Ron Rivera, Panthers have eye toward future in season finale
The Panthers have a plan for how they are going to use their players on Sunday.
For once, it appears that Carolina Panthers head coach Ron Rivera and myself are on the same page. Monday, he gave everyone a little insight into how the Panthers will play the Week 17 finale against the New Orleans Saints. With the Panthers having nothing to lose and everything to gain, it should be interesting to see how they play this final contest of the 2018 season.
Although we obviously do not know the ins and outs of their game plan, Rivera stated that the Panthers should be smart with how they use their starters. Let me start off by saying that I agree with his sentiment. If this was a must-win game, I may push the starters to go out there. However, in a game with not much at stake, this will give an opportunity for some of the younger guys to play. With several key players on the defense getting older, this would will be a good opportunity for some of the younger guys to make their mark.
"“We’ll be evaluating for this last game, we’ll be evaluating for the season,” said Rivera. “We want to be able to have some stuff to go back on on some of these young guys.”“We do have to approach it that this is any other week,” said Rivera. “You prepare to play football, you prepare to win a football game. And then you go from there.”"
In his press conference with the media, names like DJ Moore, Curtis Samuel, Chris Manhertz, and Ian Thomas came up in the conversation. Those are names that I would expect to come up. All of the players mentioned above have tremendous potential and especially guys like Thomas and Moore need to be able to continue to build on the success that they had in 2018.
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When he was given playing time, Moore excelled. Throughout the course of the season, he showed the Carolina Panthers that he was the right draft pick. Heading into the season finale, he has caught 51 passes for 797 yards and two touchdowns, averaging 13.9 yards per reception. His best game of the season came in the team’s loss to Detroit back on November 18. In that contest, he caught seven passes for 157 yards and a touchdown.
Thomas has been more of a late-bloomer, partly due to the injury to Greg Olsen. In the last couple of weeks, he has really performed well and showed the Panthers that he may be their tight end of the future. He has caught 31 passes for 272 yards and a touchdown. His best game of the season came on Sunday against the Falcons. He caught four passes for 48 yards and a touchdown showing that he could be an explosive option. Both Moore and Thomas have the skill sets to be building blocks for the Carolina Panthers future.
It will be interesting to see how the Panthers use their players in the finale. The starters should definitely play on Sunday, but this should mostly be a game for the reserves as the team needs to take a look at who may be able to be key pieces for the future.