Panthers’ run game gets in gear

Their total 47 rushes for 203 yards were the most since head coach Matt Rhule took over last season. In fact, the 47 attempts were the fourth-most in franchise history, and it was their first 200-yard game since they piled up 285 against Jacksonville in Week 5 of 2019.

It’s worth noting that Christian McCaffrey was a part of that one, but not Sunday. He’s eligible to return from injured reserve as soon as next week against the Patriots (though they won’t know whether he’ll be able to until they see him practice Wednesday).

But the way the offense had struggled without him the last four weeks, having this kind of output without him was the kind of statement they needed to make.

“It was awesome, man,” veteran left tackle Cameron Erving said. “To see a lot of guys go out there and getting their opportunities. Of course, we’re ready for Christian to come back, whenever that time is, whenever he’s healthy. but in the meantime, all we can do is what we can do, which is execute every play that Joe (Brady) calls for us.”

They did just that Sunday, able to put together three drives of 15 plays or more. That’s what they were hoping to do the previous week against the Giants, but they didn’t, running just 17 times the entire game after Rhule said the team wanted to establish a new identity.

“I thought it was kind of the game plan going in and kind of what we wanted to do last week and we didn’t really kind of never got it going,” Rhule said. “I think sometimes weeks like last week happened for you to go back and really self-reflect and say, ‘Hey, we say we’re going to do these things. Are we going to do them?’

“We had some bloody runs, we had some second down runs and went for it to get some third downs, and quarterback sneaks. Find a bunch of different ways to try to do it. You can only do that when you’re converting third downs. I thought we were excellent on third down. And Sam gave us a lot of plays with his legs, which we knew was going to be important. So, we’ve talked a lot about it today. We finally did. First time since I’ve been here we ran for 200 yards, so it’s a step in the right direction.”