A win is a win.
Some may be more heart-stopping than others, but they all certainly count; this one happened to send the Panthers into the playoffs.
A Christmas miracle.
With the Panthers struggling on both sides of the ball and facing injuries throughout their receiving corps, the Panthers will gladly take this 22-19 comeback win over the Buccaneers in their home finale to clinch a playoff berth and send the Panthers limping towards a New Year’s Eve matchup against another division rival, the Atlanta Falcons. A two-yard touchdown run by Cam Newton in which he fumbled the snap and recovered on a single bounce before plunging into the endzone with 35 seconds left in the fourth quarter sent the Bucs home with their 11th loss of the season.
“When I got the snap, it was a perfect snap, my knuckles actually hit the ball,” Newton said after the game about the 54th rushing touchdown of his career. “It’s just a little drill that I usually do right before the game with controlling the snap. Throwing the ball off the ground, trying to get the right bounce and find the trajectory of the ball. I am just happy it wasn’t a pass play because if it was, the offensive line would have come back. Everyone was moving forward which allowed me in. Some say it was kind of good because it froze everybody too.”
“I am just happy that we scored.”
They certainly needed it after struggling for much of the day. For the past five weeks, the Panthers defense has been helped out by their offense. As they’ve allowed 25.4 points over the the past month, the offense has averaged over 30; as they’ve given up 368.8 yards per game, the offense was racking up 371.6. This week, however, against a banged-up Buccaneers team, the offense wasn’t able to lift them up as the defense continued to allow big downfield plays, allowing Jameis Winston and the Bucs to rack up 392 yards while Newton and the Panthers were only able to pick up 255.
The defensive effort was marred by missed tackles, and while they recovered three fumbles and sacked Jameis Winston six times, the Panthers defense will need to play better if they expect to make a deep playoff run.
“We’ve got to play better,” Captain Munnerlyn said after the game. “I think Jameis threw for almost 375 yards or something like that. We’ve got to be able to get off the field on third down; we were good at that in the beginning of the year, and going into the postseason and going into next week in Atlanta, we’ve got to get off the field on third down. We’ve got to limit the YAC. When guys catch the ball, we’ve got to tackle now.”
“We’ve got a lot of work to do, but I like where we’re going.”
Winston finished 21-of-27 for 367 yards and a lone touchdown, a third-quarter strike to Bobo Wilson while the Bucs as a team converted 55% (6-for-11) on third down after coming into the game converting less than 40% of their chances.
In a first half marred by offensive inefficiency, though, the Byrd was still the word.
A week after third-year wide receiver Damiere Byrd broke onto the scene with two touchdowns, including the now-infamous #ButtDragSwag catch in the back of the endzone, the former Gamecock from Sicklerville, NJ scored his third career touchdown, this one a 103-yard kickoff return to break a second quarter tie and put the Panthers ahead 12-6 after the teams had traded field goals to open the game.
“[Byrd] saved us. There were some things that we didn’t do very well as an offense or defense that we didn’t do until the very end when we had to,” Ron Rivera said about Byrd, who left the game after injuring his knee on the second half opening kickoff. “I’m very proud of a young man like that, who came in and was a practice squad guy; he was basically an undrafted free agent. He’s the kind of young man you want around.”
While the Panthers were able to defeat a battered Bucs team that had placed five players on injured reserve only this week and were without DeSean Jackson and Robert Ayers, it certainly wasn’t pretty. The Panthers struggled to put anything together offensively in the first half, with Byrd’s 103-yard kick return outgaining the offense in net total yardage as the Panthers could only cobble together 78 yards on four drives.
After passing for his sixth career four-touchdown game last week against the Packers, Cam Newton came crashing back to Earth in his worst game in over a month, totaling only 160 passing yards and unable to get anything going with Devin Funchess nursing a sore shoulder and Byrd exiting with a knee injury; Greg Olsen would be unable to build on his nine-catch, 116-yard performance last week as he would only snag three catches for 27 yards. Brenton Bersin and Kaelin Clay stepped up as the defense tilted towards the Panthers two biggest playmakers; the two receivers accounted for three catches and 47 yards on the game’s final drive.
After Patrick Murray missed a 51-yard field goal, the Panthers got the ball back and drove down the field before facing a fourth-and-three at the five yard line and 52 seconds remaining. Cam Newton incited the Buccaneers to jump into the neutral zone for the third time to make it a fourth-and-one; a Jonathan Stewart run that the veteran running back insisted was closer to the goal line than the referees gave him credit for was measured and confirmed to be good enough for the first down.
As Ryan Kalil snapped the ball to Newton for a designed quarterback draw, the snap bounced off of Newton’s fingers only to jump right back into his hands from the ground. Rivera said with a wink after the game that it was just the way they drew it up and Newton said the fumble actually helped because it froze the defense for a half-second, but Kurt Coleman described the ball tumbling to the ground and bouncing right back to Newton before he plunged into the endzone best.
“Merry Christmas. God is good.”
Additional Notes
- Pro Bowl alternate at right guard Trai Turner missed his second straight game with a concussion; Amini Silatolu started in his stead. Wide receiver Russell Shepard also was absent from the game against his former team after dealing with a shoulder injury suffered last week against the Green Bay Packers
- David Mayo started for the second time this season in place of Thomas Davis, serving a one-game suspension for his helmet-to-helmet block on Packers wide receiver Davante Adams.
- Wes Horton recorded his third strip-sack of the season on the Buccaneers first drive of the game when he got to Jameis Winston as he was releasing a pass and the ball skipped forward; the fumble was recovered by rookie Bryan Cox, Jr.
- Julius Peppers secured the 19th fumble recovery of his career in the second quarter as Winston bobbled the snap inside the red zone and Peppers jumped on it. Peppers entered the game with five forced fumbles and an interception in 18 career games against the Bucs.
- The Panthers attempted a fake punt in the third quarter. While Michael Palardy’s pass intended for Ed Dickson fell incomplete, a pass interference call on Tampa Bay would give the Panthers a first down on a drive that would end in a Graham Gano field goal.
- The Panthers allowed a 70-yard completion to Chris Godwin, the second 70-yard completion of the season allowed by the defense; neither long completion went for a touchdown.
- Graham Gano made all three of his three field goal attempts (25,28,30) but had an extra point attempt blocked.
