Carolina Panthers pull off a huge upset, defeating the defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots in their backyard. Carolina’s dramatic, 33-30 victory over New England at Gillette Stadium was back an offensive breakout from the Panthers, a team that scored 22 points total in its last two games and a last-second field goal. Newton and company matched the Patriots stride for stride early on. After Patriots opened the game with a 41-yard field goal, Carolina answered on the ensuing drive with a 32-yarder from Gano. The trend continued as Newton matched Brady’s 2-yard touchdown pass to receiver Chris Hogan with a 29-yard touchdown pass to running back Fozzy Whittaker. However, instead of matching Patriots field goal, Newton went ahead and toss a 10-yard touchdown strike to wide receiver Devin Funchess to give Carolina the lead at halftime. In the second half Newton found Funchess again for a 16-yard touchdown, then the next possession Newton scored on a 7-yard run to give the Panthers 30-16 lead. Brady and the Patriots would, of course, come back and tie it up with 3 minutes left. But Carolina drove 46 yards on 10 plays to let Gano kick the game winning 48-yard field goal.
The MVP for today game is quarterback Cameron Newton, 22-29, 316 yards, 3 touchdowns and 1 interception. Cam looked like his MVP self if he plays like that the rest of the season, the Panthers are playoff bound. And with the win, Cam becomes the winningest quarterback in Panthers history, passing Jake Delhomme. Other big-time stats, Funchess finished the game with 70 yards receiving, the most since Week 17 of the 2015 season, and two touchdown catches. Kelvin Benjamin hauled in his first 100=yard receiving game of the season while Jonathan Stewart added 68 yards on the ground, becoming the Panthers’ all-time leading rusher. Luke Kuechly strung together at least four tackles in a row. On a defense that was patched together with duct tape in the secondary and with linebacker Thomas Davis (rib) obviously not at 100 percent, Kuechly got the team just organized enough to force a few field goals instead of touchdowns and did a ton himself. New England did score 30, but without Kuechly it would have been far worse than that. The ageless Julius Peppers had two big sacks of Tom Brady, bringing his season total to a team-high 4.5 after four games. Peppers is going to hit some of those contractual sack incentives he has by midseason at this pace. This week win makes next week’s game bigger, Carolina Panthers (3-1) and Detroit Lions (3-1) will face off in Michigan in a battle of two of the top teams in the NFL.
