Life would appear to be just great these days for the 14-0 Carolina Panthers. Cam Newton, their effervescent (not to mention multi-talented) quarterback, is surely the NFL’s most valuable player, and the Panthers are generally resourceful and resilient.
With victories over Atlanta and Tampa Bay, Carolina could become the second team in NFL history to win all 16 regular-season games. The Panthers have outscored their opponents by 171 points, second in the NFL to Arizona, and are a very good bet to play in Super Bowl 50.
“It’s great,” Luke Kuechly, Carolina’s rapacious middle linebacker, said of being 14-0. “You come in with a mindset every season to win every game, but we’re taking it one game at a time this year, and that’s what’s really helped us – that one-game-at-a-time approach. You don’t get ahead, you don’t get behind, you learn from the past games and you concentrate on the future ones.”
So it sounded a little strange to hear Roman Harper, their strong safety, say this after the Panthers beat the New York Giants on Sunday, 38-35: “This is the most disappointed 14-0 team I’ve ever seen in my life. And that’s a great thing, because we hold ourselves up to such a high standard.”
They’d just won a bizarre game, which will be mostly remembered for the ridiculous and far-too-long sideshow of the clearly incited Giants receiver Odell Beckham swapping cheap shots with Carolina cornerback Josh Norman. Beckham picked up three penalties, Norman two.
The Giants were desperate to stay in the NFC East race, but the way the Panthers blew a four-touchdown lead during a 19-minute span of the second half was disconcerting. You may remember the first team to finish 16-0 in the regular season, the 2007 New England Patriots, coughed up a four-point lead to the Giants in the final minute of Super Bowl XLII.
Newton is truly amazing: he is first among NFL quarterbacks in rushing and sixth in passing efficiency, and he appears to have fun when he plays, which is refreshing. With 449 points, the Panthers are the highest-scoring team in the league.
But their defense is a little shaky. Norman is one of the NFL’s best cover corners, but the other corner, Charles Tillman, is 34 years old and playing on a bad knee, and the safeties are Kurt Coleman, who has been a reserve the last two years, and Harper, who is 33 and literally graying.
Eli Manning threw three second-half passes and was not sacked on Sunday, and Rashad Jennings scored on a 38-yard touchdown run in which he burst through the line and galloped untouched through the secondary. The Giants rushed for 161 yards.
The Panthers are, by far, the best team in the league with 35 takeaways – 22 interceptions and 13 fumbles. They are plus-19, also a league-best, in turnover margin. The Panthers are third in the league in total defense, allowing a scant 314.9 yards a game, and are fifth overall in pass defense, giving up 224.8 yards per game.
But Kuechly said the Panthers’ defense would need to “give him a little more of a complement,” referring to Newton.
“We have to close out the game,” the veteran defensive tackle Dwan Edwards said.
Harper made an unintentional pun when he said: “We’re getting everybody’s best punch. That’s what happens when you’re on top of the column. And we’re trying to stay up there right now.”
Finishing 16-0, they all agree, would be nice, but can the Panthers stay up there through the night of February 7?
They are not exactly a one-man team – Jonathan Stewart is a tough runner (though he missed the Giants game with a foot injury), and Greg Olson and Ted Ginn are clutch receivers – but, again, their defense will probably need to provide an answer to that question.
Ron Rivera, the former ‘85 Bears linebacker who is Carolina’s head coach, said he was “very disappointed in ourselves. We had an opportunity to close a team out and we didn’t do it. Why? Because we didn’t keep our focus and maintain our composure out there.
“Bottom line is, you’ve got to stay focused when you play this football game. If you don’t, that’s what’s going to happen. I’m referring to us as a football team. The whole football team.”
Meaning, not just Norman. The Panthers flustered Beckham, who dropped what surely would have been a 52-yard touchdown pass from Manning on the third play from scrimmage, and whose first catch came after the Panthers had taken a 35-7 lead.
But Beckham finished with six catches for 76 yards, including a 40-yard pass from Manning and a game-tying 14-yard touchdown pass with 1 min 51sec to play. The Panthers needed a 49-yard drive and a 43-yard field goal from Graham Gano on the game’s final play to win it.
“It’s the end of the season,” Kuechly said after finishing with 15 tackles. “Guys are fighting for playoff situations. That’s just how it goes. There’s a couple of games left, and teams are going to play hard. That’s what it comes down to.”
Even though the Panthers close the season against the pretty-much-out-of-it Falcons (7-7) and definitely-out-of-it Bucs (6-8), Rivera has already said he won’t back off at the end of the regular season, as some coaches of unbeaten teams have done late in the season.
Tom Brady could tell them it is much more fun to win the Super Bowl than it is to finish 16-0. But the Panthers also have some issues to tend to before they open the playoffs with a game in Charlotte the weekend of January 16-17.
“I was celebrating, I was excited. I’m 14-0,” Tillman said. “At the same time, I’m humble about being 14-0. I’m not rubbing it anybody’s face. I’m very humble. We almost did lose the game, but I think you saw the character of our team at the end of the game, the true character of what we can do. I don’t think anybody got rattled. We focused, got locked back in.”
Well, Newton did, anyway.
“Hit the reset button,” Tillman said.
