Panthers vs. Buccaneers: Carolina Grades, Notes and Quotes
The bye week is typically a time to reflect and self-scout, finding ways to shore up a team’s strengths and hide a team’s weaknesses. For the Carolina Panthers, it will be a time to enjoy their fourth straight victory as they tied the 2003 Super Bowl squad. By beating the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 37-23 on Sunday, the Panthers improve to 4-0, sharing the top of the division with the Atlanta Falcons.
The NFC South is the only division in football with two undefeated teams, making it one of the most top-heavy divisions in football through the first four weeks of the season. It’s a far cry from last season, when the Panthers didn’t pick up their fourth victory until December on their way to winning the division.
Carolina’s fifth consecutive win over Tampa Bay was fueled first and foremost by the defense. Tampa Bay turned the ball over five times—the most turnovers Carolina has forced since December of 2009, when it forced Josh Freeman to turn the ball over five times. It hurried and harried Tampa Bay rookie quarterback Jameis Winston on a sloppy, rainy day.
You would expect Josh Norman, Kawann Short and Thomas Davis to be the sparkplugs of a defensive effort, and they were. They were joined, however, by the newest Panther defensive end acquired just this week. No, not Jared Allen, but former Washington practice-squad player Ryan Delaire.
With Charles Johnson out until at least November, Delaire took advantage of an opportunity to play and picked up a couple of sacks, which ties him for the team lead. The added pressure forced Winston into early throws, flustering the rookie and creating the defensive performance.
The offense was able to capitalize. Cam Newton threw for his second-smallest total in his career with just 124 yards receiving. But that included multiple touchdown strikes to Ted Ginn Jr., while the running game topped 130 yards, controlled the game and capitalized on the short fields provided by the defense.
The schedule picks up from here, though not as much as one would have thought before the season. Games against the Seattle Seahawks and Green Bay Packers will be tough, but the Philadelphia Eagles and Indianapolis Colts seem like much easier opponents than they were a month ago. We’ll see if the Panthers can keep their momentum up after the bye, but for now, they’re sitting pretty atop the division.
Grades
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Position | Grade |
QB | B |
RB | B |
WR | B |
TE | B- |
OL | B |
DL | A |
LB | A |
DB | A |
Special Teams | C |
Coaching | A- |
Quarterback
Cam Newton may have thrown for his second-fewest yards in his career, but that was more of a function of how the game was developing as opposed to any poor play on the QB's part. He threw a couple of touchdown passes to Ted Ginn and added 51 yards with his legs to be the team’s leading rusher.
Running Backs
Jonathan Stewart only received 10 carries, but he picked up 50 yards on them to lead the running backs production. He also was indirectly responsible for a touchdown; he fumbled the ball directly into Carolina tight end Ed Dickson’s hands. Cameron Artis-Payne also had a solid look late in the game, picking up 25 yards of his own.
Wide Receivers
Ted Ginn caught two touchdown passes. He now has eight touchdown receptions in his 20 games in Carolina and six touchdown receptions in the other 104 games he has played in. It was Brenton Bersin, however, who led the receivers with four receptions for 54 yards. Corey Brown had just three yards, and Devin Funchess had no catches.
Tight Ends
It was a quieter day for Greg Olsen, who caught two passes on six targets for 28 yards. Ed Dickson had just one reception but had one of the highlights of the week. Jonathan Stewart fumbled, but the ball popped right into Dickson’s hands in the clear, allowing him to run nearly 50 yards for a score.
Offensive Line
Tampa Bay picked up two sacks on Newton, but on the whole, the Panthers did a good job bottling up sack leader Jacquies Smith and Gerald McCoy on the day. The Panthers also had 4.0 yards per carry, topping 130 yards on the ground for the second time this season.
Defensive Line
Jared Allen was quiet in his Carolina debut, but Ryan Delaire picked up two sacks in his first game as a Panther. Kony Ealy also showed good penetration with a quarterback hit and a tackle for a loss. Star Lotulelei recovered the Tampa Bay fumble on the first play of the game. And Kawann Short had a key pass deflection to set up another interception.
Linebackers
Thomas Davis led the team with 11 tackles and had a spectacular, leaping interception in garbage time—his second of the year. That's not bad for someone who was questionable entering the game. Shaq Thompson also showed some skills in the pass rush, nearly bringing down Winston and forcing an intentional-grounding call as he continued to play a larger share of the snaps with Luke Kuechly sidelined with a concussion.
Secondary
Josh Norman continues to stake his claim as one of the best cornerbacks in football, picking off a couple of passes and providing at least one more fantastic pass broken up on what could have been a touchdown. Kurt Coleman added his first interception of the year as the Panthers held Winston to a 57.0 quarterback rating that was somewhat inflated by garbage time in the fourth quarter.
Special Teams
It was an average day for the special teams. Graham Gano made three field goals, and Fozzy Whittaker returned a kickoff 26 yards. However, Carolina had issues covering kickoffs, with Tampa Bay running back Bobby Rainey averaging 30.7 yards per return, and the Panthers' Brad Nortman boomed a punt into the end zone on a play that called for some touch.
Coaching
It was another solid day for head coach Ron Rivera and his crew, with the only blemish being a failed challenge when the game was well into garbage time.
Panthers Make Life Difficult for Jameis Winston
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Rookie quarterbacks generally have difficulty reading defenses and taking care of the ball. The Panthers knew this coming in and managed to capitalize on several mistakes by Winston and the Buccaneers.
On the first drive of the game, Winston and backup center Joe Hawley had snap issues, placing the ball on the ground. Star Lotulelei came out of the bottom of the pile with the ball, setting up a Panthers field goal to make it 3-0.
On the next drive, Winston ended up hitting Josh Norman between the numbers, and Norman made him pay by returning the ball 46 yards for a touchdown to make it 10-0.
Norman, September’s NFC Defensive Player of the Month, has started his contract year smoking-hot; he’s the first defensive back to have two touchdowns off of interceptions in the first four games of a season since Darren Sharper in 2009 and only the 20th player to do so since 1960.
Three drives later, Kawann Short tipped Winston’s pass at the line, and Kurt Coleman was able to haul in the resulting wounded duck for yet another turnover. That set up Ted Ginn’s touchdown to make the score 17-3.
Flipping to the second half, Josh Norman had his second interception of the game covering Vincent Jackson, returning the pass 34 yards. That gave him 110 interception return yards on the season—the franchise record is Chris Gamble’s 157 yards in 2005 and seems very catchable. That set up Ted Ginn’s second touchdown to make to score 31-10 in the third quarter.
Finally, Thomas Davis made a fantastic leaping interception late in the fourth quarter when the outcome was already more or less decided, picking off a pass intended for Mike Evans. Davis wasn’t even a lock to play, as he’s slightly banged up from last week.
Every one of Carolina’s first-half points was a result of turnovers. If anything, it was disappointing to only come away with 17 points at halftime, considering the field position the Panthers had multiple times in the first half. But in a bit of a sloppy day, the defense was able to regularly and consistently force Tampa Bay into mistakes.
Tampa Bay Beats Itself
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While Carolina’s defense forced a large number of Tampa Bay mistakes, the Buccaneers were more than willing to help the Panthers out with their own mistakes, making the final margin a little bit misleading. Carolina was good, but Tampa Bay was quite poor.
First and foremost is the performance of Tampa Bay place-kicker Kyle Brindza. Last week against the Houston Texans, Brindza missed three field goals and an extra point in a game the Buccaneers eventually lost by 10 points.
He wasn’t much better this week, missing a couple of field goals after some of the more promising Buccaneer drives and an extra point at the end of the game. His misses weren’t the difference between winning and losing this week, but they did squelch potential Tampa Bay momentum at points in the game where the outcome was still in doubt.
There were other mistakes and gaffes. Lavonte David dropped a surefire interception, Vincent Jackson had some key drops and the overall performance was in general poor. Carolina’s two-score margin of victory mostly involved it playing solid football and keeping out of its own way, letting Tampa Bay make mistake after mistake and then capitalizing. The result was the easiest win of the season for the team.
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Panthers Set Franchise Record with 15th Consecutive 100-Yard Rushing Game
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According to Pro-Football-Reference.com’s streak finder—and counting only regular-season games—the Panthers set a franchise milestone against Tampa Bay.
With 133 yards on the ground, the Panthers topped the century mark for the 15th consecutive game, topping the stretch from Sept. 9, 2011, to Jan. 1, 2012, when Jonathan Stewart, Cam Newton and DeAngelo Williams formed a three-headed monster in the backfield.
Williams, of course, is gone, doing well with the Steelers up in Pittsburgh. Newton is his usual self. What’s surprising, however, is that the Panthers have been able to continue the streak this season without Jonathan Stewart playing a major role.
Stewart’s fantastic finish to the 2014 season forged the first part of this streak, but his high-water mark this season has been just 62 yards against Houston in Week 2. He is the team’s leading rusher, but Newton is right on his tail.
That 15-game streak keeps pace with the Seattle Seahawks, who have a chance to also go to 15 games on Monday night against the Detroit Lions in a game where they won't have Marshawn Lynch, per NFL Media's Ian Rapoport. Those two dueling streaks are the longest in the league since LeSean McCoy and the Eagles had a 19-game streak in 2010 and 2011.
Josh Norman Draws Another Penalty Flag
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About the only negative thing you can say about Josh Norman this season is his tendency for getting penalized after a great play. After both of his interceptions returned for a touchdown this season, he has drawn a flag—first for taunting against the Jacksonville Jaguars and this week for riding the football like a horse after scoring a touchdown.
After the game, Norman said he had actually asked the officials before Sunday’s game if he could pretend to ride the ball like a horse to celebrate a score, according to ESPN.com’s David Newton. The problem, however, is that he actually used the ball as a prop, which is explicitly illegal and grounds for an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty under the current rules.
“I rode Delta and I got penalized for it,” Norman clarified, per Joe Person of the Charlotte Observer.
As long as Norman continues to make big plays, the occasional celebration penalty will be begrudgingly accepted. It’s the only black mark on what has been a fantastic season so far for the 27-year-old.
Cam Newton: Still Room to Improve
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Sitting at 4-0 and atop the division, it would be easy for a team to rest on its laurels—or at least start looking ahead to the showdown against the Seattle Seahawks in two weeks. A wiser team, however, will recognize the Panthers haven’t been as impressive of an undefeated team as they could be and that there’s plenty of room to continue to improve.
Cam Newton made that point clear in his postgame press conference. “We still haven’t played the football we are capable of,” he said, according to the Charlotte Observer's Jonathan Jones.
This was the closest Carolina has come to playing a complete game this season, and it’s the first game it's put away with a significant amount of time left on the clock. It was by far the Panthers' most impressive performance of the season so far, but Newton is still correct—there are aspects of the team that haven’t quite clicked on all cylinders yet.
Jonathan Stewart hasn’t really gotten going, rushing for fewer than 70 yards in each of the first four games. The defensive line has yet to generate a massive pass rush, with the team’s sack leaders being practice squadder Ryan Delaire and Mario Addison with two apiece. There also remain question marks at wide receiver that haven't been answered yet.
Still, even if you believe Carolina is the worst 4-0 team—which is debatable—it’s still a fantastic start with plenty to build on into the rest of the season.
Ted Ginn: 'It’s Not Pretty, but We’re Getting Wins'
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Acknowledging Carolina doesn’t quite have the pedigree of the other undefeated teams to this point in the season, Ted Ginn still summed up the Panthers well after the game.
“It’s not pretty, but we’re getting wins. All you can ask for,” he said in his postgame presser.
He’s right—this isn’t like college football, where human polls and opinions of the quality of opponents matter for your final bowl-game placements. All that matters is wins and losses, and a 4-0 start is great. Since 1990, 59 of the 71 teams that started the season 4-0 have made the playoffs.
That doesn’t mean, however, that how you performed in those first four games is meaningless. Squeaking out wins over bad teams is less impressive than crushing quality opponents. The Panthers have played well but not perfectly so far.
There are still areas Carolina can improve, and the team will be hard at work during the bye week. However, 4-0 is 4-0, and there’s plenty to celebrate in Charlotte at this point.
Bryan Knowles is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report, covering the Carolina Panthers. Follow him @BryKno on Twitter.
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