Cat Scratch Reader
The Panthers battered defense looks to bounce back this week.
The Panthers are coming off a crash down to Earth performance against the Cowboys, as Dallas racked up 211 yards on the ground while backup Cooper Rush threw for 3 TDs against a defense that couldn’t seem to stop anything in their 11th loss of the season. This week, they’ll be facing a Cardinals offense with one of the top rushers in the league in James Conner (backed up by a high potential rookie in Trey Benson), and a Cardinals offense with both their starting quarterback and a passing offense headlined by TE Trey McBride and rookie top draft pick WR Marvin Harrison Jr. Let’s dive in.
As mentioned earlier, the Panthers rushing defense got destroyed last week. This week isn’t going to get any easier for them, as per TeamRankings.com, they’ll be facing a Cardinals rushing attacks with the 3rd best yards per rush in the NFL, and the 7th best rush yards per game. Combined with these facts, the Panthers rushing defense took a significant hit this week, losing rookie starting ILB Trevin Wallace and his backup Claudin Cherelus to the injured/reserve bug this week. Currently as of this writing, the Panthers have 3 ILBs on the active roster and 1 on the practice squad, and aside from Josey Jewell the rest are practice squad/back end of the roster fodder. The Panthers might be inclined to simply play an extra defensive lineman on rushing downs and see what happens.
While Jaycee Horn could see his lion’s share of snaps against the rookie Harrison, that is not something we can safely assume until we see it. I would think playing Horn on Harrison makes sense, but they did not have him shadow CeeDee Lamb last week and the Cowboys receiving group as a whole ate regardless. I think the biggest focus for the passing game needs to be against McBride, who currently leads the Cardinals with 89 receptions for 938 yards. He is very much the engine of the passing attack, so Ejiro Evero needs to have a plan this week. Whether that means having Horn come up and cover him more or simply using Horn to take away Harrison, Evero needs a different gamepan from last week.
The Panthers were on a solid stretch of keeping QBs contained (for the most part) and closing in for sacks and negative plays on passing downs over previous weeks, that all evaporated last game against Cooper Rush. They abandoned trying to get after and rattle the QB for some reason despite Rush being one that has made mistakes this season. They need to keep Kyler Murray contained, as he has the ability to not only get out of structure and throw the ball downfield, but break this defense with his legs should he get a big enough rushing lane. I can’t stress...
