Only a few teams do it better. Nobody does it more.
The Panthers run the football more than any NFL team, and they do it in a way that makes defending their running game very tricky.
They come at you 20 times a game with eight-year veteran Jonathan Stewart, a 235-pound battering ram, and they come at you 10 times a game with Cam Newton, the Panthers’ freak-show quarterback.
Factor in a few other miscellaneous carries, and the Panthers are running the football 32.8 times per game, most in the NFL.
“They run a little bit of everything, make you be disciplined in your reads and physical at the point of attack so we’ve got to match that,” inside linebacker Jordan Hicks said. “We’ve got to know what’s coming at us and anticipate it.”
Newton is on pace to shatter the modern NFL record (post-1960) for carries by a quarterback.
Bobby Douglass ran 141 times for the Bears in 1972, and Newton is on pace for 160 carries. Newton already owns the No. 2 and No. 3 marks in NFL history for most carries by a QB — 127 in 2012 and 126 in 2011.
“He’s long, big, obviously built-well guy who can out-run you if you let him,” Hicks said. “You’ve got to be smart with your leverage and we’ve got to rally and tackle.”
Newton is averaging 4.3 yards on first down and only 3.7 yards on second down. But on third down? He’s averaging 6.6 yards per attempt.
That's when he really becomes a weapon.
“That's what we want to do, get them in third-and-long situations, make Cam drop back and beat us throwing the ball,” linebacker DeMeco Ryans said.
“I think that's where we'll gain an advantage. When it's third-and-short, he has the ability to run the ball and it's really tough to stop him.”
The Panthers are averaging 4.0 yards per carry, which is only 18th-best in the league. But coach Ron Rivera — a one-time teammate of Walter Payton on the legendary 1985 Bears — loves to win with defense and a true commitment to the running game.
So the Panthers run early, they run often and they stick to the ground attack to try to wear people down.
It’s paid off in a 5-0 start and nine-game winning streak going into the Panthers’ game against the Eagles at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Sunday night.
“They have a good run game,” defensive lineman Vinny Curry said. “Hardball. Hard-nosed football. It’s going to be an old-school brawl. They’ll run at you, their offensive line does a good job. They’ve got every play in the playbook.”
It should be a great matchup between a Panthers offense churning out 133 yards per game on the ground, third-most in the league behind the Jets and Seahawks, and an Eagles defense tied for seventh in the league in rush defense at 94 yards allowed per game and tied for second at 3.5 yards per carry.
“The challenge is they are going to try to pound you and they have got a back in Jonathan who’s a big, physical downhill running back,” head coach Chip Kelly said.
“And then you have a quarterback — and it’s different than other zone-read-type teams you face where it' a quick, agile quarterback that's going to break outside — in Cam, who can pound you, too, because he's got to be the biggest quarterback in the league from that standpoint in terms of rushing — him and (Ben) Roethlisberger. But they don't run Ben. They run Cam.
“So I think they are just going to try to wear you down and pound you a little bit. I think their offensive line is built that way. Their running game is built that way, so, ‘Can we stand in there and go to toe-to-toe with them?’ is going to be the challenge for us.”
In Bill Davis’ three years running the defense for Kelly, the Eagles have allowed just 3.7 yards per carry — third-best in the NFL during that span.
Only two backs have rushed for 100 yards against the Eagles since opening day of 2013.
“The challenge this week is first and foremost stopping the run,” Ryans said. “They rush the ball a lot so it's gonna be a heavy run game for us defensively and we have to stop the run. And then you sprinkle in the quarterback run, which gets kind of tough, but I feel like we'll do a good job of stopping that.
“I think they will stay committed to the run game and they'll keep pounding it until something works for them. It's gonna be a big task for the front seven.”