Larry Brown Sports

The Carolina Panthers may be out of the playoff hunt, but they have plenty to motivate them against the Atlanta Falcons this weekend. The Falcons are a far superior team, but they needed a miraculous comeback to beat the Panthers in Week 4. After leading the improbable come-from-behind victory, Matt Ryan apparently was not friendly to his division rival.

Several Carolina players say they have had Sunday’s game circled on their calendars because of the nasty things Ryan said after their first meeting.

“I can’t repeat it to you. That’s how bad it was,” cornerback Captain Munnerlyn told reporters, via the Charlotte Observer. “He totally disrespected us. They won the game. They came all the way back and beat us. But to say what he said, I don’t think it was called for. He could have handled it a different way. But he said it. … He said some harsh words. So it’s going to be a fight out there.”

As Pro Football Talk mentioned, Ryan was caught by television camera’s saying, “Get the f*** off our field!” after his team’s Week 4 win. It’s quite possible it was that statement that rubbed the Panthers the wrong way, and that is likely what has led to defensive end Greg Hardy wanting to embarrass Atlanta.

“I’m really not a fan of the team down the street,” Hardy said. “I’m trying to mess up their whole playoff experience. I want them to go home sick in the stomach, mad about life, a couple depression issues, all types of things. It’s going to be a long day from my point of view. I’m coming.”

It sounds like the 3-9 Panthers are not in search of any added motivation this week. The Falcons have already wrapped up the NFC South and are simply playing for playoff seeding, so it may be difficult for them to match Carolina’s intensity. That being said, there’s no question about which team has the edge in talent.

Are the Carolina Panthers one of those teams that likes to trust their defense to start off a game and defer to the second half after winning the coin toss? Or do they like putting the ball in the hands of Cam Newton right away to set the tone for the rest of the game? Had they won a single coin toss this season, we might be able to answer that question.

The Panthers have lost 12 coin tosses this season, including each one at the start of their 11 games and one at the beginning of their overtime loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers a couple weeks back. Since the team is having absolutely no luck calling the toss in the air, Carolina is asking the fans to make the call this weekend when they take on the Kansas City Chiefs.

By liking the Carolina Panthers on Facebook, fans can vote for whether the team should call “heads” or “tails” before their game against the Chiefs on Sunday. The fans are currently in favor of heads, which has received 51% of the vote.

The odds of losing 12 straight coin tosses when you have a 50% chance of winning each one are astonishing, but it’s not the first time we have seen something like this happen. Remember when this unlucky team dealt with the same misfortune almost exactly a year ago? Give the Panthers credit for turning their bad luck into a marketing campaign.

H/T The Big Lead

The Carolina Panthers suffered a heartbreaking loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday that was so crushing it reportedly moved one of team’s players to tears.

According to Joe Person of The Charlotte Observer, Panthers linebacker Thomas Davis cried while talking about the team’s loss. “Thomas Davis brought tears in describing the Panthers’ latest loss,” Person tweeted.

It’s easy to see why Davis was so disappointed after the loss. The Panthers were up 21-10 with six minutes left and blew the lead. The defense allowed Tampa Bay to drive 80 yards in 50 seconds for a touchdown to make it 21-19 Panthers. Carolina also allowed to a two-point conversion to tie the game and send it to overtime, and then they allowed the Bucs to go 80 yards for a winning touchdown in overtime.

Davis, who had a team-high 16 tackles, was penalized 15 yards on a questionable unnecessary roughness call during the tying drive. He also forced a fumble on a goal-line stand in the fourth quarter.

At 2-8, there is no doubt many Panthers fans are crying along with Davis. At least he didn’t hold up the team bus with his crying.

Teams generally schedule an opponent they think they’re going to beat for their homecoming game, that way they can look good in front of fans they want to impress. That point was not lost on Carolina Panthers players DeAngelo Williams and Cam Newton.

Williams said after the Panthers beat the Redskins 21-13 that he was pretty upset when he woke up Sunday morning and saw that Washington dubbed the matchup with Carolina a “homecoming” game.

“I get over and I pick over the game day [program], and I’m looking at the [program], it’s customary,” Williams said, per D.C. Sports Bog. “And I look on there and it says homecoming. And I’m thinking to myself, like, this is the National Football League. Are you serious? Homecoming? Homecoming.

“And it’s not like you tried to hide it. You blatantly put it on the front of the game day. And you’re talking about somebody fired up today? I was pissed.”

Williams says he mentioned the slight during the team’s pregame meeting and that the entire squad was fired up by it.

“It was the whole team,” said Williams. “It was the whole team. That was definitely motivating. I mean, you don’t say you’re gonna have a homecoming in the National Football League. I mean, you do it in college. It’s [against] one of those teams that’s just terrible. You don’t book a good team for homecoming….I don’t know if they had a dance or anything; I just know you don’t give a team extra motivation by putting that on your program, just blatantly coming out and saying you’re our homecoming game.”

After the game, Cam Newton seemed to indicate he felt the same way.

According to FOX’s A.J. Perez, Newton said it was “embarrassing” to be the Redskins’ homecoming opponent.

Maybe that was the type of motivation Carolina needed. They won the game 21-13 and beat the Redskins well enough to make Mike Shanahan practically give up on the season.

The Redskins had more than 150 former players back for the game, and they honored the franchise’s top 80 players. The best way to cap a day like that? With a big fat L. Williams and Newton probably couldn’t have been happier to hang it on them.

Panthers head coach Ron Rivera’s decision to punt at the end of his team’s loss against the Falcons rather than go for it on 4th and less than a yard has been a topic of discussion among Carolina fans this week. The Panthers were past midfield, and Rivera decided to pin Matt Ryan and company deep rather than trying to ice the game by converting a first down.

It sounds like wide receiver Brandon LaFell disagreed with the decision.

“It’s fourth and inches, we’ve got Mike Tolbert, we’ve got Jonathan Stewart, some of the best power backs in the league,” LaFell told The Mac Attack on WFNZ in Charlotte Tuesday. “I felt like we could have got that yard. And I didn’t want to put our defense in that situation, because we should have won the game right there with that possession.”

The situation the defense had to face was not a difficult one. Carolina was able to pin the Falcons at their own 1-yard line with 59 seconds remaining. Rivera clearly made the right choice, but his defense put Atlanta in a position to win when it allowed Roddy White to come down with a 59-yard prayer on the first play of the drive. They then failed to protect the sidelines and allowed Ryan to easily get his team into field goal range.

It’s easy to second-guess the coach when the end result is not ideal, but Rivera made the right call. As an offensive player, you can understand why LaFell wishes the coach would have given the offense a chance to win it. The fact that Atlanta prevailed doesn’t make Rivera’s decision the wrong one.

Thanks to Sports Radio Interviews for transcribing the interview

No Hakeem Nicks? No Ahmad Bradshaw? No problem. NFL teams often use the phrase “next man up” when starters go down with injuries, and the Giants exemplified the importance of depth by adhering to it on Thursday night. Their offense looked as good as it has all year, as Eli Manning had his way with the Carolina secondary and reserves Andre Brown and Ramses Barden enjoyed career nights.

But it wasn’t only the Panthers’ defense that struggled. Their offense looked stale right out of the gate. Cam Newton was picked off three times and pressured a ton by the Giants front seven. As Steve Smith put it after the game, nothing worked.

“Everything that we did tonight, we need to go ahead and get a trash can – a good, tin one – and burn those plays and never go back to them,” he said according to the News and Observer. “Because it was shameful for the fans. It was just flat-out terrible. We just got our tails whipped from the beginning to the end in every aspect. It was pretty disgusting.

Sympathy for Carolina fans seemed to be a common theme after the game, as Newton agreed with his star wideout that the loss was embarrassing.

“Who wants to support something that puts on a performance of embarrassment? That’s what that was,” Newton said. “If I was a fan of the Carolina Panthers I’d be holding my head down in shame at the product that was out there.”

The good news for Panthers fans — if there is any — is that it’s only Week 3. Sometimes a little humility early in the season can go a long way.

Photo credit: Chuck Cook-US PRESSWIRE

There’s nothing quite like a little rah-rah to get us all excited for the upcoming NFL season — especially during one of the most boring sports months of the calendar year. Whether it’s Jets players talking about the “greatness” that New York’s 2012 roster contains or division rivals trading trash talk, we all need something to help get us through these slow months. By taking out a full-page ad in the Charlotte Observer to explain why the Panthers will win the Super Bowl this season, Carolina center Ryan Kalil took the excitement into unprecedented territory.

The ad, which can be seen here, has a headline that says “Why the Carolina Panthers will win Super Bowl XLVII” and reads as follows:

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