What jumped out at Carolina Panthers coach Ron Rivera after he watched film of Sunday's loss to the Vikings?

"Oh, the missed opportunities," he said with a deep sigh. "Some of the penalties. Not necessarily the penalty, but what it created, what it took away.

"We had some really good things that went on, some really good plays. You kind of look at them and say, man, they're almost silly to have those kinds of penalties committed."

The biggest flag came when receiver Kelvin Benjamin was called for a block in the back, negating what would have been a 56-yard catch, run and score by Fozzy Whittaker.

"Kelvin has his hands on the guy on the inside portion. The guy turns to run by Kelvin and he pushes him. It's one of those things you'd like to say, 'At that point, you can just let him go and let Fozzy do his thing.' It's hard because he was engaged," said Rivera, who revealed he contacted the league to get clarification on the call.

"At the end of the day, you may have started on the side, but once your hands get to the back, just don't push. And unfortunately, that's what happened."

Benjamin, who was targeted 21 times his first two games, didn't see one until late in the fourth quarter.

Why ... and ... how?

"We had a couple opportunities with Kelvin to make some plays with him. We didn't do it. The quarterback read out of it and went to his next option a couple times," Rivera said. "One thing they did do with Kelvin is they did get up onto the line of scrimmage early as he was getting his release. He didn't have a lot of clean releases, and you could see the safety was favoring to that side, so that's part of probably why Cam made the reads he did.

"He made some very good decisions, though. He had some guys that were open. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to get the ball to them."

Ah, yes, time ... or a lack thereof.

The Vikings sacked Newton eight times, the second-highest total of his career. But instead of pinning all the blame on the offensive line, were some of the sacks on Newton, who vowed to continue taking more "layups" this season?

"There were probably a couple times when he could've dumped the ball, but if he had an extra beat to step into the throw where he had guys coming open, they could've been big plays," Rivera said.

"Sometimes we get in that position where we want to make something happen and we may press a little bit. He probably did press a little bit. Again, this is a guy that's competitive; that wants to win, and sometimes you lose your patience and you try to force something. So there were probably a couple (times) that he tried to make something happen when he could've taken the layup."

With the Panthers unable to pull away in the first half despite a 205-34 advantage in total yards, the Vikings jumped in front with a 10-play, 79-yard drive at the start of the third quarter. Quarterback Sam Bradford, who had 8 net passing yards in the first half, hit on 14 of his 17 passes in the second.

But to Rivera, the loss wasn't on the defense.

"We did some nice things with the exception of one drive. We give up 14 points, only one touchdown as far as our defense was concerned," he said. When you look at those stats, and I tell you we had over 300 yards of offense, and they had a little under 220, you'd probably say, 'Wow, that was a good game, you guys won.'"

Ultimately, Rivera continued to circle back to what the offense did in the first half. Or, really, what they didn't do that later affected both them and the defense.

"We shut the run down, so they went to a 3-step drop to get the ball out quick and try to get us off balance. But if we don't put the points on the board that you'd like and don't give up the punt return, and you have a lead, it changes their approach. When you get a lead, you can protect a lead and you can play defense a little more aggressively," Rivera said.

"In a game where you have the lead, you can run the ball. You put them in position where they've got to play catchup and now it's a little bit different. Again, it goes back to being able to keep that lead and put people in a position where they've got to do things they don't want to."