The Panthers held on to beat the Seattle Seahawks 31-24 on Sunday, knocking the two-time defending NFC champs out of the postseason with their 12th straight home win. The Panthers will host Arizona next week for the NFC Championship and a spot in Super Bowl 50.
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The Carolina Panthers are coming from a 31-24 win over the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday.
In the locker room after the game, safety Kurt Coleman pointed out there is so little separating teams at this point in the playoffs.
Emphatically backing up their superb regular season with one of the most dominating halves in football history, the Panthers then hung on in the face of a furious Seahawks rally before surviving.
“Man, it was like a bend-but-don’t-break”.
Along with his status as scariest runner in the NFL, biggest cheerleader on the Carolina Panthers’ sideline, corporate spokesperson and post-touchdown football gifter, Cam Newton is an underrated passer.
The Panthers await, with Newton vowing to make up for a second-half lapse against Seattle.
Just a few plays after the Seahawks had kept a drive alive with a fake punt late in the third quarter, the Seahawks had a second-and-10 trailing 31-14. That drive stalled, but with Carolina’s offense sputtering, Seattle later got closer on Kearse’s 3-yard catch of a jump ball against All-Pro cornerback Josh Norman.
DAVIS DOES IT AGAIN: Panthers linebacker Thomas Davis – the team’s longest tenured player – came up with an onside kick to seal Carolina’s win.
“We fought hard and played our butts off”, Wagner said, “but we lost”.
“We just screwed it up at the start of the season, we screwed it up at the start of the game”, he said on the season’s final edition of “The Pete Carroll Show,” referencing the loss to the Panthers. And that led to one happy winning quarterback. He burst through the middle on the first snap and almost outran everyone, getting tackled at the Seattle 16 by Richard Sherman. The Carolina Panthers ground game is averaging 144 yards per contest, and Jonathan Stewart leads the way with 106 yards and two touchdowns.
The former Prattville High School and Alabama Crimson Tide standout said it had been damaged during a run-in with Seattle running back Marshawn Lynch, aka Beastmode. Lynch finished with six carries for 20 yards. “They got a great push and a great pass rush and it makes my job easy”, Kuechly said. “He’s one of those guys that sets the tempo because he’s a physical player, and this game is about physicality”. Greg Olsen’s spectacular 19-yard reaching catch over double coverage made it 31-0. Quarterback Russell Wilson, who was under all kinds of pressure, put Seattle in a hole in the first half with a pair of interceptions, including a pick-six.
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But that ended the onslaught, and the Seahawks who returned for the second half were an entirely different team, energetic and efficient. Defensively, Arizona is allowing 20 points and 386 yards per game.
