Greetings everyone from Charlotte, NC, the land of mediocre football teams and twice-a-decade hot streaks! Lo and behold, we managed to sneak into a playoffs we have no business being in thanks to being the shiniest turd in the dogpile known as the 2014 NFC South. We're a 7-8-1 football team that managed to be better than the Falcons, Saints, and Bucs, who all collectively managed to somehow drop every chance we gave them to walk off to a playoff berth. It's quite embarrassing, but obviously it's worth it to us now since we managed to knock off the Ryan-Lindley-led Arizona Cardinals, and you guys are no stranger to improbably playoff victories yourselves; my fondest memory of the Seattle Seahawks is watching a 7-9 2010 squad trounce the overrated Saints. To this day Lynch's TD run is one of the go-to gifs in response to obnoxious Saints fans talking mad poo about their overrated sewer team.
But I digress. I know a lot of you guys are overlooking us, and maybe for good reason. We've got a lot of flaws and don't have the depth (or the starting talent) in key positions like you guys do. But I also see a lot of people overlooking us to the tune of referring to us as a second bye week. That's foolish. Not because you're not the better team (you clearly are) but because the team you guys remember from late October is, two months later, completely different.
When after the Seahawks loss we were in full tank mode. Everyone was convinced Ron Rivera was going to get deservedly fired, we'd gotten blown out by the Packers the week before, and in fact we were getting ready to embark on a losing streak that saw us taken down by the likes of Teddy Bridgewater and the Vikings, a streak during which Rivera, almost certainly in desperation to save his job, made roster move after roster move, dumping vet starters like Jason Avant much to cries of murder from the fanbase, benching starters and replacing them with rookies too raw to sustain any kind of success. And then out of nowhere, for no particular reason, it all came together at once. We dropped 40 points on the Saints in their house and then went on to demolish our other division opponents, capping off a four-game winning streak with yesterday's victory over the Cardinals.
In light of this, here's what's different about the team you played in October:
1) Our starting running back is no longer DeAngelo Williams. Old, ineffective, and widely considered a derisive lockeroom figure, he's been supplanted by Jonathan Stewart, who, finally healthy, has averaged almost 100ypc during the past five games. Leading the way is Mike Tolbert, who went on temporary IR early in the season and emerged since week 12 as the fullback we came to recognize as integral to the running attack, and even caught a score against the Cardinals, reestablishing himself as a threat in the screen game (where he is the most effective, IMO.)
2) Perhaps the biggest change is the offensive line. When you faced us on October 26 you were facing a lineup consisting of left tackle Bell, left guard Velasco, center Kalil, right guard Scott, and right tackle Chandler. It was roundly denounced as the worst starting OL crew in the history of the NFL. It made the 2006 Raiders look all-pro. I mean it was ghastly. But while Byron Bell still remains a popular joke/default curse word in the Carolinas, we've replaced every other guy on the squad not named Kalil, and it's worked wonders. We promoted this random fat guy named Norwell, who sat on a practice squad because his measurables didn't fit the archetypical guard, and around the same time got third-round rookie Trai Turner back in the lineup on Kalil's right side, and the two of them have been one of the best guard combos in the league since that time. Most improbably of all, we picked up some journeyman named Mike Remmers, who'd floated around training camps from Baltimore to Denver, and plugged him in at the starting right tackle position and he hasn't looked back. It allowed us to jettison Chandler, who was actually a defensive tackle converted to start at offensive tackle… derp. Project over. Since we played you guys the turnaround has been absolutely unbelievable. Cam has time in the pocket, the running game is the most effective it's been in half a decade, and we're actually winning football games. Winning trench battles is why.
3) Kelvin Benjamin has slowed his rookie roll since the first half of the season, much to our disappointment, reverting to a number of recent performances where he's dropped catch after catch. That's awful for us, and if he continues it against you all we'll be in for a long day. But ever since cutting Jason Avant a few weeks ago in favor of promoting young guys - by all accounts a desperation move by Ron, whose regime's playcalling was openly criticized by Avant the day before - we've seen an explosion in performance. Jericho Cotchery, something of a disappointment himself, has stepped up nicely in the absence, and most impressive of all has been Philly Brown, and undrafted return man out of Ohio State who's had a couple of incredible plays on offense and special teams, and currently provides the only true deep threat on the roster. You'll see him used in reverses and deep posts on Saturday night, and you'll see lots of it. You didn't see it in October because he was injured.
4) Our defensive line has been pretty awful all year. Greg Hardy went down for slamming some chick down on a bed full of AK-47s and then sandwiching her head in a toilet seat (I'm really not kidding) and we've been struggling to find an identity as a pass rushing unit ever since. Well… until week 14 that is. Charles Johnson, long-time left end, finally recovered from back injuries that'd hampered him all season and he's been unstoppable ever since. The useless rotation of Wes Horton and another guy whose name escapes me (because he's forgettable) has been supplanted by rookie Kony Ealy, who had a sack in each of his last four regular season games and Frank Alexander, who was widely considered to be the team's breakout defensive player in training camp but has been deactivated all season due to stupid PED suspensions. He's back and our defensive line has looked phenomenal ever since.
5) Our starting secondary on October 26 consisted of cornerbacks Melvin White and Antoine Cason, with Thomas DeCoud and Roman Harper holding back the safety position. The entire secondary has been maligned since day one. Outside of an early showing by Roman Harper, the whole unit looked atrocious. Through the first three quarters of the season they blew coverages, missed assignments, took awful angles, overran plays, and generally played worse than any collection of potted plants you could throw out there in their place. Cason constantly played ten yards off his man, Melvin White was inexperienced and just generally mediocre, and both safeties, established vets poached from the purge-lists of the Falcons and the Saints, constantly looked awful.
The only one starting now is Roman Harper, and he looks vastly improved. Both corners have been replaced by rookie Bene Benwikere, who PFF stats (if you put stock in them) has been the 2nd-best corner in the league since the end of November, and long-time project Josh Norman, a late-round pick who's been a project headcase for several years but finally seems to have put everything together. Third-round pick Tre Boston has stepped up to fulfill the free safety role vacated by DeCoud, who now calls punt coverages and plays a role on special teams. These secondary shakeups coincide with a defense that ranked 27th during the first 12 games and 4th in the league during the last 4.
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So what does all this actually mean? Are we an ass-spanking gang of he-men ready to take the world by storm? Well, we think we are, at least we fans do, and the players probably do as well, which is what they're supposed to do. Are we? Hardly. But what matters here is that full half of the team you faced in October is gone. 50% of the guys on the field you'll play against are new to you. They're also astoundingly better than the guys they replaced. If this doesn't worry the over-confident among you, I'm sure it worries your coaching staff, who you can be damn well certain takes them very, very seriously.
With all that said, here's how you beat us, and rather easily.
On Offense
This will be your toughest task. Panthers-Seahawks matchups for the past couple of years have been defined by hard-nosed, blood-and-guts defensive football. You guys have made gritty plays in the 4th that have ultimately doomed us, which has been the difference in the past couple of contests. But the number one thing you can do against our defense is exploit the safeties. Despite the improved play, Tre Boston is very inexperienced, and Roman Harper, when isolated against speedy players, is almost a lock to fail. The intermediate stuff and the screen games are pretty well going to get blown up, but you'll need to stick to it in order to keep the safeties honest (I hear you have a halfway decent RB up there too that should help with this.) This should make play action deadly. Tre will bite, Harper will get overrun. Points.
Also, I'm fairly sure strong side linebacker AJ Klein is out, which means he's being replaced by rookie Adarius Glanton. He's filled in nicely, but still he's the only true weak link in that front seven, and if there's anyone who can exploit it it's Wilson.
On Defense
Here's where you guys play to your strengths. You've got the league's best defense, hands down. Our offense is much improved, but deeply flawed nonetheless. For one, our offensive line is due for a bad game. They've gelled pretty well as a unit, but some of the guys are still raw, and they've proven vulnerable to backers blitzing off the right side, mainly because the aforementioned Byron Bell still plays worse than my Grandma, who's actually dead. Any team in the league is gonna get one or two free runs at the quarterback anytime he's starting. Your best bet is to get pressure against him early and often and demand a tight end being kept in to block; our offensive coordinator is a raging moron and has proven more than willing to keep tight end Greg Olsen back there, pulling our most reliable pass-catcher off the field when former Raven Ed Dickson is a better blocker anyway. Can't fix stupid.
Speaking of stupid, let's talk about Mike Shula for a moment. He's that lame-brained offensive coordinator I just brought. Son of Don Shula, he's bled mediocrity everywhere he's ever been. Hell, mediocrity would be an improvement, actually. His red zone offenses are consistently the worst anywhere he coaches. Ours is right up there with the turn-of-the-century Tampa Bay Bucs and the hapless Bama offense a decade back. He also clings to a yesteryear ball control offense mentality and he's stick to it even if he's down by three scores. Playcalling is erratic and he often doesn't get the play in until very late, leaving no time for adjustments at the line. One of the biggest identities this offense has had this year is that we'll dominate time of possession but still lose by a field goal, over and over and over again. It's the Shula trademark and it's absolutely incredible.
Anyway, the only way you're going to shut down Greg Olsen is if you force him to stay in as a blocker. Greg will usually get his. He's developed into a top three TE in this league.
I'm not sure what you can do to stop Kelvin Benjamin because none of us can figure out how to start him. It's on or off with that kid. He'll drop five breadbasket catches in a row and then catch one flying upside down with his pinkies for a first down. You guys got a taste of that in October when he caught that 50-yarder over the middle of the field between the two best defensive players in the league. Dude is awesome, but he has to be focused, and if you can figure out how to keep him from focusing you'll pretty effectively negate him. Sherman will be as good as anyone in the league at that.
To beat our run game, you're pretty much going to have to clog the line of scrimmage and gang tackle. Stewart is too good to be brought down solo. Stifle our run early and Mike Shula might revert to his normal identity as a raging idiot and abandon it, and then you'll get to take whacks at Cam Newton, which seldom does Carolina any favors since he's very much a guy who lives and dies on momentum. Get him hot and he's nigh unstoppable. Get him cold and he gets in deep funks.
Predictions
Damn good hard-nosed football. This game will be won and lost in the trenches. I'm not going to predict a score because I know you guys have a significant edge but I can't bring myself to bet against my team. Here's to a fun game with no injuries… and should you beat us, please, for the love of god, cut the legs out from under the Cowboys. I'm tired of hearing their fans.
But I digress. I know a lot of you guys are overlooking us, and maybe for good reason. We've got a lot of flaws and don't have the depth (or the starting talent) in key positions like you guys do. But I also see a lot of people overlooking us to the tune of referring to us as a second bye week. That's foolish. Not because you're not the better team (you clearly are) but because the team you guys remember from late October is, two months later, completely different.
When after the Seahawks loss we were in full tank mode. Everyone was convinced Ron Rivera was going to get deservedly fired, we'd gotten blown out by the Packers the week before, and in fact we were getting ready to embark on a losing streak that saw us taken down by the likes of Teddy Bridgewater and the Vikings, a streak during which Rivera, almost certainly in desperation to save his job, made roster move after roster move, dumping vet starters like Jason Avant much to cries of murder from the fanbase, benching starters and replacing them with rookies too raw to sustain any kind of success. And then out of nowhere, for no particular reason, it all came together at once. We dropped 40 points on the Saints in their house and then went on to demolish our other division opponents, capping off a four-game winning streak with yesterday's victory over the Cardinals.
In light of this, here's what's different about the team you played in October:
1) Our starting running back is no longer DeAngelo Williams. Old, ineffective, and widely considered a derisive lockeroom figure, he's been supplanted by Jonathan Stewart, who, finally healthy, has averaged almost 100ypc during the past five games. Leading the way is Mike Tolbert, who went on temporary IR early in the season and emerged since week 12 as the fullback we came to recognize as integral to the running attack, and even caught a score against the Cardinals, reestablishing himself as a threat in the screen game (where he is the most effective, IMO.)
2) Perhaps the biggest change is the offensive line. When you faced us on October 26 you were facing a lineup consisting of left tackle Bell, left guard Velasco, center Kalil, right guard Scott, and right tackle Chandler. It was roundly denounced as the worst starting OL crew in the history of the NFL. It made the 2006 Raiders look all-pro. I mean it was ghastly. But while Byron Bell still remains a popular joke/default curse word in the Carolinas, we've replaced every other guy on the squad not named Kalil, and it's worked wonders. We promoted this random fat guy named Norwell, who sat on a practice squad because his measurables didn't fit the archetypical guard, and around the same time got third-round rookie Trai Turner back in the lineup on Kalil's right side, and the two of them have been one of the best guard combos in the league since that time. Most improbably of all, we picked up some journeyman named Mike Remmers, who'd floated around training camps from Baltimore to Denver, and plugged him in at the starting right tackle position and he hasn't looked back. It allowed us to jettison Chandler, who was actually a defensive tackle converted to start at offensive tackle… derp. Project over. Since we played you guys the turnaround has been absolutely unbelievable. Cam has time in the pocket, the running game is the most effective it's been in half a decade, and we're actually winning football games. Winning trench battles is why.
3) Kelvin Benjamin has slowed his rookie roll since the first half of the season, much to our disappointment, reverting to a number of recent performances where he's dropped catch after catch. That's awful for us, and if he continues it against you all we'll be in for a long day. But ever since cutting Jason Avant a few weeks ago in favor of promoting young guys - by all accounts a desperation move by Ron, whose regime's playcalling was openly criticized by Avant the day before - we've seen an explosion in performance. Jericho Cotchery, something of a disappointment himself, has stepped up nicely in the absence, and most impressive of all has been Philly Brown, and undrafted return man out of Ohio State who's had a couple of incredible plays on offense and special teams, and currently provides the only true deep threat on the roster. You'll see him used in reverses and deep posts on Saturday night, and you'll see lots of it. You didn't see it in October because he was injured.
4) Our defensive line has been pretty awful all year. Greg Hardy went down for slamming some chick down on a bed full of AK-47s and then sandwiching her head in a toilet seat (I'm really not kidding) and we've been struggling to find an identity as a pass rushing unit ever since. Well… until week 14 that is. Charles Johnson, long-time left end, finally recovered from back injuries that'd hampered him all season and he's been unstoppable ever since. The useless rotation of Wes Horton and another guy whose name escapes me (because he's forgettable) has been supplanted by rookie Kony Ealy, who had a sack in each of his last four regular season games and Frank Alexander, who was widely considered to be the team's breakout defensive player in training camp but has been deactivated all season due to stupid PED suspensions. He's back and our defensive line has looked phenomenal ever since.
5) Our starting secondary on October 26 consisted of cornerbacks Melvin White and Antoine Cason, with Thomas DeCoud and Roman Harper holding back the safety position. The entire secondary has been maligned since day one. Outside of an early showing by Roman Harper, the whole unit looked atrocious. Through the first three quarters of the season they blew coverages, missed assignments, took awful angles, overran plays, and generally played worse than any collection of potted plants you could throw out there in their place. Cason constantly played ten yards off his man, Melvin White was inexperienced and just generally mediocre, and both safeties, established vets poached from the purge-lists of the Falcons and the Saints, constantly looked awful.
The only one starting now is Roman Harper, and he looks vastly improved. Both corners have been replaced by rookie Bene Benwikere, who PFF stats (if you put stock in them) has been the 2nd-best corner in the league since the end of November, and long-time project Josh Norman, a late-round pick who's been a project headcase for several years but finally seems to have put everything together. Third-round pick Tre Boston has stepped up to fulfill the free safety role vacated by DeCoud, who now calls punt coverages and plays a role on special teams. These secondary shakeups coincide with a defense that ranked 27th during the first 12 games and 4th in the league during the last 4.
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So what does all this actually mean? Are we an ass-spanking gang of he-men ready to take the world by storm? Well, we think we are, at least we fans do, and the players probably do as well, which is what they're supposed to do. Are we? Hardly. But what matters here is that full half of the team you faced in October is gone. 50% of the guys on the field you'll play against are new to you. They're also astoundingly better than the guys they replaced. If this doesn't worry the over-confident among you, I'm sure it worries your coaching staff, who you can be damn well certain takes them very, very seriously.
With all that said, here's how you beat us, and rather easily.
On Offense
This will be your toughest task. Panthers-Seahawks matchups for the past couple of years have been defined by hard-nosed, blood-and-guts defensive football. You guys have made gritty plays in the 4th that have ultimately doomed us, which has been the difference in the past couple of contests. But the number one thing you can do against our defense is exploit the safeties. Despite the improved play, Tre Boston is very inexperienced, and Roman Harper, when isolated against speedy players, is almost a lock to fail. The intermediate stuff and the screen games are pretty well going to get blown up, but you'll need to stick to it in order to keep the safeties honest (I hear you have a halfway decent RB up there too that should help with this.) This should make play action deadly. Tre will bite, Harper will get overrun. Points.
Also, I'm fairly sure strong side linebacker AJ Klein is out, which means he's being replaced by rookie Adarius Glanton. He's filled in nicely, but still he's the only true weak link in that front seven, and if there's anyone who can exploit it it's Wilson.
On Defense
Here's where you guys play to your strengths. You've got the league's best defense, hands down. Our offense is much improved, but deeply flawed nonetheless. For one, our offensive line is due for a bad game. They've gelled pretty well as a unit, but some of the guys are still raw, and they've proven vulnerable to backers blitzing off the right side, mainly because the aforementioned Byron Bell still plays worse than my Grandma, who's actually dead. Any team in the league is gonna get one or two free runs at the quarterback anytime he's starting. Your best bet is to get pressure against him early and often and demand a tight end being kept in to block; our offensive coordinator is a raging moron and has proven more than willing to keep tight end Greg Olsen back there, pulling our most reliable pass-catcher off the field when former Raven Ed Dickson is a better blocker anyway. Can't fix stupid.
Speaking of stupid, let's talk about Mike Shula for a moment. He's that lame-brained offensive coordinator I just brought. Son of Don Shula, he's bled mediocrity everywhere he's ever been. Hell, mediocrity would be an improvement, actually. His red zone offenses are consistently the worst anywhere he coaches. Ours is right up there with the turn-of-the-century Tampa Bay Bucs and the hapless Bama offense a decade back. He also clings to a yesteryear ball control offense mentality and he's stick to it even if he's down by three scores. Playcalling is erratic and he often doesn't get the play in until very late, leaving no time for adjustments at the line. One of the biggest identities this offense has had this year is that we'll dominate time of possession but still lose by a field goal, over and over and over again. It's the Shula trademark and it's absolutely incredible.
Anyway, the only way you're going to shut down Greg Olsen is if you force him to stay in as a blocker. Greg will usually get his. He's developed into a top three TE in this league.
I'm not sure what you can do to stop Kelvin Benjamin because none of us can figure out how to start him. It's on or off with that kid. He'll drop five breadbasket catches in a row and then catch one flying upside down with his pinkies for a first down. You guys got a taste of that in October when he caught that 50-yarder over the middle of the field between the two best defensive players in the league. Dude is awesome, but he has to be focused, and if you can figure out how to keep him from focusing you'll pretty effectively negate him. Sherman will be as good as anyone in the league at that.
To beat our run game, you're pretty much going to have to clog the line of scrimmage and gang tackle. Stewart is too good to be brought down solo. Stifle our run early and Mike Shula might revert to his normal identity as a raging idiot and abandon it, and then you'll get to take whacks at Cam Newton, which seldom does Carolina any favors since he's very much a guy who lives and dies on momentum. Get him hot and he's nigh unstoppable. Get him cold and he gets in deep funks.
Predictions
Damn good hard-nosed football. This game will be won and lost in the trenches. I'm not going to predict a score because I know you guys have a significant edge but I can't bring myself to bet against my team. Here's to a fun game with no injuries… and should you beat us, please, for the love of god, cut the legs out from under the Cowboys. I'm tired of hearing their fans.
