Carolina Panthers: Pursuing the Atlanta Falcons
The Carolina Panthers need to focus on catching the Atlanta Falcons if they want a guarantee of a playoff berth.
For the Carolina Panthers the last half of the season will be a race for the playoffs. Given the success of the NFC East and the top of the NFC North and NFC West, it is unlikely that will mean a wild card berth. Instead the Panthers are going to need to run down the leader of their own division, the Atlanta Falcons.
Unfortunately the Falcons stopped a two game slide of their own this Sunday. They came back and beat the Green Bay Packers despite a wounded Julio Jones. That gave them a 5-3 record on the year. The Falcons have not yet had their bye (the Panthers have) and stand two losses above the Panthers’ record of 2-5.
To coax a tie with the Falcons, the Panthers will need to win all their games and have the Falcons drop two somewhere along the way. One of those games would be the return game to Charlotte. So the Falcons would have to lose an additional game. The problem is that the Falcons play all the same teams the Panthers do. Their losses are to San Diego and Seattle, two teams that the Panthers have not yet played.
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Fortunately it is not the whole story for the Falcons. Just as the Panthers have a tougher schedule this year, the Falcons will see some of those same teams. The Cardinals will most likely be better when Atlanta faces them. The Chiefs will get a crack at both teams.
Then there are the other tradeoffs. The Falcons have a three week stretch of Eagles, Cardinals, and Chiefs. Philadelphia is playing well right now and cannot be written off. The last hope of the Panthers comes from a visit of Drew Brees to the Georgia Dome on the last day of the regular season.
So there are opportunities for the Falcons to drop a game here or there. The far harder part will be the Panthers continuing to win in order to exploit any opportunity that is there. It is unlikely that the team will win ten straight, and that is the target until the Falcons move it. The good news is that the team is due at least to even up its divisional games this season.
The Panthers have had big stretch runs to do the impossible before. It was just two years ago that a Panthers team with a retooling secondary and missing its best pass rusher managed to win all the ‘must-win’ games and make it into the playoffs as the NFC South champion. This should not be new for this crew.