With the Saints, Rams and Panthers all losing on Sunday, the Panthers will travel to New Orleans for their Wild Card matchup on Sunday at 4:40p. While the Panthers lost both regular season games against the Saints by reasonable margins, there should be some hope of the Panthers’ ability to compete against the Saints, though they will almost certainly need to play better than they did against the Falcons, especially on offense. Ron Rivera said Monday that the Falcons game was in the past and Carolina is focused on the future. But what should they look to lean on against the Saints if they hope to do better than one-and-done in the NFC playoffs?
Stop The Run
The Saints finished the regular season with the third-ranked rushing offense (via Pro Football Reference), and the seventh best passing offense; while the Saints’ passing attack cannot be ignored, much of that is set up from the run game. Even though the Panthers finished the season with the eighth-ranked rushing defense, they have had issues throughout the season with breakdowns in gap discipline leading to long runs. This happened multiple times against the Saints in the two losses, mostly on plays involving offensive motion either pre- or post-snap. On the following play, the Saints motion pre-snap and the Panthers struggle to adjust, leading to an unfilled gap and a decent pickup for a first down.
While this specific play didn’t lead to a huge run, the long runs by both Ingram and Kamara in New Orleans were due to breakdowns of this nature. While these are two of the best running backs in the NFL, a worrying development for the Panthers was how these breakdowns have continued in recent weeks. Against the Buccaneers a week ago, the Panthers allowed a long run by Peyton Barber when Mike Adams didn’t adjust across after pre-snap motion, leading to a completely unfilled gap.
If the Panthers are unable to stop the Saints from breaking off long rushing plays, they will likely open themselves up to play-actions and screens while also putting themselves in consistently poor positions defensively. What was something of a promising sign, however, is how the Panthers were able to stifle the Falcons running game on Sunday; while they allowed Matt Ryan to scramble at times, they managed to hold the duo of Coleman and Freeman to a combined 2.1 yards per carry on 22 carries with a long of six yards. It might be foolish to expect similar numbers against the Saints on Sunday, but having allowed the Saints rushing game to average well over five yards per carry during both of their meetings so far this season, a significant improvement is certainly needed.
Reign In The Blitz
The Panthers have blitzed as much as any team this season, and while that has allowed them to have success at times, it also, especially recently, has caused some problems. Blitzes can work well to get a quarterback moving in the pocket and to force him to get rid of the ball before he would like; however, if the blitz is unable to generate immediate pressure leading to either a sack or a hurried throw, the lack of defenders in coverage allows for relatively easy separation and easy completions. This is particularly true when teams adopt three, four or five wide receiver formations, as potential blitzers are then forced to either declare themselves pre-snap by abandoning their receivers or blitz from further away, giving the quarterback more time to get rid of the ball, thus eliminating the positive aspects of the blitz entirely.
In the two games against the Saints this season, the Panthers have allowed Drew Brees to complete 76% and 74% of his passes, and while Brees has completed a ludicrous 72% of his passes throughout the year, the Panthers should be looking to hold him below, not above, his season average. The Rams were able to limit Brees in their win over the Saints by being able to get pressure without having to blitz and forcing him to make throws against dropback coverage from the pocket. Drew Brees has been one of the least sacked quarterbacks in the NFL this season, and by bringing additional rushers, all teams have managed to do is to allow him easier completions. While it places a lot of pressure on the defensive line to get to Brees, the Panthers cannot afford to allow the Saints big passing plays in the air by beating the blitz.
Run The Damn Ball
The Saints rank 23rd in rushing defense efficiency, a weakness that the Panthers absolutely must exploit if they hope to be playing past Sunday evening. Two of Jonathan Stewart’s best five games this season have come against the Saints, averaging 4.43 yards per carry over those two contests; as a team the Panthers have rushed for 5.4 yards per carry against the Saints this season. Given these numbers, it is frankly shocking that they had under 23 rushing attempts as a team in either game; even if the final scores were lopsided, the Panthers were still within two scores until the fourth quarter in both games. If Trai Turner and Jonathan Stewart are able to return against the Saints for Sunday, there should be an expectation of the Panthers being able to run the ball and, as such, this should be the major focus of the Panthers’ offensive game plan. The Panthers finished fourth in the NFL in rush offense, and they will need every yard they can get to score points and keep up with the Saints as well as keep the Saints offense off the field.
If the Panthers can get their running game going and keep it going, then they will take a lot of pressure of a passing game that was nothing short of terrible against the Falcons in their season finale. This will then potentially open up the play-action and screen games, hopefully limiting how the Saints are able to shift coverage towards Olsen, Funchess and McCaffrey.
What should be noted is how important Trai Turner is to the Panthers’ running game. While there have been fewer plays this year of him simply blowing people off the ball as in previous campaigns, the Panthers rank third in yards per carry over right guard; if he is unable to clear the concussion protocol and play against the Saints, that would be a potentially fatal blow to the Panthers’ running game.
Innovate, Adapt, Overcome
Losing two of your three best receivers isn’t going to help an offense, and a Panthers group that wasn’t the deepest to start is now forced into playing Kaelin Clay and Brenton Bersin alongside Devin Funchess. Nobody should expect that transition to be seamless, but the Panthers need to do a better job of adapting to their new personnel. Kaelin Clay and Brenton Bersin do have value as receivers, but they are specialists rather than the complete package; for the Panthers’ passing game to improve, Mike Shula needs to adapt his offense to the personnel he has available.
Kaelin Clay has the speed to get behind the defense, and while he has struggled catching the ball at times, he could be used effectively to force safety help over the top. This might not lead to lots of deep completions, but by forcing the safety up the field, it then creates more space for Olsen, Funchess, McCaffrey and Bersin to work underneath. Shula had reasonable success using Ted Ginn, Jr. in this way during his first stint with the Panthers and that should be used as a template for how to now use Clay.
Bersin is almost the complete opposite in terms of skill set; he is a savvy route runner and has decent hands but lacks the speed to separate well against man coverage and isn’t going to stretch the field. While the Saints don’t use a huge amount of zone coverage, Bersin could be used as a zone-beating option, allowing Funchess to be used exclusively to attack one-on-one coverage. To expect a significant overhaul of the Panthers passing game this late in the season is unrealistic, but by intelligently using the pieces he has available, Shula should be able to create a passing attack that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Getting Lucky
No matter how much a team plans, plays and coaches correctly, an awful lot of the NFL comes down to luck. While it is fairly hard, if not actually impossible, to control the luck you get, the Panthers will still need some to go their way if they want to progress in the playoffs. In Week 13 against the Saints, the Panthers were still in the game with a chance to get good field position until a muffed punt by Clay all but put the game out of reach. Earlier in the game, a missed false start killed a drive to start the second half. Neither of these should be blamed for losing the game, but the Panthers might want to check their horseshoes and rabbit’s feet as they board the team plane to the Big Easy.
Since the AFL-NFL merger, when a team that goes 2-0 against an opponent in the regular season goes on to face them a third time in the playoffs, 65% of the time (13 of 20) the team that swept its opponent 2-0 in the regular season has gone on to win that playoff meeting, too. That doesn’t have to be the case this weekend, as the 65% success rate is almost exactly the same as the success rate of home teams (64.7%) in the playoffs, but the myth that “it’s hard to beat a team three times in the same season” isn’t necessarily true.
The Panthers genuinely do have a real shot of beating the Saints in New Orleans; both games this season were far closer than the scores suggested. However, they cannot afford to let the Saints off the hook as they have in both previous games; if the Panthers can establish and maintain their interior rushing game and prevent long plays on defense then they can be playing not only past next Sunday, but for a few weeks yet to come.
