3. Christian McCaffrey
As valuable as a deep and diverse skill position grouping can be, for an offense to be genuinely elite it needs to have a player that they can lean on when the going gets tough. The clearest example of this came when the Panthers faced the Broncos in Super Bowl 50 – while the Panthers had been able to use a deep receiving group without any star names to great effect throughout the season, when they faced a defense that had the players to consistently drop back into man coverage, rushing just four with a deep safety over the top and a ‘robber’ to take away the short middle, their offense faltered. If teams have the personnel to run it, this coverage scheme is extremely effective, especially when teams are able to get pressure with four rushers – it forces offenses to complete outside throws against man coverage. The Saints had success running this defense at times last season, and the Panthers even used this coverage to great effect on a third down against the Patriots this very preseason. The only way to have success against this coverage is to have a player or players who can consistently separate against man coverage without relying on leverage; such as is the case on routes such as slants and posts. This is where McCaffrey’s value lies.
McCaffrey is a decent ball carrier, with good vision and an ability to exploit gaps when they appear, but what makes him worth the top ten pick the Panthers spent on him is his ability as a receiver. When lined up in the backfield, especially in three or four wide receiver sets, defenses are forced to either take linebackers off the field, thereby exposing themselves in the run game, or run the risk of having McCaffrey in a matchup that significantly favors him. It should be more than clear at this point what McCaffrey can do when lined up against a linebacker or even most safeties, and should the Panthers find themselves facing dropback man coverage again this season, McCaffrey gives them as good a hope of exploiting that coverage as one could hope for.
4. The Front Seven
The Panthers’ defense has been built from the front since the drafting of Kawann Short and Star Lotulelei back in 2013, and that looks to continue into the 2018 season and beyond. While Star Lotulelei is now in Buffalo, the defensive line group may have gotten stronger with the signing of Dontari Poe from Atlanta. With Mario Addison returning at one defensive end spot and Wes Horton expected to replace Charles Johnson as the other defensive line starter, the Panthers have a starting defensive line that, as a group, average over two sacks per game over the past five seasons. To put that in context, eleven NFL defenses didn’t average that number of sacks last season.
At linebacker, the Panthers have consistently boasted one of the strongest groups in the NFL, with Shaq Thompson expected to take over the primary outside linebacker role alongside All-Pro Luke Kuechly. While Thomas Davis is going to miss the first four games with a suspension, the Panthers also have some excellent depth in this area, aided by 2018 draft picks Jermaine Carter, Jr and Andre Smith. This depth is also present on the interior of the defensive line with Vernon Butler and Kyle Love being arguably the best rotation defensive tackle pairing in the NFL and future Hall of Famer Julius Peppers expected to make an impact as a rotation piece. This might not be the world-conquering front seven that carried the Panthers to the playoffs in 2013, but there will be very few front sevens, if any, that are able to compete with the Panthers in 2018 – at least if everybody stays healthy.
5. New Coaching Look
While it is very early on in the 2018 season to be making any grand conclusions – it hasn’t even started, I would point out that the Panthers so far rank third in yards per pass, fourth in yards per carry, fourth in points per game, 10th in completion percentage and second in third down percentage while Cam Newton has posted his best preseason in term of completion percentage, yards per pass and – for what it’s worth – QBR for his career, despite multiple offensive line injuries. Meanwhile, Shula’s Giants offense ranks 25th in yards per pass, 10th in yards per carry, 13th in points per game, 27th in completion percentage and 23rd in third down percentage and the offense’s only first quarter points thus far have come on a 42 yard field goal on a drive kept alive by a taunting penalty.
Without making too fine a point of it and allowing that all of these are preseason statistics that should be taken with a huge grain of salt, Norv Turner might not be Kyle Shannahan, but he’s better than Mike Shula.
Panthers fans should also hope for an improvement on defense, as while Steve Wilks has a real shot of being as good a head coach as he was a defensive backs coach, his talent for teaching and motivation wasn’t always matched by his ability as a tactician – yet another quirk of the NFL’s zigzag coaching tree. While Eric Washington is very much an unknown entity as a play caller, as Wilks was a year ago, he has talked about dialing back from of the blitz-happy tactics which left the defensive backs exposed last season, which led to the team ranking in the bottom half of almost every passing stat despite ranking third in sacks; Washington has already shown a willingness to mix in the occasional 3-4 look to keep offenses guessing. The early signs are slightly more mixed than those for the offense, but if Washington can iron out some of the kinks and learn from the early mistakes any new coordinator is all but certain to make, there is every chance that the Panthers’ defense is improved on a year ago.
The Panthers might not be the bookie’s favorite to lift the Lombardi trophy come February, but if the early offensive signs carry on into the regular season and the defense begins to come alive as Eric Washington and the new additions work themselves into midseason form, the Panthers could well be a genuine contender as the season enters the latter parts of the season.
