It’s pretty clear who’s to blame for Panthers’ offensive struggles in Week 12 loss after Dave Canales’ postgame comments
It was not his best game calling the offense.
The Carolina Panthers dropped the ball in Week 12, and there’s no better way to put it. The lights were too bright on primetime for this team that needed to live up to the hype with the opportunity to take over the lead in the NFC South with six weeks remaining.
Instead, the Panthers’ offense struggled to find any consistency against a depleted San Francisco 49ers’ defense and routinely shot itself in the foot all game.
“We just have to be able to carry our execution, regardless of where it’s at, what time it’s played, who the opponent is, we have to focus on those things and make sure that we come out of the game with good football,” Panthers head coach Dave Canales explained. “And I didn’t feel like we did collectively.”
Looking at the box score, it’s easy to put the blame on quarterback Bryce Young, who finished the game with two costly interceptions that prevented points from going on the board. But the entire offensive operation was off before some of those mistakes happened, and Canales is why.
Dave Canales switched up the offensive game plan, and it played a major role in the team’s loss
Throughout the 6-5 start to the season entering Week 12, the Panthers found the ideal recipe for success on offense by leaning into the run game with running back Rico Dowdle and recently started hitting the big shots downfield in the passing game to complement the run game.
Last week against the Atlanta Falcons was the second week in a row that an opponent focused on shutting down the run game, and Canales learned his lesson to trust his quarterback when the run game was struggling. That allowed Young to post a franchise-best 448 passing yards, and it seems like Canales took the wrong message from that game going into the next week.
“I just felt like building off what happened last week and just taking a step forward with the passing game — I saw some opportunities,” Canales added. “We were protecting pretty well, as far as pass protection goes. And just felt like we didn’t come away with our opportunities consistently enough early on.”
The Panthers failed to lean into the run game and relied too much on the passing game on Monday night. Dowdle and Chuba Hubbard finished the game with a combined nine carries for 54 yards, and the run game was completely abandoned in the second half (three total carries by the RBs).
Even before it got to that point in the second half, the Panthers had a questionable call on the one-yard line. Instead of punching it in on the ground, Canales dialed up a passing play, and Young was intercepted in the end zone, killing a golden opportunity to score points off a key takeaway.
“(The defender) made a great play on the ball. But we’ve been running the ball there in that situation. I felt like we had another chance to run it if we didn’t get the completion on that,” Canales explained when asked about the play call. “But I like the call. It was an aggressive call that we had opportunities on, and unfortunately, came out with an interception.”
Entering the game, the Panthers had scored seven rushing touchdowns inside the five-yard line, including one keeper by Young back in Week 3. Passing in that situation (first-and-goal from the one) was a bad decision. And the bad decisions continued with the second-half game plan.
“In the second half, at a certain point, when the score becomes what it is, we gotta move it a little bit here and throw the ball around, and had some measure of success that way,” Canales explained. “And the run game seemed to be hitting pretty good. But I was trying to take advantage of it. They were playing some loaded boxes. They did a good job with their disguise in those areas, too.”
The 49ers knew what they were doing; they were baiting the Panthers into thinking it needed to be a passing game, and the Panthers fell for it. Coming out of halftime, the Panthers were only down seven points. After the 49ers scored early in the third quarter, Carolina ran just one designed run play.
Yes, there were some mistakes, such as penalties and the two turnovers that put the unit behind, but the deficit never reached dire straits to completely abandon what makes your offense click. It was a doomed game plan for the entire second half and could have been easily avoided.
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