Cat Scratch Reader
The Monday following the Carolina Panthers total dismantling at the hands of the New England Patriots, Dave Canales made his way to the lectern in the Panthers media room and told everyone listening that the team was taking a long, hard look at who they were over the first four games of the season. A promise to look at where they were at with their scheme and personnel to make needed changes going forward.
Truth be told, when I heard that I was tempted to roll my eyes so hard they would push out the back of my head. I didn’t, and decided that the second year head coach deserves a chance to go through some growing pains and chose to take that outlook going forward… at least for now.
Not long after, the Panthers released the underwhelming 2023 3rd round pick DJ Johnson in what would end up being the amuse-bouche before many other changes were revealed during a record setting day for the Panthers against the Miami Dolphins. For this week’s game review, let’s take a look at a litany of changes the Panthers coaching staff made in the last week that have, hopefully, set the team up for continued success.
For a coach that would preach the value of running the football, Canales sure did seem to call a lot of pass plays during the first four games. Granted, some of them were necessary given that the Panthers were frequently losing by double digit points. Many times, it seemed like the running game was effective but underutilized in favor of a more volatile Panthers passing game.
After the Dolphins took their commanding lead, Canales finally began to prioritize running the football with Rico Dowdle, and by goodness did that man deliver. Down 17-0, a situation where everyone in the stadium expected the Panthers to start forcing Bryce Young to pass the Panthers back into contention, the Panthers ran the ball 5 straight times. The tone was set for the rest of the game and Dowdle went on to ruin the day for every Dolphins supporter with 206 yards and a touchdown.
Another layer of this re-commitment to the running game was Canales and the coaching staff’s willingness to go outside of their traditional wide-zone running schemes and implement more down hill, gap style plays. They even sprinkled in some other unique-ish ways of getting runners in space like reverses and pitch plays. Dowdle’s opening 53-yard scamper of the 2nd half was on a pitch play that you would not find many examples of during Canales first 20 games calling offensive plays.
This was teased with the release of DJ Johnson, but on Sunday their changes to how they deployed their personnel made a huge difference.
At outside linebacker, despite both Patrick Jones and DJ Wonnum being healthy, the release of Johnson had rookie Nic Scourton out-snapping Wonnum on his way to...
