Many expected Kaelin Clay to be the player to “take the top off” of opposing defenses with Damiere Byrd and Curtis Samuel lost for the season with leg injuries. Unfortunately, Clay and the rest of the pass catchers struggled to get separation and establish a rhythm with Cam Newton in the Panthers 22-10 loss to the Atlanta Falcons in their season finale; Carolina must get some contributions from the options in the passing game that are not named Funchess or Olsen, and Clay has an opportunity, along with Brenton Bersin, to make an impact on the offensive success as the Panthers head to New Orleans to face the Saints in the Wild Card round of the playoffs. We had a chance to chat with Clay after the disappointing loss and how the offense can get better in the short span of a week before heading to New Orleans.
Obviously, a disappointing performance. What went wrong for the offense today?
It was just an off day for us. It wasn’t nothing that they did, it was everything we did; we just didn’t play a complete game. It was just a bad game. Bad in general.
Was it miscommunications in the passing game?
No, I don’t think it was miscommunications, it was just- we just didn’t execute. If you look at it, it wasn’t [anything] that they did; we didn’t execute, we didn’t take advantage of the things that they gave us. It was just an ugly game.
How do you take a long drive like you had at the end of the first half and spin that positively towards next week?
I think we have to look at this game in general, not even that first drive we scored on, we’ve got to look at this game and look at the mistakes that we made and correct them. I don’t know who we’ve got and it really doesn’t matter who we’ve got; whoever it is, that’s who we’ll be focused on now. The game today is over, hats off to Atlanta for playing a great game and doing a good job, pretty sure they got in the playoffs with the win, I think for us, it’s just getting back to square one and making sure we’re doing what we need to do to win games.
It’s New Orleans next week, they lost to Tampa today, so if you had won today, the Panthers could have won the NFC South, does that make it extra disappointing?
It’s always disappointing when you lose, you never want to go into a game and lose, regardless of what’s at stake, but we’ll get on New Orleans tomorrow and we’ll figure out a game plan. The coaches will pick out the best plays of what we need to do to come out victorious.
How does the passing game get back to clicking after you’ve faced these injuries, who needs to step up?
Everybody. We all have confidence in one another and in our room. Like I said, the coaches will come up with a game plan on what it is we need to do to be victorious; whatever that game plan is, we’ll execute it to the best of our abilities come Sunday.
