Cat Scratch Reader
Don’t look now, but the Carolina Panthers are on a winning streak.
Would you look at that, it turns out the Carolina Panthers can win more than one game in a row. Trust me, it happened, I watched it myself! Maybe it was the New York Giants having a bad day, maybe it was a few Panthers having a really good day, or maybe it was the schnitzel.
Whatever it was, it was surprisingly very fun to watch. The Panthers, the proverbial “home” team in the international series game held in Munich, Germany started the game off incredibly hot and went into halftime having shutout the Giants. The second half was a different story, as the Giants started to catch some momentum and made it a game for the electric German crowd.
While the Panthers probably should have had the game wrapped up during regulation, they found themselves in overtime and completely bereft of momentum after the Giants had just executed a 12 play game tying drive to end the 4th quarter. But wouldn’t you know it, a player in process blue finally decided to have a worthy revenge game as former Giant A’Shawn Robinson punched the ball out of Tyrone Tracy’s arms. Josey Jewell pounced on the loose ball and Eddy Pinero sent the Panthers sideline into a frenzy with a right-down-the-middle strike through of the uprights.
Since we don’t get to do this often enough, for this week’s game review let’s celebrate some of the Panthers keys to victory.
Reminiscent of the Panthers games of yore, the offensive run game was humming to the tune of 188 yards on 32 attempts. The freshly extended Chuba Hubbard was the biggest beneficiary with a personal record 153 yards on 28 carries. Hubbard had the most impressive rushing performance in the NFL this week by most statistical measures. Racking up nearly 40 yards more than the second place finisher in rushing yards, Hubbard also nearly doubled the second place rusher in NFL’s Next Gen Stats “rushing yards over expected” metric, averaging 2.61 yards over expected per rush in the process.
While Hubbard certainly had a strong afternoon, he didn’t do it by himself as the Panthers offensive line once again proved why they are one of the best in the NFL. 4 out of 5 starting line man had a PFF run blocking grade above 70.0, including Robert Hunt and Damien Lewis who had a 88.7 and 87.8 grade respectively. Special shoutout to Cade Mays, who was signed off the Giant’s practice squad earlier in the regular season as the Panthers back-up center and forced into action after a few injuries, to putting up back-to-back admirable performances.
For all the consternation surrounding the promotion of Dan Morgan to General Manager in the offseason, Morgan’s free agent acquisitions played major roles in the success of the Panthers on Sunday:
