A lot has been made of the front seven of the Carolina Panthers – and for good reason.
When you have at least two surefire Hall of Famers, a nine-man rotation along the defensive line with nary a weak link and a second level that’s led by the best middle linebacker in the league who routinely calls out the offense’s playcalls before the ball is snapped, you’re going to get a lot of attention. When you hold one of the best running backs in the league to less than 70 yards rushing and your Week 1 produces stats like six sacks, an 18% third-down conversion rate and not allowing the opponent to cross midfield until after halftime, that coverage will grow.
But in order to have a successful run defense, it’s not just the front seven, sometimes it’s up to the secondary to come up and make plays in the run game, just as they did on Sunday – while Luke Kuechly and Shaq Thompson led the Panthers in tackles, the next three were Donte Jackson, Mike Adams and Da’Norris Searcy.
“There’s a buy-in,” defensive coordinator Eric Washington said Monday. “Your defense is defined by a couple of things – the willingness of the corners to tackle and also the ability of your interior guys to go and chase the football, especially when it goes outside on the perimeter. It’s incredibly important that our corners tackle, that they understand how to tackle and that they do it at a high level and at a good efficiency.”
“Everybody’s a run defender, whether you’re at the point of attack or whether you’re a cutback player.”
You might not think of 5’11, 181-pound Donte Jackson as a willing tackler, but that’s exactly what he is – and he showed it during the first quarter when he took on Ezekiel Elliott, who has 40 pounds on the rookie cornerback – not to mention almost 2,700 career yards in 26 games. But that didn’t matter to Jackson; he wanted to make some contact for the first time in his NFL career.
“You guys saw that,” said Jackson after the game. “A little guy that can hit a little bit – I was just feeling the energy, we were clicking on all cylinders, just playing fast and I was able to come down and be able to make a good hit.”
“I kind of ‘hulked up’ a little bit – it was a great play.”
It takes a certain kind of player to compliment his own play and Jackson is certainly that kind of player – bringing the swagger and confidence to the secondary after they struggled at times last season was one of the reasons the Panthers drafted him in the second round.
Being a willing tackler – which he showed by racking up 116 tackles at LSU despite being one of the smallest guys on the field – was another. Ron Rivera has been pleasantly surprised not only by his tackling, but by the way he played in coverage; despite a fourth-quarter pass interference call, Jackson was one of the keys in holding Dak Prescott to only 170 yards through the air.
“I thought one of the things that he did was I really thought he played very well with his techniques,” said Ron Rivera when talking about his rookie cornerback. “When you go and watch him, he stays in a good body position [and] his plant and drive going downhill was excellent. One thing he did do very well also was he tackled very well – again, he’s a work in progress and he’s going to get better and better each week. ”
“The anonymous voices don’t give him credit for being a good, sure tackler and I think that’s one of the things you have to look at – he tackles the way you’d like people to tackle, he tackles with his head up and [with] his shoulders.”
Overall, limiting the Cowboys to 232 net yards – only 40 until the Cowboys pieced together two drives that ultimately ended in a punt and a missed field goal – is seen as a win for Eric Washington in his first game as defensive coordinator – they have certain goals they want to achieve on defense, from limiting the opposition on third down – check! – to sacks to turnovers to scoring points on defense, but the most important one is getting the victory.
Washington is pleased with not only the performance of his defensive unit, but of himself in his first game not only helming the defensive line but the entire defense, complimenting both his veteran players and the assistant coaches below him – Ron Rivera was impressed as well.
“I was really pleased with his rhythm,” said Rivera about Washington, who is the third defensive coordinator in three years for Carolina. “I thought he mixed up the pass rush [and] the pressures and the coverages very well. I was really pleased with the way that those guys handled stuff on the sidelines, I thought they communicated very well in terms of the coaches – I thought their adjustments were really good and the suggestions they were making to Eric were what you would expect from those guys.”
Aside from that one drive.
Ten plays, 75 yards – ten coming via Donte Jackson pass interference – was all it took for the Cowboys, who hadn’t been able to do anything all day against the Panthers defense, to get within one score in the fourth quarter – and it was clear that wasn’t good enough for this defensive group. As Ron Rivera looked down the sidelines, he saw a group that was confident, comfortable, disappointed that they had lost the shutout – and anxious to get back out there and prove themselves.
“You could get that sense that they wanted one more shot – they wanted to get that chance and they did,” said Rivera. “And when they got it, I thought they handled it very well. It was ‘Hey, when we get back out there, we’ve got to make something happen,’ that’s what I liked.”
They certainly made something happen – two sacks, one each from Wes Horton and Kawann Short forced Prescott into a desperation fourth-down incompletion with Julius Peppers bearing down on him from the left side; in certain situations, the defensive line has the autonomy to organize and execute the rush off a menu of different options when they utilize their “green system” – and that usually happens on third down or in obvious passing situations.
That was the case on those final two drives and the result was three sacks for the defensive line and a forced fumble that enabled the Panthers to line up in the victory formation – if you’re counting at home, that’s three items checked off the defensive checklist – sack, turnover, victory.
And it was on third down, to boot.
The superfecta.
