Normally as the season goes on, the NFL picture becomes clearer and we start to get a good idea of who’s who and what every team is capable of. For the most part, we’ve reached that point in the season,
but there are a handful of teams that seem to provide an unpredictable grab bag of outcomes. Two of those teams are meeting in Atlanta on Sunday.
The first time these two teams met, the Panthers were coming off two dreadful showings against the Jaguars and Cardinals (outside of the comeback attempt against the latter). The Falcons had handled the Vikings after taking the Buccaneers to the wire. Naturally, the Falcons were going to steamroll the Panthers. Except the opposite happened. The Panthers blanked the Falcons 30-0.
That game has proven to hold no predictive power over the games that have followed. The Panthers won four out of five, including a road win over the Packers. But the one loss in that stretch was a home 40-9 loss and then they followed the winning spell with a dismal home loss to the Saints. The Falcons handled the Bills then lost four straight, including a blowout loss to the Dolphins. There’s no telling what’s going to happen on Sunday when these two teams collide.
All that said, if there’s one thing that’s become quite clear as the season has gone on, it’s that the Panthers offense lives and dies with Rico Dowdle. Bryce Young has fully morphed into a low upside game manager. The lack of explosiveness in the pass game as hampered the offense, and it’s only been buoyed by Rico Dowdle playing like one of the best backs in the NFL and picking up big chunks of yards on the ground. And that brings us to the keys for the Panthers offense in this Week 11 divisional matchup.
- It’s the Rico Dowdle show. The Saints didn’t let Dowdle get loose last week, and hopefully that doesn’t prove to be the blueprint for the rest of the Panthers’ opponents. The Panthers need Dowdle to be explosive if they’re going to win this game. The Falcons have one of the best pass defenses in the league, but they’re weak against the run. Case in point: they let Jonathan Taylor run for 244 yards and three touchdowns last week. 83 of those yards came on a single carry. This defense is prone to giving up long runs, and that’s the Panthers best chance at moving the ball effectively.
- Keep the pass rush at bay and get the ball out against pressure. The Falcons boasted one of the worst pass rushes in the league for several years running before they finally went all in trying to fix it this offseason. They used their first first round pick on Jalon Walker and then traded back into the first round to grab James Pearce Jr. That duo has combined for 5.5 sacks, and they’re joined by 13 other players that have registered at least half a sack this season. That has made for a defense that’s fifth in the league in sacks and sixth in the league in ESPN’s pass run win rate statistic. Young has had moments where he hesitates when faced with pressure. He’s going to have to be decisive because the Falcons are going to create pressure.
- Prove that the deep pass can be a threat. There’s been a lot of talk on the Internet about how the Saints dared Bryce Young to beat them, and he unequivocally did not do that. The primary problem has been a lack of a threat in the vertical passing game. It’s allowing defenses to play in a box and sit on the run game and shorter routes. For the goof of this game, the rest of this season, and the rest of his career, Bryce needs to start showing defenses that he’s willing and able to attack downfield. If the Falcons try to employ the Saints strategy of taking away the run game, Young is going to have chances to do that on Sunday. He needs to find a way to connect on some of those opportunities.
