Falcons to put on their ‘big boy pads’ for Panthers’ run game
FLOWERY BRANCH -- The Falcons know what they are facing Sunday.
They’ll see a Carolina Panthers team with a new offensive coordinator, one who wants to duplicate what they did against the Falcons in the 19-13 loss Oct. 31.
The Panthers ran the ball 47 times for 203 yards and kept the Falcons’ offense off the field that day.
“Oh, absolutely,” Falcons defensive coordinator Dean Pees said when asked if he was expecting the run. “Why wouldn’t they?”
In a battle for second place in the NFC South, the Falcons (5-7) are set to face the Panthers (5-7) at 1 p.m. at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C.
“The thing that they really want to do, coach (Matt) Ruhle has talked about it for the last couple of weeks,” Falcons safety Duron Harmon said. “They want to run the ball. They want to run the ball 30 to 33 times a game. So, we have to put our big boy pads on and get ready for the run.”
In their previous game against the Falcons, Panthers rookie running back Chuba Hubbard rushed 24 times for 82 yards. Ameer Abdullah added eight carries for 31 yards and Royce Freeman had six carries for 25 yards. The back-breaker was quarterback Sam Darnold getting loose for 66 yards on eight scrambles.
“Come on with it,” outside linebacker Steven Means said. “Come on with it. Come on with it.”
Darnold, a drop-back passer, surprised the Falcons. He’s since been injured and replaced by Cam Newton.
“That’s something that we’ve definitely been talking about since it happened,” Means said. “Then we’ve been playing a lot of the teams that do stuff that Carolina does. We go back to those principles. Plays that we did good. We’ll continue to emphasized those, but the bad plays, we make sure that we don’t let those happen again.”
Falcons coach Arthur Smith knows what’s coming, too.
“They won first, second down, got themselves in a lot of second-and-shorts, third-and-shorts,” Smith said. “Will they run the exact same plays? I don’t think so, but they’ll have a similar philosophy. That wouldn’t surprise me.”
Newton, who played at Westlake High, adds another dimension to the game. A Heisman Trophy winner at Auburn, Newton has rushed 1,087 times for 5,463 yards and 73 touchdowns over his NFL career.
“You can argue that nobody, subjectively, that nobody has been more effective running the football over a long period of time, which is rare in this league, than Cam Newton,” Smith said.
With the Panthers trying to build on a 12-10 lead, on third-and 9 from the Falcons’ 22, Darnold escaped around left end for an 11-yard gain. Four plays later, Hubbard scored on a 6-yard touchdown run to put the Panthers up 19-10.
“To be serious, that was a big play in that game,” Means said. “A game that we (needed), but they played a good game. One that we felt we should have and needed to come away with. For that big play to happen like that in a big moment, that was a crucial error. ... We can’t let that happen again.”
Harmon said the Falcons must concentrate on stopping the Panthers on first downs. They allowed too many third-and-short situations.
“That puts you in a tough spot as a defense, trying to defend two yards,” Harmon said. “We just know that we have to be better on first and second down defending the run and giving ourselves a chance to go out there and play good football.”
As the rushes started to mount, the defense had a sinking feeling.
“It doesn’t feel good, I’ll you that,” Harmon said. “Just because we pride ourselves on stopping the run. We’ve been pretty good against the run all year. When you think about it and you put it in perspective, when you see 47 rushes for 200 something yards, they ended up averaging like 3.0 something. So, I mean, it’s under four, but when they are getting five and six yards on first and second down, it just puts you in a tough spot.
“You can feel it. You can feel it as a defense when the offense rushes for 200 yards, and it usually doesn’t correlate to winning.”
The Falcons eventually place more people closer to the line of scrimmage to stop the run.
Offensive assistant Jeff Nixon will replace Joe Brady as Carolina’s play-caller.
“He’s a running backs coach,” Harmon said. “He wants to run the ball. It’s that simple. It’s coming from the top to the bottom. Coach Rhule has said it over and over again that they want to run the football, they want to control the clock. They want to win (by) running the ball and playing good defense.”
Nixon called plays for Rhule when Rhule was the head coach at Baylor.
“He might not have had any experience as an NFL play-caller, but the message is clear,” Harmon said. “We know what they want to do. They know what they want to do. It’s just going to be who is going to stop the other person.”
Even with Newton at quarterback, the Falcons are not anticipating any major scheme changes from Nixon.
“Even though, he’s a first-time coordinator, they are not going to switch their offense in the middle of the season,” Harmon said. “He might have a little wrinkle here and there. Or it might be, he might have different tendencies on how many times he wants to run the ball. But the offense is going to be the same, just maybe a difference in how he calls the plays.”
The Falcons will be flying blindly, as they don’t have any tendencies on Nixon.
“At the end of the day, we don’t have a couple weeks,” Harmon said. “We have the opportunity right now. We’re going to hang our hat on knowing that they want to run the ball. We’re going to have to force them to do something else.”
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About the Author
Honored by the Pro Football Hall of Fame in recognition of his "long and distinguished reporting in the field of pro football," D. Orlando Ledbetter, Esq. has covered the NFL 28 seasons. A graduate of Howard University, he's a winner of Georgia Sportswriter of the Year and three Associated Press Sports Editor awards.
