The easiest way to look at it is from an outsider’s perspective. When you watch the same team week in and week out, you find issues with their offensive line. You take umbrage with the playcalling. You see the drops and the overthrows and the holding penalties and the missed tackles. But take a step back and let me tell you about a 10-4 team that is peaking at the right time.
This team has won six of their last seven games and is averaging over thirty points per game in the last six weeks. They’ve become one of the best rushing teams in the league, averaging over 180 yards per game as a team on the ground in the past six weeks and crossing the 200-yard barrier three times in that span; only three teams in the league have had three such performances in 2017. They’ve rushed for over 100 yards in eight straight games and lead the NFL in rushing yards over that stretch.
Two of their captains have returned from injury in the past two weeks after missing essentially the entire season and are performing to the same Pro Bowl standards they’ve set for themselves, with their All-Pro tight end corralling nine catches for 116 yards last week.
They’re the least penalized team in the league; their kicker has the highest field goal percentage in the NFL and was just named to the Pro Bowl; they’ve forced seven turnovers in the past two games and 14 in the past six; they’re third in the league in sacks; they’re ranked in the Top Five in both rush offense and defense; they’ve scored touchdowns on 76% of their red zone opportunities in the past five games, the second-highest rate in the NFL over that span.
Oh, and let me tell you about their quarterback. In the last six games, he’s had over 1,800 total yards and produced 21 touchdowns against two turnovers. It’s not surprising, because his December statistics have been spectacular in his career: a 75% winning percentage (21-7) and a 53/14 touchdown-to-interception ratio as he has rushed for over 1,300 yards and eleven touchdowns, one of only seven runners to reach those marks, the other six being running backs.
So are Cam Newton and the Panthers peaking at the right time?
“Every year, you can isolate different parts of the season and they’re entirely different stories,” Greg Olsen said about his team’s late season surge. “And the idea is to always be playing your best football late. You see a lot of teams get out to real strong starts [and then] they kind of fade back into the pack as the season progresses. For the most part, the last couple of years, we’ve been able to progressively get better as the season’s gone on.”
“I think that’s the sign of a good team.”
The team certainly has gotten better as the weather’s turned colder, from Newton’s numbers to Ron Rivera’s 22-7 December record to Jonathan Stewart having the third-most December yards in the NFL since 2008; the Panthers can clinch a playoff berth this Sunday with a victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and this will be the Panthers fourth playoff berth in Rivera’s seven-year tenure in Carolina.
With Olsen returning and McCaffrey having his biggest game of the season last week against Green Bay, the Panthers offense is running in high gear, and much of that has to do with Newton, who Ron Rivera said is playing like he did during his 2015 MVP campaign. “Other than the players around him, I won’t say there’s a lot of difference,” Rivera said after Newton had the sixth game of his career with four passing touchdowns. “He’s playing at high level right now and he played 2015 at a high level, so it’s pretty exciting right now.”
As Dirk Koetter and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers get ready to face Newton and the Panthers, he knows that it starts and ends with the man who wears the brimless hats. While there are many talented players on the Panthers offense, it doesn’t run without Newton.
“A ton has to do with Cam Newton and his versatility, his ability to beat you with his arm and with his legs,” Koetter said. “The fact that they can basically play option football and they’ve got interchangeable pieces; the way they move McCaffrey around, the versatility of Olsen. They’re definitely on a roll.”
The question is now, how long will that roll last?
