Week 17 WIN against Tampa - Stats & Analysis

[KB_fan]

It was fantastic to be at BoA in person for the game last Sunday and watch the Panthers close out the regular season with a 15-1 record, the best ever regular season for the team.  Also, it was GREAT to get our momentum back with a big win 38-10 before the playoffs.  And it was exciting to see CAP play so well and get his first TD, and to see Funchess have his best game of the season - a great boost of confidence for the post-season

I've been dealing with a badly sprained wrist which makes working any length of time at the computer hard, so apologies for the lateness of this stats & analysis thread.

I'm just now finishing the gamebook data entry for weeks 16 & 17, so my posts will be a bit slow & sporadic throughout the day, but I want to post some observations as I discover them.

[KB_fan]

One thing I found exciting was to see how well our Special Teams performed last week - especially since we were missing both Ted Ginn & Fozzy Whittaker for punt & kickoff returns.

On Punt returns, Robert McClain didn't do too much.  2 Fair Catches and 2 Punt Returns for a total of 5 yards.  But hey, no fumbles, and one of his catches was quite tough.

On Kickoff Returns, Joe Webb had 51 yards on 2 carries, including a 27 yard return on the very 1st play of the game, and a 24 yard return just before halftime, on the drive on which we got a Devin Funchess TD.

But more impressive, WE HELD TAMPA TO 0 RETURN YARDS.  Our ONLY game of the season where we allowed 0 yards on return.  (By contrast, we had 4 games where we allowed opponents more than 100 yards on returns).

Of 2 punts received by Tampa, 1 was a fair catch, and 1 was fumbled and recovered by Joe Webb, leading to a CAR TD.

And Gano was 7 for 7 on touchbacks for kickoffs - his 3rd 100% touchback game of the season.

This MAY have been our best game on ST all season.  It was only our 4th game of the season where we had more total yards on punt & kickoff returns than our opponents.  Only our game against the Giants did we have a higher total return yards differential  (Giants +75 yards;  Tampa + 56 yards).  Against the Giants we had our only 100+ yard return game, with returns of 126 total yards.  (If Ted Ginn's TD return against the Titans had not been nullified by a penalty, we would have had another 100+ return yard game.)

 

 

[caatfan]

1 minute ago, KB_fan said:

On Punt returns, Robert McClain didn't do too much.  2 Fair Catches and 2 Punt Returns for a total of 5 yards.  But hey, no fumbles, and one of his catches was quite tough.

After the Bersin experiment, I'll take no drop/no gain returns from McClain, especially with those 7 tackles he had.

 

3 minutes ago, KB_fan said:

But more impressive, WE HELD TAMPA TO 0 RETURN YARDS. 

More of this please. 

 

19 minutes ago, KB_fan said:

I've been dealing with a badly sprained wrist which makes working any length of time at the computer hard,

Do we need to put you on IR? We're gonna need those stats and analysis after the SB win.

[KB_fan]

6 minutes ago, caatfan said:

After the Bersin experiment, I'll take no drop/no gain returns from McClain, especially with those 7 tackles he had.

Agreed.

6 minutes ago, caatfan said:

Do we need to put you on IR? We're gonna need those stats and analysis after the SB win.

Nah, like Ted Ginn, J Stew and others, I've been resting up a bit.  But I'll be good to go for the post season!  I've been wearing a wrist brace for 2 weeks, and today, I'm finally able to type without pain.

[KB_fan]

Another thing I loved about the Tampa game was that for the 5th time this season, we managed to hold on to 100% of our largest lead.  There was NO let up by the defense or letting Tampa back into the game.

I know Ron took some heat for keeping the Starters in (especially because Seattle was blowing out AZ), but I think it was really good in terms of finishing strong with great momentum.

Here are the stats for the whole season in terms of what % of our largest lead we maintained in each game.

(On average, we held on to 56% of our largest lead over the course of the season)

We had 20+ point leads in 7 games, but only in 3 games (Wasington, Atlanta (at home) and Tampa Bay (at home) did we win by 20+ points. 

It's great to have finished strong, holding on to our 28 point lead.

P.S. A side note... it's interesting that only in our 1st game against Atlanta did we "win" the game (i.e. get the game-winning score) in the 1st quarter.

I think it was crucial that we win strong against Tampa, breaking our pattern of weeks 13, 15 and 16 with games going down to the final minutes of the 4th quarter.  Obviously in week 16, it bit us, with our inability to rally to win against Atlanta.

[KB_fan]

Also related to scoring, it's pretty amazing that in 5 of our last 7 games (Washington onwards), we scored 5 or more TDs.  Against Dallas, we had only 3 TDs (2 of which were defensive scores), and of course @Atlanta we had only 1 TD on the 1st drive of the game.  We averaged 3.7 TDs per game. (We allowed 2.2 TDs per game).

The loss at Atlanta really looks like an anomaly, thankfully.  Let's hope we can keep our high-powered offense going.

(click on table for larger view)

(Note: the "return TD" against Tampa in week 4 was Ed Dickson's return of the J Stew fumble.. it could theoretically count as an offensive TD)

I'll try to do some comparison of these numbers with Panthers 2013 and 2014 seasons.

[KB_fan]

Continuing on touchdowns...  We had 4 or more total TDs (offensive & defensive) in 8 of our 16 games.  Only in our loss to Atlanta did we have only 1 TD.  We had no games in which we did not score at least 1 offensive TD.

By contrast, look at our opponents scoring:

Only in 3 games did we allow 4 or more TDs.  However we limited our opponents to 0 - 1 TDs in 6 games.

[KB_fan]

Gonna take a break now to watch the AFC playoffs.  Will hope to post a lot more later...

[iamhubby1]

Hello? Hello? Anybody here? I was under the impression that womenz were great at multitasking. I guess football will take your mind off of football.

[RumHam]

BTW, playing at home helps a lot. We are unbeatable at home. Yeah the Colts came back against us, but all these recently blown leads have been on the road.

[KB_fan]

22 minutes ago, RumHam said:

BTW, playing at home helps a lot. We are unbeatable at home. Yeah the Colts came back against us, but all these recently blown leads have been on the road.

We allowed a Green Bay comeback at home too.  But yeah, other than that, the recent comebacks we allowed were at New Orleans and at Giants.

[KSpan]

27 minutes ago, RumHam said:

BTW, playing at home helps a lot. We are unbeatable at home. Yeah the Colts came back against us, but all these recently blown leads have been on the road.

Green Bay came to Carolina as well, and that was the week after the Colts. Still half a season ago but worth mentioning.

[KB_fan]

48 minutes ago, RumHam said:

BTW, playing at home helps a lot. We are unbeatable at home. Yeah the Colts came back against us, but all these recently blown leads have been on the road.

Your comment spurred me to do split summaries for home & away.  Basically, we doubled our point differential in home games!!  roughly 4 points more on offense and 4 points less allowed by defense at home games.