Turnabout is fair play
WIDEOUT TED GINN JR. ENJOYS EXPANDED ROLE WITH PANTHERS AFTER LIMITED DUTY LAST SEASON IN ARIZONA
Ted Ginn Jr. suited up for the Arizona Cardinals in last year’s NFC wildcard playoff game at Carolina. He’s playing in Sunday’s rematch, only the NFC championship is on the line this time, and Ginn is now with the Panthers.
That’s the same team he played on for one season before his one- year stint with the Cardinals.
The speedster receiver/returner actually has switched NFL clubs five times in his nine years as a pro, and in each of his last four. His most prolific season as a receiver was his second season, 2008, when he had 56 receptions for the team that drafted him out of Ohio State, the Miami Dolphins.
By 2012, however, his second team — the San Francisco 49ers — was using him only as a returner.
Jumping to Carolina in 2013 seemed to revitalize Ginn’s effectiveness as a pass catcher. Teamed with Steve Smith and Darren LaFell, Ginn caught 36 passes from Cam Newton for 556 yards and five touchdowns.
Ginn, though, was part of the Panthers’ wideout bugout following that promising season that ended so disappointingly — with a thumping loss at home to the underdog Niners in the divisional round.
Ginn landed in Arizona before the 2014 season, where head coach Bruce Arians envisioned the fleet Ginn as the missing link in Carson Palmer’s wide-receiver corps — the field-stretcher to complement super-handed superstar Larry Fitzgerald and tall, big- bodied athlete Michael Floyd. But then fate intervened. “Ted was our third receiver last year, and he sprained an ankle,” Arians said. “And John Brown appeared.”
That would be then-rookie speedster John Brown, a third-round draft pick out of Pittsburgh State in Kansas who snared the deep- threat starter’s role.
Brown caught 48 passes for 696 yards and five touchdowns in 2014. Ginn, meantime, caught just 14 passes.
Last February, the Cardinals cut Ginn.
He became a free agent again. He was happy to return to Carolina, and the receiver- needy Panthers happily welcomed him back.
After top wideout Kelvin Benjamin blew out his knee in August, just about everybody wrote off the Carolina passing game.
But Ginn, really quite remarkably given his recent career track record, became the crucial element in the Panthers’ offence this season. He led the team with a careerhigh 10 touchdown catches, ranked second on the team with 44 catches for 739 yards, and his 16.8 yards-per-catch led the team and was eighth in the league.
“I give all my success to Cam Newton,” Ginn told the Charlotte Observer last month. “( We) really, really have a nice thing going right now.”