Second Quarter
10:33 — CAR ball, 3rd-and-11 at CAR 44
Take a touchdown off the board.
Fozzy Whittaker’s highlight-worthy 56-yard score was wiped out a needless block in the back by Kelvin Benjamin.
“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,'” Rivera said. “‘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.”
6:36 — CAR ball, 3rd-and-5 at MIN 37
In all the post-loss investigations, this play hasn’t gotten enough attention.
Up 10-2, the Panthers took over at the Minnesota 42-yard line. After Artis-Payne picked up 5 yards with a pair of runs, the chains should’ve kept moving. But Devin Funchess dropped a pass that would’ve given the Panthers a 1st down inside the Vikings’ 25.
“Those little things all of a sudden effect another play that could effect field position that all of a sudden effects momentum,” offensive coordinator Mike Shula said.
Moments later …
6:31 — CAR ball, 4th-and-5 at MIN 37
Instead of a new set of downs and a potential 17-2 game, the Panthers sent out the field goal unit. 54 yards isn’t a gimme, but Graham Gano should’ve extended the lead:
3:37 — CAR ball, 4th-and-6 at CAR 6
In their first 5 drives, the Vikings had gained just 35 yards. They weren’t a threat to score. Offensively, at least.
Marcus Sherels was another story, especially when he was able to split would-be tacklers Daryl Worley, Joe Webb and Jared Norris:
:15 — CAR ball, 3rd-and-15 at MIN 48
When Ted Ginn Jr. came to Carolina in 2013, Newton vowed to never overthrow the speedy wideout. He sure could’ve used more zip on this pass after Ginn had run past Waynes:
So, again, the Panthers certainly could’ve won in the second half. But this was a game they should’ve closed out in the first.
“If we hit the plays that we want to hit on those things, it’ll start to negate people wanting to pressure us certain ways,” Rivera said.
“You put them in position where they’ve got to play catch-up, 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.”
So in other words, the Vikings beat the Panthers because they are the better team? Your ‘missed opportunities’ blog here doesn’t tell the whole story. Lets remember the 8 sacks, 3 ints and 12 hits. Plus the score on special teams.
Didn’t feel like actually reading the post, eh?
Oh no I read it, just seemed the theme was more about your team’s miss-steps vs a well-earned win by my team.
Considering you’re on a website that covers the Panthers and not the Vikings, that’s an astute observation of the theme.
As a Vikings fan I gotta say that the Panthers did dominate the first half. and there were a lot of things that could have gone the other way. Pretty solid post and excellent analysis, don’t see the point in ripping on the Panthers.
They are 1-2 right now, but I don’t expect that the rest of the season will play out that way. As a fan a hard fought win against a talented team is great, but you can’t really talk too much smak when the other team had 5 more first downs and 95 more yards of production. I’d say both teams would like to see improvement before they face their next opponents. Pretty sure that the Panthers will beat the Falcons, but not sure if they will cover the spread.
Please tell me where I was “ripping” the Panthers or talking “smack”…I was merely looking for credit where credit was due. Good teams dominate and the Vikings grinded for 60 min. And got the W. I never said the Panthers were a bad team. I just think this is a huge win for the Vikings. SKOL!
Thanks, Zack. That Vikings D is nasty and Zimmer is really, really good. Good luck and enjoy the rest of the season.
Wait…what? What you just wrote “Zack” is what I was looking for hours ago. But since I didn’t kiss the ring I got blow back? C’mon man! ?
Most of that occurred in the 2nd half. Panthers make these plays, Vikings don’t recover the momentum-Butterfly Effect ensues. At the end of the day, still an L and still plenty of games left.
Actually, what happened is I put on my lucky Vikings jersey in the second qtr and things started changing. So, yeah…that’s what happened.
Great article Bill.
I wanted to quote a line in a post at the Huddle, but somehow all your recent articles seem to be locked? Is this true? Can’t copy & paste excerpts any more? I always try hard to attribute and link anything I quote and respect fair use.
Thanks, Karen. Unfortunately, one of the plugins sometimes disables copying and pasting. Have no idea if it means to do that or if it’s a bug, and also not sure how to fix it.
Of all these plays, the one that really grinds my gears is the block in the back that negated the touchdown. The other mistakes are bad, but this was just a completely unnecessary action.
Needless to say, this was painful to watch. Fortunately, we won’t play like this again. #KeepPounding
It’s kinda ridiculous to deride Vernon Butler for not intercepting that pass. I mean, he’s D-lineman and he’s only got a split second to react, and they’re trained to just throw their arms in the air to block passes on the line. He’s not trained to intercept them.
how about Ginn not fielding the punt that ended up pinning us on the 1?
Because the rule of thumb when fielding punts is you don’t field them inside the 10 yard line. He did the right thing. It just took a bad hop for us.
bounced between the 12 and 13
nice blog keep it up