Panthers vs. Cowboys: What's the Game Plan for Carolina?
It’s been a long time since the Carolina Panthers were able to beat the Dallas Cowboys. They’re just 1-9 against them in the regular season, and their last five matchups have ended in defeat. They’ve come close plenty of times, but Dallas has nearly always managed to get the better of them in the end.
| 10/21/2012 | Carolina | L, 14-19 | Dallas kicks two FGs in the last four minutes |
| 9/28/2009 | Dallas | L, 7-21 | Delhomme throws a pick-six with five minutes left |
| 12/22/2007 | Carolina | L, 13-20 | Marion Barber and Julio Jones rush for 148 yards |
| 10/29/2006 | Carolina | L, 14-35 | Dallas scored 35 unanswered points |
| 12/24/2005 | Carolina | L, 20-24 | Dallas scored a TD with 24 seconds left |
Of course, none of those Panthers teams were 10-0, favorites to reach the Super Bowl according to ESPN and riding franchise-record winning streaks. Still, their history of futility against Dallas—and the return of Tony Romo—might be the reasoning behind a large number of sportsbooks making Dallas the favorites to win on Thursday, according to Odds Shark.
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It’s a little condescending to refer to a 10-0 team “trying to pull the upset” over a team that’s 3-7 and in dire straits to make the postseason, but that’s where the oddsmakers have them at the moment. It’s certainly not a guarantee that the Panthers will win on the road, either—the one previous time a 3-7 team played a 10-0 team, the 1990 Los Angeles Rams actually gave the San Francisco 49ers their first loss.
Will the Panthers be able to get to 11-0? Will they break their losing streak against the Cowboys and pick up a win in their first Thanksgiving Day appearance? Or will they stumble and pick up the first loss of the season? Let’s take a closer look.
Offensive Game Plan
The Cowboys have had major issues stopping the run this season. They’ve allowed 99 or more yards on the ground in seven of their 10 games, and Football Outsiders ranks them as 25th overall against the run. This is, in large part, thanks to the poor play of the run-stoppers up front, Tyrone Crawford and Nick Haden at defensive tackle.
Football Outsiders ranks Dallas at 31st in power situations—opponents who need two or fewer yards on third or fourth down succeed a whopping 82 percent of the time. The Cowboys only tackle back at or behind the line on 20 percent of plays, 21st in the league, and they are fifth-worst at stopping backs once they get to the second level.
In other words, they’re not at all suited to stopping a power-rushing attack up the gut. The Panthers will be getting Andrew Norwell back to go alongside Ryan Kalil and Trai Turner up the middle, so expect a healthy dose of smashmouth football, with the interior linemen simply overwhelming their Dallas counterparts, and Jonathan Stewart and Cam Newton plowing forward into the secondary.
In fact, no team in football is worse at stopping those runs up the gut—the Cowboys rank dead last, allowing 4.52 adjusted line yards per play. Carolina isn’t particularly great at pounding the ball up the middle, but it has an above-average 3.96 adjusted line yards per carry there, so it’s a moderate strength against an absolute weakness. If the Panthers jump out to a lead, they are perfectly set to control the tempo of the game and wear down Dallas’ defense by pounding the rock.
Of course, Cam Newton is coming off of two very successful days throwing the ball, as well. For the first time this season, and possibly the first week in his career, Newton is listed as above average strictly as a passer on Football Outsiders and has a top-10 passing grade on Pro Football Focus. His improved accuracy and decision-making, especially in the red zone, has moved him from being a player you tolerate as a passer in order to exploit his running ability to an actual weapon even when in the pocket.
This week, he gets a chance to exploit an injured Cowboys secondary.
Morris Claiborne has been officially ruled out for the game, per Todd Archer of ESPN, and both Brandon Carr and Byron Jones are dealing with nagging injuries themselves. Normally, we’d probably see Jones shadowing tight end Greg Olsen, but Claiborne’s absence will force Jones to play a boundary cornerback role. The Cowboys will probably use multiple players to try to keep Olsen under wraps, but the effort will start with safety Barry Church, and that’s a significant matchup advantage for the Panthers.
The Cowboys have struggled with elite tight ends this season. Jimmy Graham caught seven passes for 75 yards back in Week 8, while Rob Gronkowski had four receptions for 67 yards in Week 5. Olsen is right up there with either of them, especially when it comes to the receiving part of his game, and is poised to have a big day. Couple that with the emergence in recent weeks of Devin Funchess, and the Cowboys are going to have a hard time slowing the Panthers offense down.
Defensive Game Plan
Make no mistake—the Cowboys offense is significantly different with Tony Romo at quarterback. No lead is really safe when Romo is behind the controls. He has 30 game-winning drives in his career, and when you take into account that most of his first games were as a holder and not a starting quarterback, only Matt Ryan picked up that many game-winning drives so quickly.
Admittedly, some of that is because Dallas’ defense keeps putting the offense in situations where it needs to come back, but Romo’s cannon and risk-taking style have paid dividends for the Cowboys late in the game time after time.
He still is recovering a bit from the broken collarbone that cost him six games, and at times he looked rusty against the Miami Dolphins. Specifically, he didn’t handle pressure as well as he normally does.
| No Pressure | 16 | 10 | 131 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 127.9 |
| Pressure | 12 | 8 | 96 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 51.4 |
Both interceptions came when Romo had pressure in his face against Miami, in addition to the normal sacks and quarterback hits you get when the defense brings pressure. He also completed just one pass on four attempts in the red zone and took a sack on a key third-down play.
In other words, he wasn’t quite up to full speed last week against Miami, and while he was able to produce enough to pull out the win, the long layoff seemed to lower his production significantly. Miami’s a below-average defense, as well, and now Romo gets the best defense in football on a short week. Sixty minutes of game action will help Romo get his feet back underneath him, but the short week does him no favors. He only had one full practice before Thursday’s game, so he may not yet be up to his full potential quite yet.
That means he’s going to need some help from his offensive line, keeping the pocket clean so he can look for his targets. Last season, the Cowboys had the best offensive line in football. They’re not quite playing to the same level this season. Their adjusted sack rate is up to 7.2 percent from 6.1 percent last season.
Some of that can be attributed to the quarterback change as well—Romo is better at finding targets and getting the ball out than either Matt Cassel or Brandon Weeden—but also some of it is just regression toward the mean. The weak point is right tackle Doug Free, and it’ll be up to the recently re-activated Charles Johnson, as well as Kony Ealy and Jared Allen, to get around the corners and force Romo to throw the ball before he really wants to.
Josh Norman will likely be blanketing Dez Bryant in one of the better matchups of the week, but Charles Tillman will miss another game. That means the Panthers will be going back to Bene Benwikiere on the outside and, more significantly, Colin Jones in a nickel role. Jones was the victim on DeSean Jackson’s long touchdown pass last week but was otherwise solid. The Panthers just need to ensure that Jones doesn’t get into too many physical mismatches, and the secondary should be alright against Dallas.
Dallas’ strength is similar to Carolina’s—it’s the interior line. Travis Frederick might be the best center in football, and he’s flanked by last year’s first-round pick Zack Martin and La’el Collins, who would have been a first-round pick this year if it weren’t for being questioned in a murder investigation.
Leading the way for DeMarco Murray, the Cowboys have an above-average rushing attack. It will be fascinating to watch Kawann Short battle these interior linemen—there are few better units when it comes to those power runs, and few teams that get stuffed at the line less than the Cowboys do.
Key Players and Matchups
Carolina Interior Linemen
The return of Andrew Norwell comes at the perfect time, with Amini Silatolu going on injured reserve. Before Norwell went out, there was a good chance that Norwell, Ryan Kalil and Trai Turner could have all made the Pro Bowl, as good as they were playing.
They have the opportunity to have a dominant matchup against Nick Hayden and Tyrone Crawford up the middle, leading the way for Jonathan Stewart. A strong running day could see Dallas worn down throughout the game, allowing the rest of the offense to run on all cylinders.
Dallas DE Greg Hardy
Michael Oher was high school and college teammates with Hardy, the ex-Panther and the current best pass-rusher on the Cowboys, While Hardy’s off-field incidents have been causing headaches for his employer, his on-field pass rushing prowess has been doing the same for opposing offensive coordinators.
Hardy has 4.5 sacks in six games for Dallas after missing the first four with a suspension. Prorate every player’s stats over a full 10 games, and Hardy would be tied for seventh in the NFL with 7.5 sacks. He’s an incredibly dangerous force from the outside. Oher’s having his best pass-blocking season since he was a rookie, and he’ll need to keep that up to keep Cam Newton upright and Hardy out of the backfield.
Carolina DE Charles Johnson
Hardy isn’t the only member of the Panthers’ all-time sack leaderboard to be returning in this one—Charles Johnson will start on Thursday after spending eight weeks on injured reserve, according to Joe Person of the Charlotte Observer.
Johnson and Jared Allen will get the start, but Johnson is expected to be on a snap count as he works himself back into full game shape, meaning Ealy will still get plenty of game action. Johnson, who has the second-most sacks in franchise history, has the chance to make a huge impact in his return to a defensive line that has picked up production recently but still suffers from some depth issues.
Dallas LB Rolando McClain
Rolando McClain has picked up his performance recently. He missed the first four games of the season due to suspension and then spent four more games recovering from a series of nagging injuries. Fully healthy, he’s made an impact in each of the last two games, hitting Jameis Winston three times two weeks ago and returning an interception for a score last week.
If Dallas is going to win this game, it’ll need some help from its defense, and McClain’s pick-six last week is just what the doctor ordered. Someone needs to step up and make some big plays, and McClain’s been on the spot the last two weeks.
Carolina S Roman Harper
Over the last month or so, Harper has picked up his game in pass coverage. Over the past four weeks, Harper has a +5.4 pass-coverage game from Pro Football Focus, the second-highest grade among safeties over that time period. That includes three passes defensed and an average of just 6.5 yards per completion.
The Cowboys have their own tight end weapon in Jason Witten, who needs just six receptions to become the 11th player ever with 1,000 receptions. He’s had six or more receptions in five of Dallas’ 10 games so far, including two of the three weeks Tony Romo has played the entire way. He hasn’t scored a touchdown since Week 1, but the 10-time Pro Bowler is still a dangerous weapon. Harper will get the first crack at slowing him down, and it’s important for the Panthers that Harper continues his recent run of good play.
Prediction
While Dallas looked better last week than it did in Tony Romo’s absence, he’s still just one player. The Cowboys likely would not have gone winless had he played throughout the middle of the season, but they wouldn’t have gone winless if they didn’t have some other fundamental problems on the roster this season, either.
The Cowboys' defense is almost precisely unequipped to deal with Carolina’s power rushing attack, and their secondary is banged up just as Carolina has taken a step forward in the passing game. They're definitely a better team on offense than on defense, but Carolina has the best defense in football and should at least be able to fight Tony Romo and company to a standstill—and, I suspect, do significantly better than that.
The Cowboys have won six of their last nine Thanksgiving Day games, it’s true, but they lost six of their nine Thanksgiving games before that. The Cowboys are 29-17-1 on Thanksgiving, so they do generally play well in their national spotlight game, but a good chunk of that is simply due to having home-field advantage and, historically, being used to playing on a short week. It’s not secret Thanksgiving mojo.
It might take some secret Thanksgiving mojo for Dallas to win this one. I’ll buy into this being one of the toughest challenges left on Carolina’s schedule, but the Panthers shouldn’t be underdogs against the Cowboys, no matter where or when the game is played.
Final score: Carolina 28, Dallas 17
Bryan Knowles is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report, covering the Carolina Panthers. Follow him @BryKno on Twitter.
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