Let’s be honest: The Panthers (4-5) almost certainly are going to lose that one to Super Bowl-contending Arizona, regardless of who plays QB.

But Walker might get Robby Anderson going — the two played together at Temple. He might run around and make some plays. Walker might do something — anything — to make the Panthers offense a little better than unwatchable.

That’s what the Panthers were Sunday: Unwatchable. And that’s despite the return of tailback Christian McCaffrey. Carolina’s offense only got two field goals, and that’s after two turnovers caused by the Panther defense set Carolina up inside the Patriots’ 35. The Patriots’ end zone might as well have been guarded by a moat and dragons.

But this was nothing new. Under Darnold, Carolina has scored exactly one TD in the past three games. The Panthers have had 34 offensive possessions in those three contests, and 33 have ended short of the end zone.

As for Darnold himself, he had three consecutive 300-yard passing games earlier in the season. He looked good. But here are his passing yardage totals for the past five games: 177, 207, 112, 129, 172.

Even worse, he has two TD passes in those five past games.

And eight interceptions.

Eight — that’s the killer number. That’s the one Rhule keeps referring to when he said things like this in his postgame press conference. From Rhule:

▪ “I don’t want to lay things on one person but we just can’t continue to keep throwing the ball up. We have to protect the football.”

▪ “Those are decision-making things we have talked about and talked about and talked about, and here we are at Game 9 of the season and it hasn’t happened.”

▪ “As bad as it was, it still just comes down to throwing the ball up in the air, and we just can’t be that team. We never wanted to be that team. We can’t be that team. And unfortunately, we were that team in the second half today.”

Rhule benched Darnold two weeks ago in the fourth quarter of a similarly awful game when Carolina lost 25-3 to the New York Giants. This time he kept Darnold in to “play through” his mistakes, but it never got much better.

“I can’t live with turning the ball over like that,” Darnold said.

Darnold was also asked why he believed he should still be the Panthers’ starting QB.

“I mean, I am not going to sit here and tell you guys why I should be the quarterback,” Darnold said. “I believe in myself and that’s all that matters.”

The Panthers have messed up the quarterback position on a regular basis since Cam Newton started getting hurt, and that goes for the Rhule regime, too. (Rhule is now 9-16 through 25 games as an NFL head coach.)

Teddy Bridgewater? A one-year mistake.

Not drafting Mac Jones or Justin Fields as insurance in April? Another mistake.

And even though I would contend the Darnold trade was a reasonable price for a quarterback at that stage of his career, picking up his 2022 contract option (for $18.858 million) now seems like an enormous mistake.

Rhule was asked after the game if Darnold still gives Carolina the best chance to win.

“I’ll watch the tape before I make some big statement,” Rhule said. “To be quite honest, I want to make sure I see everything and consider all factors.”

That’s a smart answer, with the heat from a game still burning.

But with some time to think about it, Rhule should now make the smart call. This isn’t the long-term decision Carolina will have to make in the spring when the Panthers surely will need to draft a quarterback with their first pick. This is just for right now.

Anderson yelled at Darnold after he threw his third interception, telling the quarterback he had to “tighten up.” But all Anderson was really doing was voicing the frustration everyone has with Darnold.

It’s time to bench Darnold for a week, and start Walker.

It might get better for the Panthers.

It can’t get much worse.