The Bengals Game
Unfortunately, yes, there were still breakdowns in gap discipline against the Falcons, but there were at least much fewer of them – just three, in fact; and while different from the Falcons game issues, these mistakes did at least have something of a pattern. All three of the runs went to the outside of the right tackle, with all three involving movement of blockers in front of the ball carrier. The first saw the Bengals pull both guards across while leaving the end initially unblocked:
Here, the mistake looks to be by Mayo, as he recognizes the left guard pulling too late, and so is unable to get back outside to force the ball carrier into Kuechly who is pursuing from the back side of the play. The second error is also on Mayo, as with the fullback leading outside right, he looks to plug the gap inside the tackle, thereby allowing the running back to simply hit the outside gap. While this gap is technically Poe’s, Mayo needs to recognize that the 350 pound nose tackle isn’t going to be able to run to the perimeter on the stretch, but that he is already effectively filling the inside gap and that Mayo needs to take the outside one.
Lastly, Bryan Cox makes a mistake on the final long Bengals run, where he is left unblocked initially before being kicked out from the back side of the play. What Cox does here is that he tries to fight the kickout block, failing to recognize that he has inside help and that his responsibility is the edge, and so when the running back bounces outside to the edge that Cox is meant to be defending there is nobody to stop the long run:
Neither Cox nor Mayo are expected to be major pieces on defense, especially when Peppers returns to a full workload and Thomas Davis returns from suspension, but these are not mistakes that the defense can afford to make with any regularity.
Lastly, and while there is not yet all-22 tape to assign responsibilities fully, it is worth taking some time to look at how the Panthers fared against the Giants, a game in which they did an excellent job of limiting New York on the ground apart from two runs of over 20 yards. On the first of these, the issue is quite evident, as Rashaan Gaulden gets too narrow and Barkley is able to bounce the ball outside of him for a big gain:
With the other being due to both a nice bit of vision and athleticism by Barkley and a slight overpursuit by Poe:
This second play in particular is one where you simply have to tip your cap to the running back and admit that you got beat – for every time this spin move works perfectly and he gets to scamper for fifty yards, there are going to be half a dozen instances where he spins right into a 350 pound tackle and gets flattened.
If you take out these two runs, the Panthers actually held Barkley to -2 yards on 13 carries, an excellent performance. Gaulden’s mistake isn’t ideal, but given that he is still learning the position and is unlikely to see a huge amount of playing time this season with the signing of Reid this certainly isn’t cause for panic, and while there are reasons to be concerned about other aspects of the Panthers’ defense, the gap discipline issue does appear to be more of a blip than a trend.
All video clips via NFL Game Pass.
