First, let me say that leading the league in scoring is an amazing feat. I am not trying to diminish that accomplishment in any way by writing this. The Carolina Panthers scored 500 points this year - 145 more than the Denver Broncos (9.1 more points per game).
The real measure of any offense (or defense) is points. Can you score them on a regular basis? Can your defense stop the opponent from scoring on a regular basis?
The Panthers defense was directly responsible for four touchdowns and indirectly responsible for many more (by forcing turnovers and giving their offense short fields). They had 85 scoring drives and 24 of them started in their opponent's territory - 15 of those 24 were touchdown drives.
The Panthers offense scored 55 touchdowns. The Broncos offense scored 30 touchdowns, but as you will see below, the Panthers offense faced some extremely weak defenses.
A look at who they played
Here's a listing of the 16 regular season opponents and where they ranked in terms of scoring defense (points allowed)
Carolina Opponent | Points Allowed Rank |
SEA | 1 |
HOU | 7 |
GB | 12 |
ATL | 14 |
ATL | 14 |
DAL | 16 |
WAS | 17 |
IND | 25 |
TB | 26 |
TB | 26 |
TEN | 27 |
PHI | 28 |
NYG | 30 |
JAX | 31 |
NO | 32 |
NO | 32 |
The Panthers played against two top 10 defenses (SEA and HOU), four middle-of-the-pack defenses (GB, ATL, DAL and WAS) and seven horrible defenses. Nine of the Panthers sixteen regular season games were against the worst of the worst in terms of scoring defense.
Before you try and argue that these defenses were only ranked so because they played the Panthers, you should stop yourself. That argument doesn't work. The Bucs, Titans, Eagles, Giants, Jaguars and Saints were ranked this lowly because they allowed almost EVERYONE to score a bunch of points on them not just the Panthers.
The average rank of the scoring defenses that the Panthers faced in the regular season was 21.1.
Taking a closer look we see that in their matchups with the Seahawks and Texans they scored 27 and 24 points respectively. The Seahawks allowed only 17.3 points per game this year to lead the league so putting up 27 on them in Seattle is a good game.
That being said, the Panthers played the Seahawks in week 6. The Seahawks defense was getting gashed early in the year (four of their first six opponents scored 27 or more points) and the Texans defense (partly because of their inept offense) gave up 48 to the Falcons and 44 to the Dolphins early in the year before they found their groove.
Comparative analysis
Let's turn the lens on the Broncos and look at the rankings of the defenses they faced this year in the regular season.
Denver Opponent | Points Allowed Rank |
CIN | 2 |
KC | 3 |
KC | 3 |
MIN | 5 |
NE | 10 |
PIT | 11 |
GB | 12 |
CHI | 20 |
SD | 21 |
SD | 21 |
OAK | 22 |
OAK | 22 |
DET | 23 |
BAL | 24 |
IND | 25 |
CLE | 29 |
The average here is 15.8. Five of our regular season games were against top 10 scoring defenses. Only two of our sixteen regular season games were against bottom quartile scoring defenses (ranked 25th or worse) - although the Lions, Raisins and Faiders were close.
I'm going to take the glass houses approach here and point out that we needed overtime to beat the Browns (the worst defense we faced). We lost to the immature horses and our offense did not score a touchdown against the Raisins. So please don't take this as a statement that our offense is great and theirs is not. I'd love to have the running game that they have (4th in rushing yards, 7th in ypc).
Conclusion
The Panthers offense only faced two elite defenses during the regular season and they faced them both when they were "weakened." Their offense is good - they had 26 touchdown drives of 75 yards or more this regular season. Their offense did score 24 in their playoff rematch against the Seahawks, but they were held to 295 total yards by the Seahawks in that game (221 of that came in the first half). I like the match-up of our defense against their offense particularly with Wade Phillips having two weeks to prepare a game plan.