Entering Sunday, the Panthers’ defense was ranked the best in the NFL in many categories, and while a poor showing by the offense didn’t make their job any easier, the Saints’ offense definitely got the better of them. That is not to say that the Panthers’ defense didn’t do a lot of good things on Sunday, but their performance was plagued by mistakes that have either not been made in the first two weeks, or which have been left unexploited. This article will look at how the Saints were able to gain yards against what has been, and is expected to be, one of the NFL’s top rush defenses.

Two High to Succeed

“We played sideways. We didn’t play downhill. We didn’t play into our creases, we didn’t control our gaps.” -Head Coach Ron Rivera

When teams play the Saints, they always know that Drew Brees will give their secondaries issues; he isn’t going to go to the Hall of Fame for nothing. However, on Sunday, the Panthers found it hard to stop the Saints on the ground, something that has not been the case in recent years or even early this season. A major part of that was multiple break-downs in gap discipline, something hugely uncharacteristic of recent Panther defenses. Even worse, on some plays they didn’t even give themselves a chance.

On both of these plays the Panthers are lined up in what are effectively ‘two-high’ formations; although in the second play it is actually the corner playing deep. What this means is that the Saints have a blocker for every in-box defender for the Panthers; even with good lane discipline, these plays are relying on a third-level defender to make a play. In the first case, this doesn’t happen until the running back has already picked up the first down, and in the second the corner misses the tackle trying to get down to the line in time.

There are circumstances when teams should adopt two-high formations, but neither of these plays constitute such situations. If the Panthers want to stop the run more effectively than they did against the Saints, they first have to put themselves in better situations. For example, in the second play, there is no reason why Bradberry needs to be that far off the line of scrimmage.

Gap Undisciplined

“I thought we didn’t execute well at all. I thought it was poor execution, poor fundamentals all the way around.” -Defensive End Julius Peppers

What was even more worrying from Sunday’s performance was that even when the Panthers had enough defenders in the box, they couldn’t get them in the right places.

On this play, Short looks to dive inside of the guard center, leaving a running lane over the right guard, which Kuechly is too far across the shut off. This could well be due to miscommunication, but is often simply a mental error by the defensive linesman. Such issues should be relatively easy to fix, especially for a player of Short’s caliber; where the bigger issue seemed to come was in the ability to communicate across the line. On both of the following plays, the secondary player has the outside lane, but this isn’t communicated to the rest of the defensive front, with the following results:

It is hard to tell from these clips where the communication broke down, it could well be due to late motion by the offense to an empty-sided formation, but it will continue to cost the Panthers dearly until rectified. The Panthers’ scheme is hugely dependent on checks, with secondary players rarely following receivers across the field, and so any continued issues in communication would be particularly damaging. This is normally something that becomes an issue when teams have to bring in new players due to injury, but given the relative health of the Panthers’ defense it can only really be put down to yet more mental errors.

The Soft Edge

“I think we’ve just got to be a little bit more patient. A term we always say, you’ve just got to babysit and buy time.” -Defensive coordinator Steve Wilks

Another area that the Saints exposed was the Panthers issues defending stretch runs. While the Panthers used their rapid pursuit to blow some of these up for losses, they also got caught out of position when their pursuit discipline was tested. On the following play, Luke commits a pair of errors, firstly over-pursuing to the ball, allowing for a cutback lane for the running back:

Whether as a response to that play or not, on the following play, he pursues well to the outside but then, almost fearing as if he had over-pursued, he looks to cut back inside the defender and in doing so opens up an outside running lane. In the first instance he needs to be patient as a back-side defender and in the second trust his own back-side defenders to pursue to the ball effectively. It is rare to see Luke commit such mental errors, and hopefully Sunday was a blip, but there is a fine line between rapid pursuit and over-pursuit that the Panthers must ensure not get on the wrong side of.

Do Your Job

“We feel confident that if we were playing up to par, up to our standards, we can hang with anyone in this league.” -Safety Kurt Coleman

Finally, when all goes well and there is a defender in position to make a play, they have to do so. On too many occasions against the Saints, the defender in the run gap failed to do their job well, if at all. On the first play, Worley is tasked with the outside gap, and should be able to make a tackle on Peterson for a modest gain. However, despite having inside support from Peppers, he looks to dive too far inside and allows Peterson to bump the run outside for a larger gain. This play is not the end of the world, but mistakes like that turn positive plays into negative ones.

On the next play, it is Peppers and Thompson who are at fault. Peppers initially failed to cut the run off outside, largely due to an apparent hesitation, but Thompson is still able to use his speed to be in position to make a tackle; but he misses. Missed tackles are a fact of life when in comes to defensive football, but when added to a game plagued by lane ill-discipline and mental errors it made for a rough outing.

Thompson wasn’t alone in this mistake, the usually reliable Luke even missed one on an outside run by Peterson:

None of the above mistakes are what allowed to Saints to run for over five yards-per-carry against the Panthers on Sunday, but rather the sum of them all. The pursuit style defense is always going to give up plays on the outside run, a calculated gamble balanced by negative plays, but if the Panthers are going to commit so many mental errors then the maths of said gamble could well prove to be faulty. None of this is irreparable, but the window for fixing it won’t be open forever.