The Carolina Panthers defense showed progress in their rush defense during Sunday’s game against the Arizona Cardinals, following a disappointing performance in Week 1 when they allowed over 200 rushing yards to the Jaguars. The Panthers focused on improving their scheme and personnel groupings in practice ahead of facing the Cardinals.
Their efforts resulted in holding Arizona to just 82 rushing yards, marking the lowest total for a Panthers opponent since Week 3 of last season, when they limited the Raiders to 55 yards. It was also the first time since Week 12 of last season that the Cardinals finished with fewer than 100 rushing yards.
“I think that our coaches did make a huge emphasis on that in practice, making tackles, open field tackles, stopping the run,” safety Lathan Ransom said after the game. “And I think that’s just a hat’s off to the D-line, to linebackers and everyone’s executing their jobs, and I think they did that well and we’re going to continue to get better.”
Outside linebacker D.J. Wonnum commented on correcting previous mistakes: “We made up our mistakes that we had in the first game. A lot of different gap integrity things, issues that we had in the first game, we just went and watched the film and just keyed in and honed in on that and just show it today.”
Defensive lineman Derrick Brown emphasized execution as key: “I think it was just execution, right, same problems that we had last week, we fixed this week. I mean, we’ve got to fix them going forward.”
Despite improvement against Arizona’s ground game—holding James Conner to 34 yards on 11 carries and limiting Kyler Murray’s output—there were still moments where big plays occurred. Murray broke free for a notable 30-yard run after nearly being sacked.
“You know that’s one thing we’ve worked on all week because we know how athletic he is and how efficient he is when he gets out of out of the pocket,” Brown said.
Looking ahead to next week’s matchup against another mobile quarterback, Michael Penix Jr. of Atlanta, Brown stressed continued learning: “I mean, whenever you’ve got a scrambling quarterback, you gotta be a lot more careful in the rush, right? You can’t, can’t be too careful and then allow them to sit back there all day, but you need to be efficient enough to get to him.”
Rookie Princely Umanmielen recorded his first NFL sack during Sunday’s contest. He described his play: “It was a tight end lined up inside of me. He faked chip and then I got a chip from the running back as I was rushing up the field, and after the running back came and tried to chip me, I just kept rushing to try to beat the tackle on the outside, and I did, and you know, it felt good.”
Umanmielen saw increased playing time alongside fellow rookie Nic Scourton as part of a rotation with veterans Pat Jones and Wonnum. The defensive line also featured Derrick Brown playing consecutive games with A’Shawn Robinson and new acquisition Bobby Brown III.
“I mean we’ve been doing this ever since the summer back in OTAs,” said Brown regarding developing chemistry with teammates.
The Panthers’ defense held Arizona’s offense to only 20 points (with seven additional points coming from a fumble recovery return) while allowing 293 total yards. Head coach Dave Canales noted these positives despite areas for further improvement.
“It was what we talked about is discipline and trust with each other of fitting off each other, playing with energy that they need to,” Canales said. “It was a really disciplined approach to the run game today so I saw a lot of great improvement there.”
“The guys—it matters to them—and they took a lot of pride in that,” Canales added. “But again—the defensive guys will be up here—and they’ll be the first ones to tell you—you know—there’s a handful of plays that we got to be sharper on with our communication and all that.”
