Panthers Head Coach Ron Rivera

 

RE: Was Kelvin Benjamin benched for final series?

No, we had him out because that wasn’t his personnel groupings. I saw him make some plays and had some opportunities to make more plays. That was it.

RE: Did he have an issue with Benjamin’s effort after overturned interception?

When you ask him, he said he thought the guy was down to begin with. Again, he wasn’t happy with the lack of call there so that you’ll have to ask him. The issue I had was that I saw the ball hit the ground, so I assumed it was down. It kind of took a little bit to get him started. You do want to make sure everyone understands to get the guys down but when you ask him he is going to tell you he thought the ball was on the ground.

RE: Did Kelvin “play to the last whistle”?

Yeah, I’m fine with it. Ok. I am. I’m not quite sure where you guys are going with it. On both times, one he was down by contact, the other time the ball hit the ground. I’m not sure what you are trying to create here.

RE: Offensive line performance

I thought they had their moments. There were a couple times when we really needed them to come through, they did. They protected the quarterback for the most part. At times we gave up a couple of plays, but I also thought they opened up some holes and gave Jonathan Stewart the opportunity to run the football. We got Fozzy Whittaker on the edge a couple times as well.

RE: Devin Funchess

He has been working very hard. I think Ricky Proehl has done a really nice job with him. He is one of those young guys that again, sometimes the opportunities get limited because of the players we have. We have a good group as far as the wide receivers are concerned. Again, when the quarterback finds those guys and gets them the ball, gives them the chance, they can make plays for us.

RE: Has a decision been made on Luke Kuechly’s season?

No. I will go along with what the doctors tell me. That’s the truth of the matter.

 

Panthers QB Cam Newton

 

RE: If he discussed the near misses with Kelvin Benjamin

No I haven’t, but the film will tell everything. We had a couple near misses and you know, it’s about the chemistry. It’s about, you know, practice. We worked that in practice and I was so confident that we were going to get it because of how much we worked, yet that’s just how it plays out sometimes. We just have to go back to the drawing board and get better at it next week.

RE: If he felt the game was complete offensively and defensively

It wasn’t. The defense played lights out for us, gave us unbelievable field position. You know offensively, not to rain on the win, we have to put up points — points as in getting touchdowns. If we do that, that game is out of hand earlier and that’s what imposing our will is. We have to have that type of mentality, that killer instinct and we didn’t have it. But we found ways to win and that’s positive and the optimism of it.

RE: How he’s feeling after the win

Winning swept a lot of things and a lot of feelings up from that rug, and just going to the next one. Now when you lose, all that debris that you try to sweep up, it’s still up on top of the rug. For us, it’s happy. We’re happy that we got a win today. Hopefully we can keep it going.

RE: Jonathan Stewart’s somersault run

He’s a cat. Pudgy cat. House cat. It was good to see Stew keep his balance and that’s what he can do. For him to have the wherewithal to keep going, that’s another thing too.

RE: Reuniting with Josh Norman next week at Washington

It’s not a game about him versus us. We just need to win this game.

 

Panthers RB Jonathan Stewart

 

RE: If he thinks his somersault play will go viral

I’ll retweet it and put it on my Instagram.

 

Panthers TE Greg Olsen

 

Re: Carolina’s defense forcing five turnovers

That’s a pretty good defensive stat line there. You’re going to win a lot of ballgames with stats like that on the defensive side of the ball. So hats off to them, they got us in a lot of short fields. A couple times, we did a good job. A couple of times, we settled for field goals which fortunately didn’t come back to hurt us. … I think the real story is how well the defense played.

 

Panthers LB Shaq Thompson

 

Re: Coming back to play this week after last week’s loss in Seattle

We just knew last week wasn’t good enough and last week was not us. We came out today and we wanted to show everybody that our defense is still good. Last week was just a fluke.

 

Panthers LB A.J. Klein

 

RE: Defense forcing five turnovers

If you take the ball away in this league, you’re going to win. Giving the offense an opportunity to score more times than not in a positive territory, I mean that’s our job. And we did a great job at creating turnovers and obviously that translated into points for us today.

 

Panthers CB Daryl Worley

 

Re: What went through his head on the play he intercepted Philip Rivers

Just making a play on the ball. That’s what we’ve been working on all week, just turnovers. We’ve been exceptional in practice this week, overemphasizing it. The results showed in the game.

 

Panthers S Tre Boston

 

RE: His emotions after the take-aways

Juiced! It’s a great feeling. It’s a feeling of momentum. The stadium going crazy because we just got a turnover, those are huge. The offense comes on with a little juice, they are able to go down there and score. That’s the biggest thing about momentum: Once you get it, you’ve got to maintain it, and focus it and get some points off of it.

 

Chargers QB Philip Rivers

 

Re: Panthers defense

They played good today. That defense — I know they didn’t have 59 (Luke Kuechly), and they are missing the 24 (Josh Norman) from last year, but it’s a good defense. It’s a good defense. We felt coming into the game. Obviously we knew to throw the records out the window. It’s still a good team that has been in every game and they outplayed us.