I never said it meant anything. I asked a question. I asked what was the reason for this? Because I do believe there's a reason for everything. McCoy is a good DT. Poe is a good DT. They got ran all over so I asked what happened there. I didn't see enough Panthers games to know.
Two-gap responsibility could be the primary reason. DEs and NTs in the 3-4 are charged in run defense with taking up blockers so the linebackers can run to the ball. They are essentially blocker magnets unless Carolina was running a hybrid 3-4 like Wade Phillips'.
There's two ways you can get hurt by the run in the typical 3-4 alignment. Either your tackles aren't good enough to force the offense to maintain double teams, so the linebackers can't stay clean. Or the linebackers aren't good enough to fill the gaps created by the double-teams.
Depending on which version of the 4-3 we run, at least one of the tackles should have one-gap responsibility. One of the problems for us last year was whichever tackle was single-blocked couldn't regular disrupt opponents' running game. Woods did a better job of it than the others, but he was doubled a lot on running plays.