A lost opportunity against the Saints

The Panthers lost to the New Orleans Saints on Sunday 30-20. The Panthers had the chance to win this game but were never able to seal the deal, which allowed the Saints' amazing offense come back. We jumped to an early 14-0 lead in the first half and were able to go into halftime up 17-6, which included a huge defensive stop that led to the Saints getting a field goal instead of a TD at the end of the half. But then the Saints came back in the second half and we more or less lost our composure. While there were several aspects that cost us the game, two plays stick out in my mind as the most important. The first one was when the Panthers were 1st and goal from the 1 yard line, but due to extensive injuries we had Mackenzy Bernadeau, an o-line man, as our fullback who bumped into Jake on the play causing him to be sacked for a loss. We ended up settling for a field goal on this play and a TD would have put us up more and kept our momentum going. Instead it was a momentum killer. (I wonder why Bernadeau was in as fullback since he doesn't know that position and why a RB like Jonathon Stewart, who knows the motions in that area perfectly, was not called in to block for DeAngelo Williams). The second play was when the Panthers drove to make a comeback, DeAngelo Williams fumbled the ball and the Saints recovered in the endzone for a TD. This put the game out of our hands. So if we had continued to play in the second half like we did in the first, then we would have beaten an undefeated team, but at the end of the day we were not good enough to do that.



-Gray