Hope everyone enjoyed their week off from Carolina Panthers football. The bye week couldn’t have come at a better time. For the last two weeks, the lasting memory of the Panthers is an upset win over the Rams. In the time that’s past, that very same Rams team completely annihilated the Cardinals on the road to remind everyone that they’re still good. On that same day, the Buccaneers lost at home to the Saints, dropping them to 7-6 and a tie with the Panthers for the division lead. The vibes are high.
And for anyone that knows how this Panthers team operates, that’s terrifying. The vibes were high after the Panthers went into Lambeau Field and stunned the Packers. The Panthers followed that with a home game against this very same Saints team and proceeded to play one of their worst games of the season. They bounced back to restore the good vibes by beating the Falcons in Atlanta while Bryce Young threw for a franchise record 448 yards. The offense then crashed from that to put forth an embarrassing performance on Monday night despite their defense spoon feeding them several scoring opportunities. Now, after the win over the Rams, the vibes have never been higher. Is that a jumping off point this time? Or is it just a new high point for the team to crash down from?
The Saints have been frisky lately. They’re 2-2 in their last four games starting with that win over the Panthers. They lost to the Falcons and Dolphins, but they had a chance to tie the Dolphins late with a 2-point conversion. And of course they just beat the Buccaneers in soggy Tampa Bay this past Sunday. They’ve played pretty well defensively in that span of games, allowing just 18 points per game. None of their four opponents have topped 200 yards passing. That started with the Panthers posting an anemic 102 yards passing and seven points back in early November.
The Panthers are going to try to avoid a repeat of that showing, and they have the benefit of knowing what the Saints did to stop them. They should know what they need to do to counter the Saints’ last game plan.
- Prove that you can beat the Saints through the air. In the first meeting, the Saints dared Bryce Young to beat them by putting bodies in Rico Dowdle’s run lanes and leaving their secondary on islands against the Panthers’ receivers. Dave Canales stubbornly tried to stick with the run game, but the Saints had it bottled up. When forced to the air, Young was afraid to pull the trigger and threw the vast majority of his passes within seven or eight yards of the line of scrimmage. He seemed spooked by the interception he threw on the first drive that was called back because of a dubious roughing the passer call. This time, the Panthers need to air it out early on, hopefully with some success, to back off the Saints defense and make them respect both phases of the game. That will open up room for the run game, which is what the Panthers want to lean on.
- Ride the hot hand on the ground. Rico Dowdle got the majority of the carries in the first meeting, but he’s been rather ineffective in recent weeks after the explosive beginning of his time as a starter. He has averaged 3.2 or fewer yards per carry in three of the last four weeks. Meanwhile, Chuba Hubbard has averaged at leat 4.7 yards per carry in all four games in that time. He had very limited touches in the first three before getting a big share of the workload against the Rams. He looked like the much more explosive and difficult to tackle back between the two against the Rams, so the Panthers would be wise to lean on him more than Dowdle to start the game. But both have shown capable of playing well. Whoever is popping off should continue to get carries. Don’t overly commit to one back or the other before the game starts.
- Score fast and put the pressure on. The Saints have had a very bad season and haven’t given their fans much to be excited for in several seasons (we know the feeling). It can be very hard for a struggling team to play in front of their home crowd when things aren’t going well. If the Panthers can score quickly and get the fans feeling restless, there’s a very real chance things snowball and become very difficult for New Orleans.
