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It really is overwhelmingly cliché to classify Carolina’s home game against the Tennessee Titans as a “must-win,” but as the saying goes, clichés are born out of some detail of truth.
And even though this is the midway point for the Panthers, this truly was a game they couldn’t afford to lose if the postseason is to be any sort of realistic possibility.
Carolina played like its season was on the brink and got rid of the conservative offense and allowed quarterback Kyle Allen to be more aggressive throwing the ball downfield. Allen’s solid performance and the return of steady defensive play added up to a 30-20 Panthers win Sunday at Bank of America Stadium.
Barring some dramatic and unexpected run of consecutive wins over the final eight games, there seemed little expectation of Carolina (5-3) making the playoffs had it lost to the very average Titans (4-5).
As it stands now, the postseason is attainable.
“We knew what a loss like (the 49ers) did for our season last year, so all week, all we preached was getting back on the road and getting back to what we were doing,” said Panthers cornerback Donte Jackson, who had an interception. “We had a great chance of starting over this week, because we were back home, so that was the whole thing – just come out here and play ball like we play ball.”
The Titans entered with a strong and stingy defense, which is why it was somewhat surprising that Carolina didn’t do the dunk-and-dink style of offense, but rather had Allen throwing 32 times, 22 of which came in the first half.
And of those 32 passes, almost none, if any, were screen passes or dump-offs. Allen’s average passing yardage per completion was 13.6 yards, which is really high, comparatively speaking.
“We knew we were going to have to take a lot of shots downfield,” Allen said of his aggressive passing. “We converted on a lot of them, but we left a lot of them on the field.”
The Panthers were so set on opening things up, that they even ran a fake punt on their first possession of the second half. It resulted in a first down and eventually a 1-yard touchdown run by tailback Christian McCaffrey, which gave Carolina a 24-7 lead with 5:16 left in the third quarter.
Carolina also went for it on fourth down early in the second quarter on a fourth-and-two at the Tennessee 7. A short pass to McCaffrey resulted in the team’s first touchdown of the day.
The aggressiveness offensively was there all day.
“I was really looking for something to give us an edge,” Rivera said of the fake punt. “I just thought the opportunity was right.”
McCaffrey finished with 146 yards rushing and 20 yards receiving, to go along with three touchdowns, two of which came on the ground, including one that went for 58 yards up the middle.
McCaffrey, who’s in his third season, became just the third player in NFL history with at least 150 yards from scrimmage in six of his first eight games to start a season. Jim Brown and Matt Forte are the others.
After his long run for the score that gave Carolina a 30-14 lead with 10:23 left to play, the folks that were still remaining in the stands started chanting, “M-V-P! M-V-P! M-V-P!”
“That was pretty cool,” McCaffrey said of the chants. “But we’ve got a lot of ball left.