The Carolina Panthers defense unsurprisingly struggled in their season opening loss to the Las Vegas Raiders. The Raiders boast an elite offensive line and offense that ranked ninth in offensive efficiency last season. A team full of young players headed by a first-time defensive coordinator is always going to have a hard time with that, especially when you throw communication issues into the mix.
It doesn’t look like it’ll get easier for the defense in Week 2 as they pay a visit to Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Bucs struggled in Week 1 against the Saints, but that’s not something the Panthers can hang their hat on. The Bucs are integrating a new quarterback into their offense without a real offseason, and the Saints defense is really good. They’ll be better moving forward. That likely starts this week.
Here are three things the Panthers need to do when their defense is on the field:
- Pressure Tom Brady. Hey I bet you’ve never heard this one before—if you want to beat Tom Brady, you have to get pressure on him. People like to say that as if it’s some strategy that’s unique to Tom Brady and not other quarterbacks, but I digress. The Panthers really do need to put pressure on the quarterback after they did none of that last week. The Bucs offensive line looked shaky and Brady is one of the most immobile quarterbacks in the league. The Panthers front should be able to notch their first sack of the season and disrupt the passing game a little more than we saw in Week 1.
- Create negative plays in the run game. The Panthers did a decent job containing Jacobs aside from the touchdowns, limiting him to just 3.7 yards per carry. The caveat to that is they only stuffed Jacobs for negative yardage on two of his 25 carries. The Bucs ran the ball 26 times even with the negative game script, so they’ll likely make it a priority again against the Panthers. Starting running back Ronald Jones was only stopped for a loss once by the Saints, so getting him in the backfield is no easy task, but the Panthers need to do that with some frequency to put the Bucs offense behind the sticks.
- Hope they catch some lucky breaks with Tampa’s weapons. Tom Brady wasn’t sharp in Week 1, so much so that head coach Bruce Arians called him out in the media. Mike Evans is currently questionable with a hamstring injury, and Chris Godwin entered the concussion protocol on Wednesday. A fully healthy and firing Buccaneers offense probably overwhelms this defense with ease., but an ailing receiving corps and iffy quarterback play level the playing field a whole lot.