Snap Counts: DJ Moore, Julius Peppers To Get Bigger Roles

The Panthers weren’t able to complete their last-second comeback attempt in Atlanta, falling 31-24 as the last ditch pass to rookie DJ Moore fell incomplete on the right side of the end zone; Moore, who saw the fewest snaps of any wide receiver (17) actually did a lot of work on special teams – his 19 snaps were second on the team to only captain Colin Jones – as the Panthers miss both Damiere Byrd and Curtis Samuel, but Ron Rivera said Monday that the role for Moore may be getting bigger as Moore took his only catch 51 yards for a touchdown.

“We’ve got to put more on his plate,” said Rivera. “Just looking at some of the things we’ve done in practice, I think that we can stress him more and ask more of him – we do have him doing a lot on special teams; that is one of the factors that’s probably taking away from some of his opportunities on offense.”

The entire offensive line played every snap, something that surprised both left tackle Chris Clark, who signed on Wednesday and wasn’t sure he’d be able to play the entire game, and Ron Rivera, who asked Clark if he wanted to come out – Clark said he could play through and the Panthers survived Week 2 with their starting offensive line unit intact, something that couldn’t be said after Week 1.

With Greg Olsen out, rookie Ian Thomas took the majority of the snaps and backups Chris Manhertz and Alex Armah weren’t factors at all, only playing 14 combined snaps between them. Christian McCaffrey dominated the running back snaps as he stayed on the field for 94% of the plays; CJ Anderson only played eight snaps total.

On the other side of the ball, the secondary saw some backups get playing time as the team suffered injuries to Donte Jackson – who said after the game that he would “100%” be back for Week 3 – and Da’Norris Searcy, who entered the concussion protocol for the second time in the span of a month; the Panthers utilized both Colin Jones and Rashaan Gaulden at safety and Eric Washington liked what he saw from both players, particularly when they used Gaulden as a blitzer.

“They gave us good energy and they gave us range,” said Washington about both safeties. “We were able to make sure that they stayed in the lead position – we got good run support from both safeties and there’s a reason why we like both guys; we feel comfortable with them being in the football game at either time.”

“If they have to play an extended role, we feel very comfortable.”

On the defensive line, the rotation looked a little different than it did last year when Julius Peppers played 50% of the snaps – the future Hall of Famer only saw the field for 33% of the plays, which is a light load compared to Wes Horton (75%) and Mario Addison (81%) – while Ron Rivera said that’s a natural progression of Peppers getting his legs under him after offseason shoulder surgery, Washington was more blunt in his assessment of Peppers’ playing time.

“He needs to play more and he will,” said Washington on Monday. “We need to do a better job with the rotation of getting Pep in the game in obvious passing situations and just rotating him in in general, but there’s no reason why his snap count has been what it is.”

“He needs to be on the field.”

The full snap counts are below:

Josh Klein

Editor-In-Chief at The Riot Report

Josh Klein is Editor-In-Chief of The Riot Report. His favorite Panther of all time is Chad Cota and he once AIM chatted with Kevin Greene. Follow Josh on Twitter @joshkleinrules.