USA TODAY International Edition
Led by Darnold, Panthers easily dominate Saints
Carolina’s 26- 7 victory comes as the young quarterback maintains hot start.
Panthers head coach Matt Rhule was visibly hyped up over his team’s dominant 27- 6 win over the Saints in his postgame presser Sunday. That, however, doesn’t mean he’s 100% satisfied.
Rhule said there are still parts of the game the Panthers have to tighten up in moving forward, even at a 2- 0 start.
“It was a good team win. Thought our guys played hard. A lot of things we have to get corrected,” Rhule said. “Too many coaching errors in the first half. Having to call timeouts because we have the wrong call in or one of our players getting confused. We have to clean a lot of things up.”
That may be the case, but the Panthers cleaned up the Saints with their performance. The loss for New Orleans snapped its 10- game NFC South winning streak, its four- game Bank of America Stadium winning streak and its four- game winning streak over Carolina, period. The Saints’ 128 yards of total offense was also the fewest in the Sean Payton era.
Panthers quarterback Sam Darnold tossed for 300 yards for the first time in almost two years. His 305- yard outing, although not perfect, helped pace a largely smooth outing overall.
Regardless, Rhule knows the Panthers have plenty of room to develop and build up their profile as a possible
playoff contender.
“I’m sure they’re ( Panthers players) happy we won. I want them to feel like ‘ My hard work and preparation is working.’ I think, ya know, that’s the message,” Rhule said with a smile. “It’s not about ‘ Am I good enough?’ It’s ‘ Am I doing the right things to win?’ And they have to be honest about ‘ Hey, this is what I need to do to improve.’ When you win a game, it brings another sort of set of problems. We have got to improve.”
The Panthers will have a short time to improve off the win, as they’ll head to Houston to take on the Texans this Thursday.
After a failed try with Teddy Bridgewater, Carolina is on its second experiment under center in two years. This one, fortunately, is off to a much better start with Darnold. The afternoon hit a roaring start for Darnold and the offense, as the Panthers took just three minutes and five plays to travel 75 yards to the end zone. The openingdrive touchdown found the hands of wideout Brandon Zylstra on a 20- yard bullet over the middle.
He’d follow that up by then finding one of his favorites in DJ Moore. Moore, who finished with 79 yards on eight grabs, reeled in Darnold’s second touchdown toss a 2- yard strike to close out the first half.
While Darnold didn’t have as strong a second half, which included dancing a bit too much in the pocket and an ugly interception on a play where he should’ve taken a sack, he was steady enough to park the bus. This bus driver/ quarterback finished with his first 300- yard passing game since Week 12 of 2019 to go along with his pair of scores.
Luckily, the Panthers didn’t need Darnold to turn into some sort of Superman to fend off New Orleans. His 68.4 completion percentage clip ( 26 of 38) and 305 yards were just fine in pacing the win.
Throughout the spring and summer, a working hypothesis for many football analysts was that under the tutelage of Joe Brady – and perhaps removed from the guidance of Jets coach Adam Gase – Darnold would enjoy a career revival with the Panthers. So far that hypothesis seems to be correct with Sunday’s performance and the Week 1 effort.