Ellis Williams Report Card from Sunday

[raleigh-panther]

Note. He doesn’t grade coaching. no really surprises however does Hugh level synopsis of Baker, Mcadoo and the passing offense. Worth reading 

Carolina Panthers Report Card: How did Carolina do in Week 3 of the NFL season?

BY ELLIS WILLIAMS

[email protected]

4 hours ago

Quarterback Baker Mayfield and the Panthers won their Week 3 game on Sunday against the New Orleans Saints. Behind a blitz-happy defense, potent special teams execution and one Laviska Shenault catch, Carolina beat New Orleans 22-14. 

The Panthers’ defense, special teams and rushing offense played nearly perfect games while the passing offense regressed. 

Similar to Week 2, the Panthers (1-2) put a lot of good football on tape, but Mayfield and his pass catchers are falling behind the rest of the team’s development.

Through three games, 20% of Mayfield’s throws have been considered off target. He ranks 28th out of 34 quarterbacks in completions and yards. The only quarterbacks with a worse off-target rate are the 49ers’ now-injured Trey Lance, the Bears’ Justin Fields and the Cowboys’ undefeated Cooper Rush. 

Let’s further unpack the passing offensive woes. Here are the grades:

Passing offense

F: Mayfield has taken nine sacks, sixth-most in the NFL. 

That’s because teams are heavily blitzing Carolina. Mayfield is getting blitzed 38.5 percent of the time, the highest rate in the NFL. 

The Saints were second in blitz rate versus Carolina despite entering Sunday as the 30th-ranked blitzing team.

Saints coach Dennis Allen (a former defensive coordinator) likely watched Giants defensive coordinator Wink Martindale blitz Mayfield with the fourth-highest Week 2 rate and copied his game plan. 

Through three weeks, teams are not respecting Mayfield. The plan is to send five defenders (when four or fewer defenders rush a play is not a blitz) and bet he becomes overwhelmed or cannot figure it out. 

Carolina had five passing first downs against New Orleans. The Chicago Bears had the same amount against the Houston Texans. 

Only Texans quarterback Davis Mills and the Saints’ Jameis Winston are being blitzed more than Mayfield. That will continue until offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo proves he can give Mayfield more clear pre-snap answers. 

The passing woes are not all on Mayfield. Receivers are not consistently opening. That blame falls on play design and individual skill. Tackles Ikem Ekwonu and Taylor Moton also are not playing blue-chip football. Both have the traits to execute at elite levels and must start doing so.

Rushing offense

A: It is not coming easily but once again Carolina proved it can run the football against a formidable defensive front. 

Christian McCaffrey is the first running back this season to notch consecutive 100-yard games. 

The Panthers are relying on inside-hitting runs to punish defenses. Guards Brady Christensen and Austin Corbett plus center Pat Elflein are consistently playing in unison and executing their assignments.

How can the rushing game improve? Carolina needs to start routinely marrying its run design to its play-action game. Too often it appears the Panthers are calling spot plays rather than executing a four-quarter game plan.

Passing defense

B: The final box score does not justify how Carolina played in coverage. 

Before the Saints’ final drive, Winston had 263 passing yards. Receivers Chris Olave and Tre’Quan Smith had 99 and 57 yards, respectively.

Carolina closed the game playing mostly soft, deep coverage. It’s not an excuse for allowing three consecutive explosive plays, including a 4-yard touchdown which Winston threw into triple coverage, but context matters. 

Panthers cornerback Jaycee Horn did not allow a catch, was targeted twice and made the game-sealing interception. Winston had a zero passing rating when throwing at Horn. 

Rushing Defense 

Any defense that can hold Alvin Kamara to under 15 yards receiving deserves credit.
 

A: Much like its rushing offense, the Panthers’ front seven proved they can control the line of scrimmage. 

In back-to-back weeks, the Panthers have held a Pro Bowl running back in check. 

“It lets you know that you can control the game,” Rhule said of running the ball and defending the run. ”You can get into games and be behind or be ahead, but you want to control the game, you want to control the line of scrimmage.”

It’s rush defense also forced the team’s first turnover. Linebacker Frankie Luvu stripped Kamara late in the first quarter, allowing defensive end Marquis Haynes to scoop and score. 

Special teams

A: Kicker Eddy Pineiro has been automatic points this season.

He made three kicks and an extra point on Sunday. After three games, he is six-for-six on field goal tries and five-for-five on point-after tries. His 26 points scored is fifth most in the NFL. 

Rams receiver Cooper Kupp is the highest scoring non-kicker thus far with 24.

[Jackie Lee]

Marrying the run with the occasional play action is the obvious answer to all the blitzing McAdoo is basically gifting defenses. Also zero pre-snap motion, it feels like we're running preseason game plans out there. 

[Rags]

I really do think it's our personnel, namely our receiving core that hurts the play calling a lot. But that said there's enough talent here that we should be able to move the ball better than we have.

Baker's blown chunks but the Derp hasn't helped him much either.

[Jackie Lee]

3 minutes ago, Rags said:

I really do think it's our personnel, namely our receiving core that hurts the play calling a lot. But that said there's enough talent here that we should be able to move the ball better than we have.

Baker's blown chunks but the Derp hasn't helped him much either.

Teams want to force Baker to throw from the pocket, and McAdoo is forcing him to play in the pocket. The routes aren't helping but the WR's run what McaDookie calls

[CarolinaRideorDie]

A lot of the offensive woes I think can be attributed to McAdoo schemes. If Mayfield is being blitzed that often he needs to scheme quick dump offs to CMC for easy completions. McAdoo games plans as if he has Mahomes or Josh Allen as his QB. I think he is asking too much from Mayfield to carry this offense. 

Give CMC, Shenault, and DJ a chance to make plays with easy completions. 

[Jackie Lee]

45 minutes ago, CarolinaRideorDie said:

A lot of the offensive woes I think can be attributed to McAdoo schemes. If Mayfield is being blitzed that often he needs to scheme quick dump offs to CMC for easy completions. McAdoo games plans as if he has Mahomes or Josh Allen as his QB. I think he is asking too much from Mayfield to carry this offense. 

Give CMC, Shenault, and DJ a chance to make plays with easy completions. 

It's borderline insane how the Panthers PR is focusing on 3rd down issues when the 1st and 2nd down play calling puts them 3rd and long 80% of the time

[CarolinaRideorDie]

37 minutes ago, Jackie Lee said:

It's borderline insane how the Panthers PR is focusing on 3rd down issues when the 1st and 2nd down play calling puts them 3rd and long 80% of the time

Agreed, as much success as CMC has been with running the ball, (he is the first RB this season to post back to back 100 yd games), we need to run him more on first and second down to make 3rd down more manageable. Ickey is supposed to be able to block out the sun with his run blocking, play to his strengths and stop asking him to protect Mayfield which he is struggling with right now. 

[Jackie Lee]

4 minutes ago, CarolinaRideorDie said:

Agreed, as much success as CMC has been with running the ball, (he is the first RB this season to post back to back 100 yd games), we need to run him more on first and second down to make 3rd down more manageable. Ickey is supposed to be able to block out the sun with his run blocking, play to his strengths and stop asking him to protect Mayfield which he is struggling with right now. 

Not to mention D'onta Foreman sitting on the bench doing nothing

[weyco2000]

“Special Teams”, but ignores Hekker, the guy who pretty much sealed the win with perfect placement on his final kick. In 3 games he’s punted 16 times and half of those have been placed inside the 20 and many of those have been nearly blocked. 
 

Most of points he covered are known by pretty much everyone here. It almost seems as if the Huddle is his source…

[Khyber53]

I'm still caught at the point of: "Is this a team that is almost there" or "did we win against a team that is falling apart and play close to two teams that are actually really bad"?

I hope it's the first and that we can get the offense figured out and marry it to what could certainly be a tough defense. If we do that, the Rhule will have proved me wrong. And I'll be mighty happy about it.

Hopefully we'll learn a lot about this team vs. the Cardinals.

[top dawg]

10 hours ago, Rags said:

I really do think it's our personnel, namely our receiving core that hurts the play calling a lot. But that said there's enough talent here that we should be able to move the ball better than we have.

Baker's blown chunks but the Derp hasn't helped him much either.

Darnold didn't have any problems moving the ball down the field with the same receiving corps (even less).

Darnold got locked down near/in the red zone.

Edited September 28, 2022 by top dawg

[frankw]

3 minutes ago, top dawg said:

Darnold didn't have any problems moving the ball down the field with the same receiving corps (even less).

Darnold got locked down near/in the red zone.

Uh yeah he kinda did do you not remember our nonexistent deep passing game and the results more often than not when Sam threw deep? There can be more than one thing true at once. With Sam and now with Baker we are mostly inept at moving the ball downfield consistently and teams do not fear that otherwise they wouldn't be blitzing our QB more than almost every other quarterback in the league. As inefficient as those QB's have been it's clear our gameplans and playcalls are not helping matters or alleviating these issues much.

[frankw]

For the sake of clarity I went and took a look at the numbers last year and Sam Darnold finished 28th in avg yards per pass attempt only Roethlisberger Zach Wilson and Trevor Lawrence were worse and Lawrence was stuck with a complete jackass of a head coach. Right now Baker is sitting at 19th in the same metric. So yeah Darnold was largely terrible at moving the ball downfield and Baker is marginally better with very mediocre playcalling.

Edited September 28, 2022 by frankw

[BrianS]

11 minutes ago, frankw said:

 With Sam and now with Baker we are mostly inept at moving the ball downfield consistently and teams do not fear that otherwise they wouldn't be blitzing our QB more than almost every other quarterback in the league.

This is not correct.  The effect of a blitz is to stop the deep pass, and force things quick and short.

Not saying that opponents necessarily fear our deep game, but both Baker and Darnold do have cannons.  I suspect that they can make the deep ball work. 

It's the opposite of Bridgewater.  You play coverage on Bridgewater because his deep arm doesn't scare you at all.  When he has to dink/dunk his way downfield, eventually a mistake will turn the chains against him.