(on finishing this game after the performances at the end of the last couple of games)
“It was good. It really was. Again, you can’t give teams opportunities to come back. Every chance to make a play, you have to. We were able to tackle them, keep them inbounds, keep the clock going and then being able to finish it off with the fumble – that was awesome.”
(on Cam Newton’s celebration after the final touchdown)
“I know that he wants to give the ball to a young fan. So I just think that’s part of it. I know the hard thing about it is he should be a little more mindful that this is somebody else’s stadium and try to be respectful and do it in the right manner. He does. He tries to find a young fan and give it to the fan. I get it, and again, as long as we’re not getting out of control, I think we’ll be OK.”
(on handling being 9-0)
“We take it one game at a time, but it’s the elephant in the room. We can’t deny that, but again, it’s really about the next game. It really, honestly is. All the record tells you is that you’re in position for the next thing, and that would be the play-offs. So hopefully we can continue to play well and give ourselves an opportunity to get there. We’ve got another game coming up and that’ll be the focus. The players will get to enjoy the next couple of days. They’ll get an opportunity to talk to the media and talk about the game and really, I know you all remind them that they are 9-0, but the truth of the matter is once we get started on Wednesday, the focus goes right back to who we play next.”
(on Newton’s completion percentage)
“It was 81 percent? Well, again, he continues to work with the receivers. It’s all the extra work that they’re putting in as a group, as a unit, as individuals. When you watch them in practice and something happens, as soon as we go to the defensive side, him and whoever he had trouble with, they’ll go to the other field and they’ll run that route until they get it right. So, I just think that they’re putting in a lot of extra work to give themselves a chance to get better.”
(on what he did differently today to improve his completion percentage)
“Clear weather. Last couple games playing in tsunamis and things like that, but we had a beautiful day in Nashville today. But you just have to make the most of it.”
(on connecting early with TE Greg Olsen)
“He was wide open a couple of plays, made a tease on the sideline, and he said ‘I don’t think they put me in the game plan.’ I said, ‘OK buddy, I’m going to keep getting you the ball, or whoever the ball if the play allows me.’ He also had an unbelievable one-handed catch, and he does that in practice.”
(on the reaction after he gave the football to a young fan)
“I heard somebody say we aren’t going to allow you to do that, but if you don’t want me to do it, then don’t let me in. I just like doing it. It’s not to be boastful. From the crowd’s response, they like seeing it. I’m not doing it because I got sacked. I’m not doing it because something bad has happened to the Panthers. I’m just doing it because good things have happened and I hope to keep doing it. No disrespect to anybody. It’s just a Panthers thing.”
(on if his celebrations are an example of how he loves the game)
“Absolutely. We put a premium on scoring touchdowns and performing in away games. We get so much response from fans in away games like this. Seeing the response with the Roaring Riot, seeing black, Carolina blue and Carolina white jerseys in the stadium and keep pounding throughout the game chants, it makes me happy as a player. Nobody wants to be on a team that don’t nobody like and we didn’t want to let those guys down. Anytime we score, we label it our own Sunday giveaway. We make it a priority for a person who is celebrating to give them an opportunity to share something that we have. Giving a football to a fan just makes Sunday football any better.”
(on whether his celebration was excessive)
“It’s just fun. It’s really an Atlanta-based dance and a tease. I’m a kid a heart. My youngest brother played a big win this past week, first playoff game, and he always tease me, ‘Hey brother, you gotta’ do something cool.’ He told me, ‘Dab on those folks,’ and in that tone too. He’s only 16, but he’s got an Adam’s apple. I try to make my game kid-like so people will see that I’m enjoying what I do. The birth of my lungs, while I have the ability to do what I do, I’m going to try to make the most of each and every opportunity. Like I said, I can’t repeat it enough, I’m not doing it to be disrespectful to nobody, more so just doing it just to shine light and get people a smile and having fun doing what I do.”
(on his one-handed catch in the second half)
“It was just a reaction to the situation. You don’t ever intend on going out there and trying to catch it with one hand. Sometimes you just have to react to the situation and try to make the catch any way you have to.”
(on if he was given a hard time after being stopped short of the end zone)
“Yeah, I said before that if the goal line was at the one, I would probably be leading the NFL in touchdowns. It doesn’t start at the one, unfortunately. I was glad that the next play Ed [Dickson] got his first touchdown of the year. I was happy for that. I don’t really get too wrapped up in stats.”
(on the crowd’s reaction to Newton’s post-touchdown celebrations)
“I thought a lot of the crowd was our crowd. At times it was pretty loud when we were on defense, and it was loud when we had good plays. I don’t know. I guess you would have to ask him. It seemed like a pretty standard demeanor from Cam (Newton) as far as I can tell.”
(on the Panthers’ mindset entering today’s game)
“Everybody was locked in. We knew what this game meant. We knew this could have been a trap game for us. They wanted it to be a trap game. The refs put us in a dogfight a couple of times, you know. We just kept fighting and got up out of it.”
(on the Panthers offense finishing the game strong)
“When you get the ball back like that, you want to close the game out and I think we did that. It was very important to convert on third downs and take care of every little detail on each and every play. I think we did a great job of that.”
(on the support of the Panthers fans at Nissan Stadium)
“It was awesome. I absolutely love it. I love seeing all the Panthers fans out there chanting for us. It means the world. I love seeing our fans out there. It felt almost like a home game.”
(on the offense finishing the game strong)
“We had a list of things that we wanted to get better with this week, and hammer was one of them. I think we did a good job of coming out in hammer time, putting our nose in the dirt and just grinding and trying to get positive yards.”
(on putting the game away late)
“The first half wasn’t what we wanted it to be. To be able to come in at halftime and make the corrections and go out and finish the game off was big for us. We have had the capability to do it; we just have to get it done. We have to take that next step as a defense, the next step as a team. We have to be able to finish games off when we have a lead and we were able to do that today.”
(on crediting Carolina for causing the team to wear down)
“They are just efficient. It’s not going to be 500 yards of offense and 40 points. It’s going to possess the football, wear you down eventually and a lot of teams think they are going to make this team drive the length of the field and you are going to make a mistake, they do not. They have not. It’s not on tape. It wasn’t in person today to see it.”
(on if Marcus Mariota was trying to throw ball away on the interception)
“No, he was throwing it to DGB (Dorial Green-Beckham) and DGB should have been running out a route full speed and was not and the DB was and again, the difference between winning and losing.”
(on adjustments made to limit plays to Greg Olsen)
“I thought we cleaned that up, but not until after they had already put a couple of scores on the board … Some of the catches he made over there on the sideline, those are catches that continue to just keep drives going, but I thought we settled down in the second half, it could have got bad. I thought our defense did a really good job, but eventually they are going to wear down. When we are off the field on offense in a couple of three-and-outs, there, and they come back and try to pound the ball, eventually the dam is going to break.”
(on adding pressure to Cam Newton in second half)
“What was happening in the first half, we were not covering very well. I feel like when I walked off the field at halftime, other than the screen that he threw in the dirt, I could not remember an incompletion. So the decision to pressure was made, pressure more, and also we addressed the coverage, to make it tighter and cleaner than it was. It did; it got better. That’s why we had the results of more sacks than we did in the first half. The coverage actually got better, knowing there were going to be a lot of one on ones.”
(on if Mariota was hit in the head by S Kurt Coleman)
“To my view, yes.”
(on why those hits have not been called)
“That’s something Dean Blandino can answer. We had one last week and another one this week. Again, when you slow the film down, talk through it, maybe you’ll see that. I was standing right at the point of contact. I think you err on the side of don’t do that, throw a flag, that is not what you want.”
(on Newton’s celebration)
“All I saw was the tail end of it. He did it all game, which, I guess that’s acceptable. It’s not taunting, but in my mind, it is.”