Sunday, October 19, 2008

6 Things I Liked in Carolina's Big Win over New Orleans

The Panthers dominated the Saints Sunday, 30-7. Here were a half-dozen of the main reasons why:

** Julius Peppers and the defense. Peppers had a sack, a forced fumble and also stopped a New Orleans back at the 1 to cinch the victory on the Panthers’ late goal-line stand. After a game against Tampa when you totally forgot Peppers was on the field, he was huge Sunday.

** The running game. Both Jonathan Stewart and DeAngelo Williams scored TDs and had respectable – although not huge – stats (134 rushing yards between them). That makes Jake Delhomme (122.3 pass rating Sunday) so much better.

** No punt blocks. And none returned for a TD by Reggie Bush, either (who only played the first half, due to a knee injury that flared up).

** Steve Smith. He went over 100 yards again and caught a 39-yard TD pass while being double-covered.

** Reversal. Carolina totally reversed what happened to them last week in a 27-3 loss to Tampa.

** Superb fan support. On a gorgeous October day, the fans showed up en masse and saw Carolina move to 4-0 at home this season (they were 2-6 in Charlotte in 2007). I thought the fans were particularly effective on Carolina's fourth-down goal-line stand.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

was the stadium full? it seemed on tv that the crowd was rather quiet and only 3/4 there. other than that, what an excellent way to bounce back from a bad loss and head into a tougher-than-expected matchup with arizona next week.

MichaelProcton said...

Nah, there were plenty of scattered empty seats. Fickle Charlotte fans'll do that to you after an ugly loss because they have no heart. And yes, it was quiet for the most part, but it did get loud a few times at important moments.

Panthernyut said...

The stadium was about 95% full, if not more. I'm usually VERY critical of the crowd, but have to say this Sunday was pretty darn good. Almost every defensive 3rd down the whole crowd was standing and cheering wildly (FINALLY!!!)
It was a GREAT GAME to be at. We dominated more in "real life" than it appeared on TV (I Tivo'd it, and watched it again when I got home) The Panthers seemed much more in command the whole game than the announcers would have led you to believe. (Speaking of announcers, they're back to saying SteveN Smith and DelHOME. *sigh*)

Administrator said...

Hey Godwin, nice to read yer popping off on the fans at the game from yer livin....its easy to talk about others when you are not at the game, i bet you also think you could play in the NFL too and better than the Panthers too, huh?

get a grip!