Talk about a roller coaster three weeks. First the Panthers roll over the Chiefs in the franchise’s largest win margin, then get run over by their division rival the Buccaneers, only to hand it to the New Orleans Saints Sunday. Everything the Panthers did wrong last week, they did right this week, dominating the line of scrimmage on both offense and defense, keeping Reggie Bush contained on punts, and giving Jake Delhomme and the offense great starting field position.
The game did start a little slow for the Panthers. With the Saints leading 7-3 in the second quarter, and John Fox determined to get an ineffective running game going, things weren’t looking to good in Charlotte. All that changed however on a huge forced fumble by Julius Peppers, who had a monstrous game. That fumble gave the Panthers the ball on the New Orleans 40 yard line, where Jake Delhomme led the Panthers into the red zone, where the drive was capped on a Jonathan Stewart touchdown run. Everything seemed to go the Panthers way after that, with the defense absolutely suffocating a potent Saints offense, and the Panthers offense doing a great job of capitalizing on turnovers and good field position.
Key Stats
It’s actually a little surprising when you look at the team stats, and the score of the game. For example the stats don’t show that incredible grab by Steve Smith in the endzone between two defenders to put the Panther up 20-7 in the 3rd quarter.
Really both the Saints and the Panthers are about equal in most of the categories. The one major difference would have to be in starting field position. Aided by two turnovers as well as some good returns, the Panthers were able to have short field to work with, making scoring a lot easier.
4: Number of times the Saints either turned the ball over or didn’t convert on 4th down- Obviously the forced fumble by Julius Peppers, and the interception by Ken Lucas were big momentum changers, but how about the defense coming up big twice on 4th and one, especially the one on the goal line denying the Saints a score (Julius Peppers was the one who made the tackle on that play by the way). The game ball has to go to the defense, which was able to hold in check the second ranked offense in the league.
3: Number of Penalties committed by the Panthers-The Panthers committed only three penalties the entire game, and guess what? none of them were false starts! Nock on wood, but it looks like the Panthers were able to work out the false start problems which had been plaguing them earlier in the season, which is great news.
The only other thing I want to point out is the way the Panthers were able to work out of the shadow of their own endzone and move the ball all the way down to the Saints 14 yard line. What a huge difference a week makes, last week, in the same position, the Panthers barely got two yards, resulting in the Bucs getting the ball in Carolina territory on the next possession.
The biggest thing for the Panthers now is to keep a cool head next week against the Cardnials. Hopefully this victory won’t result in the Panthers comming out and laying an egg like they did last week. One other note, it seems the Panthers have gotten rid of their home jitters, sporting a 4-0 record at home.
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