Panthers-Packers Q&A: Exploiting Carolina’s weaknesses on offense and defense

On Sunday, the Green Bay Packers return to Lambeau Field to take on the Carolina Panthers. Walker Clement of Cat Scratch Reader kindly volunteered to answer our questions about the Panthers and provide some insight into their strengths and weaknesses.

APC: If you were game-planning against the Panthers, how would you attack them on offense? On defense?

On offense, you follow the Bucs plan from Week 2. You blitz the living daylights out of them to try to keep contain on McCaffrey in the passing game. If he needs to stay in to block then he can’t hurt you leaking out of the backfield. Past that, play stout run defense, and let Allen (or an injured Newton, as the Bucs were lucky enough to face) make his own mistakes under pressure.

On defense, good luck. This is one of the most talented teams the Panthers have fielded on that side of the ball. They are finally matching an actually skilled secondary with a delightfully fast pass rush. Stack both of those units on either side of Luke Kuechly and you have one hell of a problem. Of course, the 49ers solved that problem to the tune of 51 points. They did so with a ton of misdirection plays that they hadn’t shown on film yet. Basically, they were fast enough to neutralize our pass rush while forcing Kuechly to take enough wrong steps to take him out of most plays.

We’d like to thank Walker. Be sure to check out the rest of our Q&A session with Cat Scratch Reader over the course of the week as well as our Q&A session over there. As always, keep your internet machines tuned to Acme Packing Company this Sunday for our comprehensive game-day coverage of Panthers versus Packers.