The Jaguars couldn't stop the Panthers from running the same play over and over again
Christian McCaffrey had a field day thanks to a Jaguars defense that couldn't adjust ... or tackle him.
Christian McCaffrey officially joined the MVP conversation on Sunday after putting up 237 total yards and three touchdowns on a good Jaguars defense. Jacksonville just didn’t have an answer for McCaffrey and it’s not like the Panthers offense was asking a very complicated question.
According to Panthers guard Greg Van Roten, the team just called the same running play over and over again and the Jaguars could do nothing to stop it. That play call was “midzone,” which is a common run play that aims to stretch the defense horizontally in order to create cutback lanes for the runner. McCaffrey exploited those cutback lanes all afternoon in Carolina’s 34-27 win.
Via Pro Football Talk:
Tight end Greg Olsen said he doesn’t think he’s ever heard the same play call as many times as he heard calls for what guard Greg Van Roten called a “mid zone” run that allowed for the big cutbacks that both backs used for their scores.
“It’s kind of like this: Defenses call blitzes until you pick them up and we ran the same play until they could stop it,” Van Roten said. “And they didn’t. That was a good play for us. I don’t think we thought it was going to be that successful.”
As you can see in this highlight video, all of McCaffrey’s big runs came on similar-looking plays.
McCaffrey would press the edge, forcing the Jags linebackers to overcommit before he’d make a sharp cut and gash the defense up the middle.
It was a particularly rough game for rookie linebacker Quincy Williams who whiffed on McCaffrey several times. He couldn’t get a hand on the Panthers star.
Williams can take solace in the fact that he won’t be the last defender embarrassed by McCaffrey this season.