CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The ballyhooed matchup of top-10 units never materialized.
The Panthers rammed the football right at the Eagles, and the Eagles couldn’t stop it.
“We knew they were going to do it,” linebacker Jordan Hicks said. “That’s what they’ve done this entire season. It wasn’t a surprise for us. We just didn’t play sound football.”
The Eagles’ No. 8 run defense was no match Sunday night for the Panthers’ No. 3 rush offense.
The Panthers ran 33 times for 204 yards and two touchdowns on the way to a 27-16 win over the Eagles at Bank of America Stadium.
The Eagles went into the game allowing 94 rushing yards and 3.5 yards per carry.
“The run game starts and probably ends with the discipline of gap and team football and guys being where they’re supposed to be,” defensive coordinator Bill Davis said.
“It is tough because we pride ourselves on stopping the run and we’ll continue to stop the run, but I’ll give Carolina the credit. But we didn’t get it done tonight. In any phase.”
The Panthers’ 204 yards are third-most against the Eagles in the last eight years.
Jonathan Stewart’s 125 yards are the most against the Eagles since Doug Martin of the Buccaneers ran for 128 in 2012 — late in Andy Reid’s final season.
The Panthers established the run quickly, with Stewart gaining nine and then 36 yards on his first two carries, setting up the Panthers’ first touchdown.
The Eagles never recovered.
Receiver Ted Ginn Jr. added a 43-yard run on an end-around in the second quarter, setting up the touchdown that gave the Panthers a 14-3 lead.
“They had two X-plays,” Hicks said. “You give up two X-plays in the run game, it’s going to be like that. Especially those big ones. We’ve got to be disciplined, we’ve got to get back in the lab and figure it out.”
X-plays are plays of 20 yards or more, and the Eagles had actually allowed only two running plays all year of 20 or more yards. Then they gave up two in the first half.
The Panthers became the first team since November of 2006 with two carries of at least 35 yards against the Eagles. Travis Henry had runs of 43 and 70 yards against the Eagles in a game the Titans won 31-13.
Last time the Eagles allowed two runs of 35 or more yards in a first half was Sept. 17, 1989, when Gerald Riggs had runs of 41 and 46 yards at RFK Stadium in that unforgettable game when the Eagles came back from a 30-14 fourth-quarter deficit.
“Sometimes you have mistakes — and we’ve had plenty of mistakes up until this week and they just (didn’t) find it — but those guys did a nice job of hitting a couple long ones,” Davis said.
The Panthers didn’t hit any long runs in the second half, but they pounded the ball 20 times for 86 yards.
That's Ron Rivera football. Play defense and pound the rock. The Panthers did both Sunday night.
“That’s the most disappointing thing about (Sunday),” safety Malcolm Jenkins said. “We consider ourselves to be a defense that stops the run, and to give up 200 yards is unacceptable.
“They just moved us. It wasn’t anything special. I think in the first half we were doing a pretty good job. They had the one run that popped, it was just a misfit, and they had the one reverse, but other than that, we felt we held up well. But in the second half, they just moved us.”
The Eagles’ defense did force three turnovers, with Byron Maxwell, Nolan Carroll and Jenkins all intercepting Cam Newton.
But Jenkins said the turnovers were neutralized by the 200 rushing yards.
“We really cancelled out our turnovers allowing them to run the ball the way they did because that just gives them the ball longer and that ends up taking away possessions from our offense because of the way they’re running the ball,” he said.
“We took the ball away three times but basically you can erase them because they ran the ball for two-hundred yards.”