Sam Darnold may have escaped the AFC East but he seemingly cannot escape his arch-nemesis, the New England Patriots.
The former first-round draft pick, who was traded from New York to Carolina this offseason, completed just 16 of 33 pass attempts for 172 yards as well as three interceptions.
Obviously, though, the 2021 Panthers are not the same team as the Jets of the last three years.
“I can say the last two times that we’ve played, as far as the game plan, I feel like we executed it from the front tier, to the second tier, to the back end.
As Hightower pointed out, all three levels of New England’s defense performed at a high level.
The Panthers’ first third down of the game saw New England use seven players either on or very close to the line of scrimmage, disguising its pass rush intentions.
The goal was simple: force Darnold to quickly diagnose and process what is happening in front of him, and to make the right decision based on the defense he is facing.
Carolina approached the play with a 3×1 set with 11-personnel — one running back, one tight end, three wide receivers — on the field.
New England actually had some good coverage, but a quick strike to Moore between the two safeties might have been enough to move the sticks and keep the drive alive.
It fell incomplete, but the play was already a sign of things to come: he had three passes tipped at the line of scrimmage, with a fourth ending up as an athletic interception by Patriots linebacker Jamie Collins.
Coming out of halftime down 14-6, the Panthers were in dire need of some offensive momentum.
Just like on the previous play, New England had seven players aligned on the line of scrimmage to make it difficult to see who would attack the pocket and who would drop out.
Once again, the pass rush and coverage were working hand-in-hand.
This decision nearly resulted in a sack when Uche came free through the front-side A-gap, but Darnold was able to escape the pressure.
Regardless of whether or not he was actually tying to connect with one of his teammates — wide receiver Willie Snead were in the vicinity — or simply throwing the ball away, the play was more of the same for Darnold and the Panthers offense.
The biggest defensive play of the game for the Patriots started with a relatively straight-forward look out of the defense.
Carolina, meanwhile, countered with its standard 11-personnel grouping running a bootleg play-action concept: the offensive line and running back would move to one side, with the quarterback faking the hand-off and moving to the other.
Originally aligning as the strong-side 5-technique, Barmore quickly recognized the fake hand-off and went after the quarterback rollout.
Making matters worse for Darnold was linebacker Matthew Judon before charging forward towards the QB.
While the decision was fine, the play itself turned into a disaster for one simple reason: Darnold failed to hit his intended target, instead overshooting Thomas and firing right into the waiting arms of J.C.