Mistakes cost Panthers crown
Dropped passes, fumbles, penalties among blunders
After it was all over, Carolina Panthers defensive end Ryan Delaire walked over to the stalls of Jerricho Cotchery and Ted Ginn Jr. to console them. He was there to offer support.
He shook their hands, brought them in and whispered words of encouragement.
The Panthers let one slip through their fingers. Literally.
Dropped passes, two fumbles, a pushed 44-yard field goal that caromed off the upright, penalties — when Carolina looks back on the reasons it lost Super Bowl 50 24-10, the team’s mistakes will keep it pondering on the long flight home to Charlotte.
“We kind of beat ourselves in all phases of the game. False starts. Penalties. Special-teams plays,” Panthers wide receiver Devin Funchess said. “It was uncharacteristic for us.”
The mistakes started early, but it was the last one that punctuated the end of Carolina’s dream season, one that saw the team rip off victories in 17 of its first 18 games and saw quarterback Cam Newton win the league’s MVP and offensive player of the year awards.
The stage was set for Newton to shine, for him to confirm his position among the NFL’s top quarterbacks.
Carolina, down six points, had the ball with 4:28 to play, 76 yards away from a championship.
But Denver Broncos defensive end Von Miller, who had terrorized Carolina’s normally formidable offensive line all game, added to his highlights with a strip of Newton that gave the Broncos the ball.
Five plays later, Denver running back C.J. Anderson punched the ball into the end zone, effectively ending the game.
The Panthers simply didn’t have an answer for Miller.
Midway through the first quarter, with the ball deep in Carolina territory, Newton took the shotgun snap before Miller surged off the line, popped Panthers right tackle Mike Remmers in the chest with his hands and was set to take Newton down for the sack.
But in the split second before Miller made contact, he stripped the ball away, allowing defensive end Malik Jackson to recover it in the end zone for the touchdown.
“We fumbled the ball when we really haven’t fumbled the ball,” Panthers coach Ron Rivera said.
Denver led 10-0, which meant that if the Panthers were going to come back to win, they would match the largest come-from-behind victory in Super Bowl history. The miscues didn’t stop in the second half, either.
Carolina’s offense couldn’t break out of its funk until Newton completed two strikes on the team’s first drive that put the Panthers on the fringe of a goahead score. On second-and-11 from the Denver 26, Newton floated a perfectly placed pass to Cotchery, who appeared poised to cradle it in just a few yards shy of the end zone.
Except Cotchery let the ball slide out of his grasp and tumble to the turf. “Bringing in, I thought I had two hands on it, but (Miller) raked one of my hands away from it and I lost it,” Cotchery said. “I’m going to be replaying that the rest of my life, man.”
Now, this leaves the Panthers searching for answers.
How did the seemingly best outfit in the league, which punished its two postseason opponents before it ran into Denver, fail to finish on the biggest stage?
The roster is young. Could the magnitude of the Super Bowl have claimed another upstart? It’s too early to tell. The Panthers return many of their key players. They’re still developing and growing. They can reach this stage again.
“It’s a process. We will learn from this,” defensive end Kony Ealy said.