Carolina Panthers: Summoning Derek Anderson’s Good Luck Charm
The Carolina Panthers are depending on Derek Anderson to do the one thing he does well, beat Tampa.
The Carolina Panthers will enter tonight’s game with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with one hand tied behind their back. The list of the notable injured may be more important than the list of the players who will play. That injured list includes Cam Newton, Jonathan Stewart, Michael Oher, and James Bradberry. Obviously the most important name on that list is Newton.
The Panthers starting quarterback is still the defending league MVP. He has still led the Panthers to victory sixteen times against five losses in the last two years. There is no argument for not having him on the field if you can get him. He also has been hit a lot over the course of his career.
However if there was one game that you could scrub Newton for, it would probably this one. This is not because the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are inferior to the other teams that the Panthers have faced. Instead, the Panthers just seem to have the kryptonite needed to play Tampa. That would be backup quarterback Derek Anderson.
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At this point we are pretty familiar with Anderson. He led Cleveland to a miraculous season in 2007. That saw him get to the Pro Bowl and things went downhill from there. After a stint with the Cardinals in 2010, Anderson was brought to Carolina because he was familiar with the scheme of then Panthers offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski.
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He has been content to be Newton’s backup ever since the 2011 draft. When called upon he has been a solid contributor. But no team has seen the best of Anderson like the Bucs. In 2014 the two games that Newton missed were both against Tampa. That gave Anderson a chance to go play.
His start in game one of that year was great. He helped discover Kelvin Benjamin. He threw for 230 yards and two scores with 70% completion. He did not turn the ball over. The Panthers won a close game. He repeated the performance in the crucial stretch run that got the Panthers to the playoffs. Those two wins were as important as any that got the Panthers to the razor thin playoff margin.
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Times were of course different. It was before Jameis Winston. The Panthers even had Greg Hardy for one of those games. Yet the Panthers secondary was in upheaval then too. The team will need whatever magic that Anderson can summon against the Bucs to start digging out the hole to challenge Atlanta or at least the wild card.