Inside the Panthers' Film Room: Week Three

Breaking down a play to note from Sunday's game at Seattle.

Adam Thielen had a big boy game on Sunday afternoon. The six-year veteran hauled in 11 catches for 145 yards in one of the best games of his long career. On the last of his 11 catches, Thielen found the end zone for the second time this season. On the play, Thielen took a lick from the safety, but he popped up, spun the ball, talked his junk, and ran back to the sideline.

Not only was the catch impressive, but it was a well-schemed play and a really good piece of quarterbacking by Andy Dalton. Let’s check it out.

Here is the pre-snap picture, and what Andy Dalton sees, and expects from the secondary. There is a single safety between the hashes, meaning the defense is in a middle-field closed concept. Dalton sees this and expects Cover 3.

A Cover 3 defensive concept means that three defensive backs drop deep, and each of them covers 1/3 of the secondary. The weakest point in that defense is up the seam, and a brave quarterback and tough receiver can attack the area of the field circled in green.

With that figured out, the player that needs to be read post-snap is the slot corner who is starred in the picture above. The X wide receiver, DJ Chark, is going to run a quick in route to occupy the slot corner, leaving Thielen a free run to green grass up the seam.

Easy enough, right? You read the coverage pre-snap, you have the right call in place, and it should be an easy touchdown. Not so fast my friend!

This is a great piece of quarterbacking by Dalton. We see from the end zone view that Dalton’s eyes are looking left immediately after he receives the snap from Bradley Bozeman.

His body is opening up to rip the throw to Thielen, but his eyes are looking directly at the middle of the field safety to hold him long enough to create a window to hit #19.

Dalton holds the safety for that second, pats the ball, looks right back to Thielen, and gears up to rip his second touchdown of the game.

With the safety still on that left hashmark because of Dalton’s eyes and Hayden Hurst’s vertical route, the window for Dalton to throw through is wide open, and the Panthers cut their deficit from 17 to 10.

There needs to be more downfield aggression like this going forward no matter who is under center. Now that we have multiple data points, it’s clear that both New Orleans and Atlanta have above-average defenses. Bryce young didn’t have easy tests in his first two career starts.

However, the rookie has to be more liberal with his downfield attempts. Dalton completed six passes of 15+ air yards. That’s more than Bryce even attempted in each of his starts.

Justin Herbert just hung 407 yards and three touchdowns on Minnesota.

The previous week Jalen Hurts had success throwing downfield (alongside D’Andre Swift dominating on the ground).

Minnesota is an exploitable defense, and whether it’s Bryce Young returning to the field at home or it’s episode two of the Andy Dalton experience, more downfield looks like this would be a sight for sore eyes.

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