Panthers running back Jonathan Stewart has been named NFC Offensive Player of the Week for the second time in his career after piling up 103 yards and three touchdowns on only 16 carries against the Minnesota Vikings.
While the performance was certainly noteworthy, the opponent is what made it doubly as impressive; the Vikings came into the game allowing less than 78 yards per game to teams through twelve weeks. The Panthers as a team rushed for 216 yards against a stout Minnesota front which is second-best in the league against the run.
Stewart became just the second Panthers running back to win multiple Players of The Week awards, joining Stephen Davis (3); Stewart was previously named the FedEx Ground Player of the Week in Week 16 of the 2009 season after he recorded 109 yards and two total touchdowns. Stewart has amassed 634 yards and six touchdowns through 13 games in the 2017 season; since the Panthers drafted Stewart in 2008, the team leads the NFL in total rushing yards with 19,628, over 630 yards more than the second-place New York Jets.
Stewart is currently averaging 3.5 yards per carry, the lowest total of his career; against the Vikings, that sixty-yard dart to the endzone on the first drive sparked his numbers for the week to be 6.4 yards per tote and the Panthers all-time leading rusher doesn’t appear to be slowing down when the weather turns cold; the top five games of Stewart’s career have come in December. NFL Next-Gen Stats revealed that the 240-pound, 30-year-old Stewart was moving at over 20 miles per hour as he sped to the endzone for his first of three touchdowns.
All three touchdowns came on third-and-one.
