New Orleans Saints beat the Carolina Panthers 31-26 in Wild Card game

Sunday’s Wild Card game was determined after the Carolina Panthers defence failed to protect Cam Newton and with seconds left to play, the New Orlean Saints managed to sack Newton and take the win 31-26. The Saints Drew Brees was on top of his game throwing 376 yards that resulted in two touchdowns.

With a mere 58 seconds left in regulation time, Carolina was sitting on the 26-yard line with a first down, however, as a result of pressure, several plays later against the Panthers, New Orleans defensive end Cameron Jordon saw that pressure put a grounding penalty against Cam Newton, the quarterback for the Panthers. This saw the Panthers left with one down and still on the 25 year line and after the runoff left only 22 seconds in regulation time.

Newton managed to get the ball into the end zone but was quickly sacked by Vonn Bell to give Carolina its third consecutive win over the Panthers.

Commenting, Cameron Jordan said

“We wanted it more, I mean they’ve been to their Super Bowl, let ’em go to another one next year. We want our run.”

Drew Brees threw Ted Ginn a 80 yard touchdown and a 9 yard pass that saw Josh Hill score a touchdown.

Zach line and Alvin Kamara both ran touchdowns and thanks to Kamar, Michael Thomas was able to accept a 46 yard pass. In total, Thomas managed to catch 8 passes for a total of 131 yards, and this was a solid performance on a day that New Orleans needed to get the game going after a slow start.

Newton, who had help from Greg Olsen, the Panthers tight end, was able to get the ball in New Orleans territory multiple times, but with four of those, Carolina stalled and was left with having to settle for field goals versus touchdowns.

Greg Olsen was successful with catching the pass eight times, and Cam Newton connected on twenty- two of forty passes that resulted in 349 yards and two touchdowns. However, the game saw Newton being sacked not once, but four times, with one that saw Tyeler Davison suffering a possible concussion as a result of hitting his head against the chest of David Onyemata. After being checked by medical staff, he was cleared to return to the game.

Said Jordon

We had to finish out the game and put it on our defence, put it on me, put it on our secondary, our D-line, I mean, everybody responded the way we were supposed to.

However, even with the failed attempts, Carolina was well within their capabilities of a win after New Orleans Coach Sean Payton chose to maintain the offense with only two minutes left in the game. His hope was that they could run down the clock on Carolina, who had no remaining outs. This backfired as a pass by Brees was intercepted and that saw the Panthers in Carolina’s zone with almost two minutes left on the clock. Thankfully, for the Saints, the Panthers failed to get a touchdown.

Jordon also mentioned that

This win is special, they came back late in the fourth quarter, made this a game.

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