– by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief
Follow @Koiki_Sport Follow @ALOST_Official
PHILADELPHIA — Befitting of the setting where their game took place on Sunday, the Carolina Panthers had to embody the fighting spirit that has come to define Philadelphia, including embracing a boxing match that turns into a clutch-and-hold rock fight and coming out on top on the judges’ scorecards.
Penalties (and lots of penalties) and all, sloppiness in execution and all, the Panthers scored enough points — on those scorecards and inside the stadium’s scoreboard — and came out a bloodied, beaten-up winner, Rocky Balboa style.
Bryce Young threw for a score in each half, both to tight end Tommy Tremble, as the Carolina Panthers used two fourth-quarter touchdown drives to put away the short-handed Philadelphia Eagles 25-14 inside Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday afternoon. Chuba Hubbard ran for 120 yards, his second consecutive over 100 on the ground, and capped off the Panthers’ 92-yard drive that bridge the third and fourth quarters with a 1-yard score.
It wasn’t a shock that the Panthers outgained an Eagles squad playing without Jalen Hurts and Saquon Barkley by close to 200 yards, yet Carolina kept the game uncomfortably close for Philadelphia by undoing much of their territorial advantage by amassing a franchise-record 149 yards in penalties.
Good teams are able to “win ugly,” however, and it’s that mantra that gives credence that the Panthers are, actually, a good football team. Specifically, Carolina’s defense and special teams made up for the constant miscues long enough for the offense to salt the game away; Philadelphia was held to just 126 yards of total offense in the first three quarters, and, Tre Tyus, a running back just called up from the practice squad, blocked a punt in the fourth quarter that Carolina converted to six on Young’s second touchdown pass to Tremble, from 22 yards out.
“Coach [Canales] just said that in front of all of us. There’s no such thing as an ugly win,” said Young, who threw for at 280 yards and a touchdown for a fifth consecutive week to start the season. “Do we know that there’s tons of stuff for us to go back and clean up, stuff for us to improve on, stuff for us to look in the mirror tomorrow when we get back to work? 100%. But a win is a win and this week, you can’t take that for granted. We found a way; that’s always the most important thing. It’s always more fun to clean stuff up on the winning end, but that doesn’t take the urgency away from having to make sure that we get things corrected and that we’re better than next week.”
Follow @Koiki_Sport Follow @ALOST_Official
