The Panthers might not have been pretty to watch to this point, but they now sit at 2-2 and just one game back in the division. With the division-leading Saints playing the Buccaneers – meaning one will lose – the Panthers have a chance to either pull level with the Saints or separate themselves from the Buccaneers when they host the Jaguars on Sunday.
Given that, what is it they need to do in order to come away with the W?
Pocket Presence Needs Improvement
Kyle Allen is yet to throw an interception in his NFL career, but that hasn’t stopped him from turning the ball over with three lost fumbles this past week alone. Of course, it is impossible to stop every fumble from happening when it gets to the stage of the collision itself, and while Allen could definitely do a better job in this regard, the bigger issue is his movement inside the pocket.
Of course, Allen is far from alone in not being perfect in this regard, but he needs to do a better job of staying inside the pocket as both of the first two sacks on Sunday came as a result of him bailing into pressure rather than working around traffic in the pocket. The third sack is more excusable because he couldn’t see Watt coming, but again, he had plenty of space to step up into with the rush going behind him.
The is will be particularly relevant against another strong front in the Jaguars – both Calais Campbell and the rookie Josh Allen have a chance to cause some real problems for the Panthers’ offensive line. As could be seen in particular on Allen’s second fumble, that is made all the more difficult when you can’t trust where the quarterback is going to be. There are some elite escape artists in the NFL who are consistently able to break the pocket and have success and the Panthers have played two of them in recent weeks, but for most quarterbacks, it is better to try and work inside the pocket.
Allen is still very inexperienced on the NFL scale, and this is something that has a chance to improve, but he can’t keep turning the ball over in the way he has – that starts by being smarter about how he moves in the pocket.
Make Stopping The Run A Priority
Via Pro Football Reference, only the Chiefs have been worse at stopping the run from an efficiency point of view so far this season than the Panthers, as Carolina has allowed 4.9 yards per rush. Of course, getting torched by Kyler Murray a couple of times on scrambles doesn’t help that, but the Panthers have allowed every team they’ve faced so far this season to get to 100 yards rushing, and all of their opponents except the Buccaneers have done so while averaging over five yards per carry. The Texans managed over six yards a carry on Sunday before they were forced to throw to chase the game late.
There are a number of reasons for this.
The Panthers haven’t been the best tackling team at times this season, and the three-man front can make it harder to gap fit at times against motion, but they have also just been a bit slow to hit gaps and allowed players to eke extra yards out after contact. There is no magic switch to solve this problem, but this is something the Panthers coaches have to be concerned at – one of the reasons why the Panthers’ pass rush has struggled early in games is that teams have been able to run the ball on them with reliability.
This will be of particular relevance against the Jaguars as with a rookie quarterback under center they have shown a willingness to try and pound out yards inside in order to give him front-foot ball to work with. While Leonard Fournette has been something of a hit-and-miss player so far in his career, his 220+ yards against the Broncos is an indication of just how much of an impact he can have if teams don’t get him on the ground early.
The Panthers do have highlights they can look to from this season in this regard – they did a pretty good job against the Buccaneers and in the first half against the Rams – but they’ll need to show that they can do this consistently if they want to continue to have the defensive success they have had over the past couple of games for the rest of the season.
McCaffrey Needs Some Help
Christian McCaffrey touching the ball and racking up snaps at a near-record pace is absolutely fine – until it isn’t.
Not only will his huge amount of touches test his – admittedly very impressive – ability to stay healthy, but it will almost certainly tire him out as the season goes on. The last couple of weeks, and against the Texans in particular, this has been necessary to keep the Panthers in the game, but if he ends the season with over 340 carries and 100 receptions on more than 120 targets, there is a real chance that should the Panthers make it to the playoffs, he will not be at his best. There is a reason why so many NBA players are taking regular season games off to be at their best later in the season.
Now, I am absolutely not suggesting that the Panthers not play McCaffrey for games this season – the NFL and the NBA are after all very different – but the Panthers’ offensive game plan cannot be to just give the ball to McCaffrey 35-40 times a game, at least not every week. What this means in practice is that the Panthers need to be willing to give the ball to somebody else every now and then out of the backfield, something that Norv Turner has been very unwilling to do throughout his career.
Yes, this might mean that the Panthers take a slight step back in any given game, but if it means that McCaffrey can be at his best when it really matters, that is more important. After all, you will never know how good the likes of Bonnafon and Scarlett can be if you only ever play them in garbage time when the opponent knows they are going to be getting the ball to run down the clock.
McCaffrey is, of course, going to be the center of this offensive going forward, but he doesn’t have to be quite as much of the offense as he has been to this point in the season.
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