Week 2 WIN against Houston - Stats & Analysis

[KB_fan]

Black & Blue Review ‏@BlackBlueReview 3h3 hours ago

Getting into weekly snap counts posts. Jumps out at 1st glance: Stewart 56/Tolbert 28/Fozzy 4; Shaq big jump to 43, but D played 88

[KB_fan]

For those that dig @PFF grades, Wk 2 rankings so far:

OTs -   Remmers tied for 17,   Oher 46

 

Gs -   Norwell 4,   Turner tied for 16

 

Cs -  Kalil 11

[KB_fan]

Nice.

Black & Blue Review ‏@BlackBlueReview 1h1 hour ago

JJ Watt’s lowest @PFF ratings since start of ’12:

1) -0.6 vs STL, Wk 6 ’13

2) -0.2 vs OAK, Wk 2 ’14

3) 0.3 vs CAR, Wk 2 ‘15

[KB_fan]

EXCELLENT.

Black & Blue Review ‏@BlackBlueReview 1h1 hour ago

Josh Norman remains @PFF’s top rated CB.

2.3 rating in Wk 1,

3.1 in Wk 2.

Has allowed 9 receptions on 21 targets.

[KB_fan]

I've not looked too closely at the receiving stats yet, so this tweet jumped out at me. 

Wow, nearly 20 yards a catch.  Sweet.

 

Jonathan Jones ‏@jjones9 1h1 hour ago

Tell ya who had a good game was Philly Brown.

3 catches for 57 yards, one touchdown and he held on to one on a big hit

 

[KB_fan]

Here's the brief PFF grades / takeaways article from CAR v HOU:

https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2015/09/21/hou-car-grades-jadeveon-clowney-making-impact-felt/

Carolina Panthers

– The Panthers were missing a couple of their top defenders in this game, but DT Kawann Short (+5.9) did everything in his power to mitigate the loss of Star Lotulelei with a two-hit, four-hurry performance against a Houston offensive line that was grossly overmatched throughout much of this contest. There are still question marks in the Carolina secondary, but if their pass rushers continually get after the quarterback as they did against Houston, the back-end of the defense will have an easier time holding up in coverage.

– While not the guy with the biggest reputation in this secondary, CB Josh Norman (+3.1) had a terrific day in coverage, despite being tested early and often. Thrown at 12 times (mostly while covering DeAndre Hopkins), Norman surrendered six catches for a measly 40 yards, none of which converted a first down. With a defensive holding penalty being the only blot in his copybook, Norman’s second grade over +1.0 in as many weeks has seen him shoot to the top of our cornerback grades this season.

– Carolina was criticized at the time for drafting LB Shaq Thompson at arguably the strongest position on their roster, and the first round rookie saw his first extended playing time with Luke Kuechly out for the week with a concussion. Playing just under half of the team’s defensive snaps, Thompson (+1.5) showed a bit of Kuechly’s penchant for closing on ball carriers, recording three defensive stops, with a fourth nullified by a late hit penalty in the first quarter.

Top Performers:

DT Kawann Short (+5.9)
FS Kurt Coleman (+4.4)
LG Andrew Norwell (+3.9)
CB Josh Norman (+3.1)
DT Kyle Love (+2.6)

[KB_fan]

Hats off to @Nate Dogg for a really nice post with a great graphic from ESPN showing the pressures on Houston QB Ryan Mallett

 

[KB_fan]

And here's a shout out to @Moorgan for excellent analysis comparing our D to the rest of the NFC

 

[tiger7_88]

Top Performers:

DT Kawann Short (+5.9)
FS Kurt Coleman (+4.4)
LG Andrew Norwell (+3.9)
CB Josh Norman (+3.1)
DT Kyle Love (+2.6)

 

Short - Gettleman draft pick

Coleman - Gettleman non-Tiffany's FA

Norwell - Gettleman UDFA

Noman - Hurney draft pick

Love - Gettleman dollar store FA

[KB_fan]

Ok, here's the first of my own analysis / original spreadsheets for this week.  I've been seeing talk in various places about how slow we've been starting.  Certainly that was true in the preseason and yesterday, but less so against JAX where we came out and scored on our very first drive.

I thought it would be interesting to look at our offensive production by quarter, so I came up with the following table.  We are rocking the 2nd Qtr.  Definitely the Houston 1st Qtr was tough for our offense.  But once we began to wear down their D a bit, and get in a rhythm we took advantage in Q2.

As time permits I may try to go back and look at offensive performance by quarter for last year and 2013 to assess how important is it for our O to get off to a fast start as long as our D does well from the beginning?  Are there games where we were really out of it by the end of Q1 and very hurt by a slow start?  I'm sure there've been a few...

 

[KB_fan]

Yesterday's game seems to have brought out good analysis from sometimes surprising places.   I already noted that I found a B/R article helpful and linked it above.

I also thought David Newton had a really nice analysis of our defensive performance:

http://espn.go.com/blog/carolina-panthers/post/_/id/15887/panthers-making-quarterbacks-look-bad-but-the-stakes-go-up-the-next-six-games

Here are some excerpts:

The Carolina Panthers won their first two games with star middle linebacker Luke Kuechly missing the past six quarters with a concussion and star defensive tackle Star Lotulelei missing both games with a foot injury.

They did it by holding Houston's Ryan Mallett to a quarterback rating of 57.0 in Sunday’s 24-17 victory at Bank of America Stadium. They did it by holding Jacksonville's Blake Bortles to a quarterback rating of 54.5 in the opener.

Neither of those players strikes fear into the hearts of defensive coordinators, though Bortles had an impressive 102.2 rating on Sunday against a pretty good Miami defense.

The common denominator has been pressure. Mallett was 0-for-14 when under duress. According to ESPN Stats and Information, that is the most attempts without a completion when pressured in the past five seasons.

 

The Panthers aren't playing good defense with mirrors. They're doing it with coordinator Sean McDermott's team concept and by keeping quarterbacks off balance.

There were times on Sunday that Mallett appeared to be throwing to a patch of grass because he had to release the ball sooner than he wanted or because the defender took the receiver off his route.

Norman's play has been big. After returning an interception for a touchdown and forcing a fumble in the red zone against Jacksonville, he held Texans receiver DeAndre Hopkins to five catches on 11 targets for 53 yards.

Norman said there's a reason Mallett looked confused at times.

"Disguised him with our defense," he said. "We're not going to show our hand until the ball is snapped, and then we went to something totally different."

 

 The result? The Panthers have held Jacksonville and Houston to a combined 565 yards and three touchdowns. That will win a majority of the time.

D. Newton also  reminds us of the caliber of QB we're about to face in the next 6 games:

The next six quarterbacks shouldn't be as easily rattled.

During that span the Panthers will face three Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks (Drew Brees, Russell Wilson, Aaron Rodgers) and the first pick in three of the past six drafts (Jameis Winston, Sam Bradford, Andrew Luck).

This is about as close to you can get to a "Murderers' Row" for current NFL quarterbacks as you can get without throwing Peyton Manning and Tom Brady into the mix.

Bring it on!

[KB_fan]

James Dator's Monday Morning Optimist article was also quite good in analyzing our offensive improvement.  Fair warning, he gives some credit to Shula, which some here may not be able to stomach.

http://www.catscratchreader.com/2015/9/21/9361623/monday-morning-optimist-panthers-texans-nfl

What we're looking for in these early games is less about domination and more about improvement, which is what we saw on Sunday, particularly on offense. There's no tangible reason the offense should have improved against the Texans, a demonstrably better defense than Jacksonville had -- but it did.

Carolina gained almost 100 more yards of total offense, generated more through the air, averaged 5.2 yards per carry vs. 3.0 and looked more comfortable from top to bottom. Perhaps the most encouraging statistic for the future is the two sacks the Panthers gave up. It's the same number as they gave up vs. the Jaguars, but facing J.J. Watt, Jadeveon Clowney and Vince Wilfork is night and day to anything Jacksonville could bring.

FINALLY we saw some receivers catch footballs. This is far from a finished project, and Kevin Norwood was the reason Cam Newton had an interception, but at least Ted Ginn and Corey Brown caught touchdowns when it counted. Credit goes to Mike Shula too, particularly in the ground game. For the first time in a while we saw creative and varied running schemes that put the Texans on tilt for much of the afternoon. They were consistently frozen by the threat of Newton on the ground and this had a trickle down effect that helped the rest of the offense.

Getting Greg Olsen involved early and often provided the results we can expect from him. Speed on the edges allowed him to find seams, and Newton did a good job leaning on No. 88 when it counted.  [...]

The Texans are not a good team because of their quarterback, they're barely a complete team at all without Arian Foster -- but this is still one of the best defenses in the NFL and Carolina hung 24 on them. Cam did all of this in one way or another. When you run for 7.6 yards per carry against a defense as talented as Houston's it says something. Newton made a statement.

[KB_fan]

I've posted my Week 2 "Game at a Glance" tables and analysis as a separate topic.  You'll find it here:

 

[KB_fan]

More stats from me tomorrow, I hope, including posting the link to my gamebook spreadsheet where you can follow pretty much ALL the stats for both our offense and defense week by week, with running season totals and per game averages.  It's mostly done.  I just have one more section to finalize.