Many coaches around the NFL like to break the season into four quarters.
16 games, divide it by four and if you have a winning record in each quarter, you look up and you’re 12-4. But if that’s the case this season, the Panthers have bungled their third quarter after starting the first half 5-3, losing all four games in the third quarter of the season by a total score of 106-71 – but that shouldn’t be a surprise because the third quarter has been an issue for the Panthers all season.
Sunday was no different as the Panthers entered the third quarter in Atlanta down 13-10 and 15 minutes later found themselves trailing by three scores, so interim head coach Perry Fewell focused on the third stanza in his team meeting Monday morning as the Panthers, officially eliminated from playoff contention and now playing for the future, may not necessarily want to come out with victories that will take them farther from a top-ten draft pick, but they also don’t want to embarrass themselves either.
“It was not good football,” Fewell said about a third quarter that saw the Panthers give the ball away three times as they were outscored 17-0 and outgained 141-57. “It was very inconsistent, a lot of mistakes, turnovers, not good run defense, not good alignment, assignments and execution. That’s something that we can control and we did not control that.”
The Panthers have consistently failed coming out of halftime, scoring only eight touchdowns in 13 third quarters thus far in 2019 – the average NFL team has allowed just over seven scores in the third quarter this season. The Panthers have given up 14 touchdowns while allowing 5.9 yards per rush – in third quarters this season, 28.7% of opponent’s plays have resulted in either a first down or a touchdown and they’ve turned the ball over seven times. The worst part is that the Panthers don’t know how to fix it, because the problems keep coming from different sources – same story, different week.
New coach, same problems.
“We were driving, and driving, then there was the sack-fumble and they scored,” said Kyle Allen. “Then we’re driving and we had a fumble on a kickoff return and a fumble by me. It’s just kind of the same things over and over again. We’re shooting ourselves in the foot. In the first half, I was pleased with what we did, I thought we really gave ourselves a shot.”
“And then things, kind of, just got out of hand.”
The Panthers opened the second half with two consecutive positive plays – a jet sweep by Curtis Samuel and a 19-yard pass to Ian Thomas, but Vic Beasley beat rookie left tackle Dennis Daley and jarred the ball loose from Allen, his seventh lost fumble of the season – five plays later, the Falcons were up 20-10. After a drive that ended with Allen unable to connect with an open Samuel downfield, the Panthers backed up the Falcons inside their own ten-yard line – and disaster struck as a ‘banzai blitz’ with seven players rushing the passer on third-and-long backfired, turning into the longest pass of Matt Ryan’s career.
Donte Jackson disagreed with the playcall that put him on an island against Olamide Zaccheaus, but admitted that he should have made the tackle when he had the chance. There would be no such complaints from returner Greg Dortch, who was elevated from the practice squad this week and fumbled the ensuing kickoff.
Perry Fewell didn’t talk to Dortch in the locker room – “It’s probably good that I didn’t speak to him after the game,” said Fewell.
With 6:50 left in the third quarter, the Panthers had the Falcons backed up deep in their own territory on a third-and-long – two minutes of game time later, they were down by 20 points. The final play of the third quarter?
A Kyle Allen interception on 3rd-and-20 into a swarm of red jerseys.
“I wish I could put my finger on it and give you a concrete answer,” said Fewell. “But like I said to the players, they control what we do. We’re going to try to put them in the best position to try to win football games and they’ve got to protect the football, protect the quarterback, create takeaways and stop the run.”
