After last week’s performance over Ezekiel Elliott, one of the best running backs in the league whom the defense held to only 69 yards on the ground even though the 23-year old has averaged over 100 yards per game in his career and won the rushing title in his rookie season, it seemed as if the Panthers were well on their way to another season of dominance over opposing run games.
After all, they hadn’t allowed a running back to rush for over 100 yards in 651 days – Thomas Rawls cracked the century mark in Week 13 of the Panthers’ 2016 campaign, but they’d turned back some of the best rushers in the league over the past 21 games.
Until Sunday, when that streak came to a disappointing end in a 31-24 loss to the Atlanta Falcons as backup running back Tevin Coleman rushed for 107 yards to help the Falcons get a much needed divisional win and send the Panthers into a three-way tie for second place early in the season at 1-1 – the Panthers had made the playoffs in every season but one when they’d started 2-0, so they wanted to stack wins before the bye in Week 4 – losses like this are extra frustrating when the team doesn’t play up to their own expectations.
“I think the most disappointing thing about today was that we didn’t stop the run,” said safety Mike Adams, who finished with four tackles. “We take pride in that – we’re going to get that fixed. We just didn’t tackle as well as we usually do and we didn’t do the little things that we usually do.”
“We have to start faster, we finished fine; but we have to start faster and get them behind the eight ball and maybe the tables turn a little bit.”
The Panthers defense started slow – five of the Falcons’ first eight possessions ended in scores – and consistently allowed their normally stout front to be gashed by Coleman on multiple big plays like two runs of over 25 yards; Coleman had 73 yards at halftime, including a 27-yard run on third and short.
All of the defenders pointed to the same points of emphasis – missed tackles, gap discipline and communication; these core tenets of the Panthers run defense that had enabled them to not allow a rusher to crack the century mark for all of last season weren’t present today at Mercedes-Benz Stadium – Ron Rivera had one word to describe their run defense.
Terrible.
“We didn’t give ourselves a chance to win,” said the head coach. “Last week, we played the way we wanted to against Dallas; today, we didn’t do the things we needed to do and when you don’t do those things, the result is you’re going to have somebody rush for almost 200 yards against you – we can’t do this.”
“We have to go back and we have to correct. It starts with me as the head coach – I’m a defensive head coach and to have that happen, I won’t stand for that.”
One thing that the Panthers can take away from this game is that they were able to make stops down the stretch when it counted; an interception that bounced off of running back CJ Anderson’s hands with the Panthers down two scores – “I’m a better player than that, I’ve made that catch my entire career from six different quarterbacks; I can’t let that happen,” – could have ended the game, but the Panthers defense forced two consecutive three-and-outs to give their offense a chance to come back and tie the game at the end of regulation.
After DJ Moore scored a long touchdown on his first NFL catch – and target, for that matter – the Falcons got the ball back at their own 25-yard line needing one first down to seal the game – but the defense turned them away.
“You’re down two scores and you can hang them up if you want to, but this team won’t do that,” said Luke Kuechly about his team’s resiliency after a tough day at the office. “It’s never done that, and it’s not going to do that moving forward. That’s what happens when you fight the whole game like that. You get a big stop at the end. Our defensive line played great. Shaq [Thompson] was able to jump in there and make a tackle, and you give the ball back to the offense. That’s what you’re looking for, that’s what you need. We’ve just got to make a couple more plays earlier on.”
Another streak can start as early as next week.
