The Panthers offense did not look right last week against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, causing Panthers fans across the nation to fret and worry about how the Panthers could take an offense that appeared unable to either run or pass effectively into the playoffs and make a run towards the Super Bowl.
A 22-10 loss to the Falcons did absolutely nothing to assuage anyone’s fears as they must now head to New Orleans to face the Saints, a team they’ve lost to twice by a combined score of 65-34, in the first round of the NFC playoffs. The Panthers and Saints will face off at 4:40 PM on Sunday.
The Panthers offense looked ineffectual and anemic, the statistics are a borderline nightmare for the offense:
- Cam Newton: 14/34, 180 yards, three interceptions
- Greg Olsen: one catch on nine targets, 10 yards total
- Running Backs: Cameron Artis-Payne, Christian McCaffrey and Fozzy Whittaker combined for 12 carries for 30 yards
- Wide receivers aside from Funchess: 3 catches for 51 yards
- Time of possession – 25:18; Panthers came into the game second in the league, averaging 32:45 per game
- Averaged 4.1 yards per offensive play; remove Cam Newton’s 11 rushes for 59 yards and that drops to 3.85 per play.
- Ten points were the fewest since the Week 7 17-3 loss to Chicago.
“It’s pretty self-explanatory, we played pretty bad on offense,” said Greg Olsen after the game. “We didn’t play well enough to win; we can lie to ourselves, but we didn’t play well enough offensively to win.”
“It’s the NFL. We’ve got to find ways to score points, we’ve got to find ways to move the ball, we’ve got to find ways to be more efficient, run or pass. I think it’s more than that we’ve kind of lost our stride the last couple of weeks.”
When the Panthers offense struggled the past two weeks, the defense has picked it up, holding Tampa Bay to only one touchdown and four field goals last week to give the Panthers a 22-19 win, exhibiting just enough of a bend-don’t break attitude to allow Carolina to hang around and score points when it mattered. This week, it seemed as if the game was following the same script, with the Falcons driving multiple times but only having one touchdown, a 19-yard pass on their first drive from Matt Ryan to Devonta Freeman, to show for it.
But last week, down 19-15 to the Buccaneers, Bucs kicker Patrick Murray missed a 51-yard field goal late in the game to give the ball back to the Panthers down a score; they promptly went down and scored on a Cam Newton touchdown to get the win. This week, with the game following almost the exact same script, Falcons kicker Matt Bryant trotted onto the field to attempt his fourth field goal, a 56-yarder that would put the Falcons up 19-10 with just over six minutes left.
And he nailed it.
The game would end with two consecutive drives that finished with Cam Newton interceptions, and the Falcons would qualify for the postseason as the sixth seed.
“When you force a team like this to kick field goals, you love that opportunity,” Ron Rivera said after the game. “When you go back and look at it, based on the score, you score two touchdowns and you win the game. It’s that simple. We didn’t, and that’s on us. We’ve got to give them credit, they played well.”
“They made plays when they had to, and we didn’t.”
The Panthers have been putting together long drives the entire 2017 season, starting with the Week 1 drive in San Francisco that started at their own one-yard line and traversed the final eight minutes and 48 seconds over 13 plays, all runs, to run out the clock on their first win. The Panthers lone touchdown of the first half would come on a similar drive, this one lasting eight minutes and 25 seconds and almost running out the clock on the first half; the Panthers would convert three third downs, including a third-and-23 that saw Newton completing a dart to Brenton Bersin at the Falcons four-yard line. They also converted a fourth-and-one on a Newton sneak, and the drive was capped by a touchdown catch by Devin Funchess, who would finish with two catches for only 48 yards, one of which was a 44-yard completion on third-and-seven with Desmond Trufant hanging all over him.
While Funchess managed to make some plays for the Panthers pass-catchers, on a day when no one could get separation and a fired-up Falcons defense was defending the run stiffly, rookie Christian McCaffrey, who has been one of the most reliable options for Newton on checkdown routes, had two egregious drops, one of which was on a perfectly-thrown ball by Newton that would have led to a third-down conversion in the third quarter with the Panthers down only six. McCaffrey would finish with five catches for 40 yards, but many of those were in garbage time; he will need to have more of an impact in the playoffs if the Panthers hope to make a deep run.
Perhaps doubling the disappointment in the locker room after the game was the result 450 miles south, where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated the New Orleans Saints 31-24 on a last-second touchdown; had the Panthers defeated the Falcons, Carolina would have won the NFC South and hosted the Falcons in the NFL’s version of a home-and-home next week in Charlotte.
“It’s extremely tough when if we had gotten it done today, we would have been NFC South champs,” said safety Colin Jones, who had a chance at an interception in the fourth quarter but couldn’t haul it in. “I think it’s important to look where [New Orleans] hurt us the first couple of times that we played them and go correct those mistakes.
“But we’ll be ready for them.”
Additional Notes:
- Kurt Coleman was declared inactive before the game after nursing a sore ankle for most of the week in practice. More surprising was running back Jonathan Stewart, who was held out after waking up with tightness in his back. Colin Jones started at safety while Christian McCaffrey got the nod at running back. Stewart said after the game that he wasn’t sure he would have been able to play even if today had been a playoff game.
- Newton was incomplete on his first nine pass attempts, the worst start in franchise history for a quarterback; his first completion was to Christian McCaffrey with 8:33 left in the first half for a loss of three. He then completed his final seven attempts of the first half to finish 7-for-16 for 66 yards and a touchdown in the first half.
- Graham Gano hit his only field goal attempt from 42 yards out and finished the season with a league-best 96.7% field-goal percentage, setting the franchise record. He also broke his own franchise record for most kickoff touchbacks in a season with 70.
- Newton rushed for a team-high 59 yards and finished the season with 754 rushing yards, a career-best and the eighth-best rushing season by a quarterback in NFL history.
