The Panthers’ whistle-stop tour of the NFC East comes to an end this Sunday with the Panthers making the trip to Philadelphia to take on the defending Superbowl champions. While a trip to take on the reigning champs is always going to be a daunting prospect, the 2018 Eagles have been far from all-conquering to this point, and the Panthers should view themselves as having a legitimate chance of emerging with a win to take them to 4-2. What they will need to do, however, is to play a lot better than they did on Sunday against Washington, and while not turning the ball over three times en route to a 17-point deficit probably goes without saying in terms of a game plan, what else do the Panthers need to do in order to come back from Philly with a win?
Run The Ball, And Well
The Panthers didn’t run the ball well against Washington, but they also didn’t run it very often, with Christian McCaffrey getting all of the team’s right running back carries. Of course, it would be nice to see the Panthers churning out solid gains on the ground from the start, but against the Eagles’ seventh ranked rush defense it will be important for the Panthers to keep trying the ground game even if they aren’t immediately rewarded.
The elephant in the room for the Panthers running game to this point in the season has been a the lack of carries for CJ Anderson, something that the Panthers’ coaches were finally forced into talking about this week; while their answers are hardly clear in terms of how they plan to use Anderson, what is important is that they need to get him on the field. Anderson might not be the flashiest player in the NFL, but he has proven to be consistently effective throughout his career and as effective as McCaffrey has been at times, the Panthers would be best advised to rotate the two players in order to keep them fresh, limit injuries, and force the defense to consistently adjust to the offensive personnel.
The Eagles defense is good against the run, and it wouldn’t be fair to expect the Panthers to run all over them on Sunday, but what the Panthers can’t afford to do is get one-dimensional, as even if they get down early they need to have to confidence to run the ball when that is what the defense gives them.
Passing Attack Cohesion Needs To Start Appearing
Going into the season, there were a number of questions about the Panthers’ passing attack – how would Norv Turner adapt his offense to a mobile quarterback, would Greg Olsen return to his pre-injury form and would the offensive line just fall apart being just a few of the queries on the minds of Panthers’ fans. Despite being plagued by injuries, the Panthers’ offensive line has actually played fairly well and with Samuel, Olsen and Byrd returning from early-season injuries, the Panthers are certainly not short of offensive weapons. With those two things in mind, if the Panthers passing game doesn’t start kicking into gear then questions will start being asked about the remaining aspects of the Panthers’ passing game – Cam Newton and Norv Turner in particular.
Cam has had some really good games this season, but his last couple of performances have been a little more shaky – while a lot of the issues on Sunday were far from his fault, this offense in general has not developed in the way that many would have hoped. Some of this is understandable, the Panthers have had a huge amount of change on offense from a season ago and the fact that not everything is clicking immediately shouldn’t come as a shock, but what is harder to explain away is why some of the Panthers most invested-in weapons – most notably Curtis Samuel and DJ Moore – have featured so little in the Panthers’ offense. Of receivers with at least two catches, Samuel leads the team with 18.5 yards-per-reception with Moore second at 16.2 (Funchess is third with 13.6) and yet those two receivers have just 17 combined targets through five games.
While Samuel did miss three games to start the season, that is still just a combined 2.4 receptions per game for the 2018 first round pick and 2017 second round pick. As with the rushing attack, the Panthers’ passing game doesn’t need to dominate against a decent Eagles defense to be impressive, but it needs to at least be solid. If it continues to stutter-and-start, the questions will move from cohesion to competence, and that is never a conversation with a positive short-term answer.
Get Stops Without Turnovers
The Panthers have done lots of nice things on defense this season; they have managed to hold Saquon Barkley and Zeke Elliott to meager gains on the ground, they got to Alex Smith and Dak Prescott repeatedly and forced multiple turnovers against the Bengals and the Giants. What they have not done, however, is put together a complete performance and, in those games against the Bengals and Giants, they were slightly reliant on those turnovers to get themselves off the field at times. The issue with this is that there is no one easy solution, the issue isn’t gap discipline or tackling or play calling or back-end coverage, but rather all of the above at times and none of them at others.
One thing the Eagles haven’t done on offense this season is throw interceptions, with their 0.8% interception percentage ranking second in the NFL. This doesn’t mean that the Panthers’ won’t be able to force turnovers on Sunday, but rather that they will need to be able to get off the field on third down if they want to limit this Eagles offense. Worryingly, that has not been an area of strength for the Panthers’ defense so far this season, especially in the red zone where the Panthers’ 81.8% scoring percentage allowed ranks 31st in the NFL – ahead of just the Buccaneers. There is, again, no easy answer to this, but this is something the Panthers will have to work out if they are going to challenge for anything more than draft position come the end of the season.
Get That First Away Win
This isn’t really something the Panthers need to do from coaching or game-plan point of view, but it is far from irrelevant that the Panthers are 3-0 at home but 0-2 on the road. Going to Philly is hardly an easy road trip to get a road streak going, but they have to get a win somewhere, and for the Panthers this has to start, well…from the start.
The poor start against Washington was as much due to bad luck as poor play, but if the Panther start that poorly even once more this season then serious questions need to be asked about how the coaching staff are preparing them for games; assuming the Panthers don’t completely collapse to start the game, they also can’t afford to waste early drives before getting themselves into some sort of rhythm. The Panthers’ first drive against Washington was all run, even when Washington stacked the box, and caution like this only serves to waste possessions that could be better used; in both of the Panthers’ road losses this season, they have allowed opponents to build a lead before desperately looking to chase it down as the game entered the fourth quarter; that needs to change and it starts from the opening drive.
The Panthers have had a very mixed start to the season, with some impressive performances in almost all aspects of the game but without any area showing much consistency. It likely won’t take a complete performance for the Panthers to beat an Eagles team that is also waiting to hit midseason form, but they can’t afford to enter each game waiting to see which aspect won’t show up and hoping that they can make it to the win regardless. It is far from panic time for the Panthers, but NFL seasons are very short, and they can’t keep waiting to start putting up back-to-back good performances.
