Coach Ron Rivera blames injuries and lack of communication for poor Carolina Panthers defence last year
Carolina Panthers had one of the worst defences in the league last season and that was the main reason that even with quarterback, Cam Newton’s heroics the franchise ended up with a poor 6-10 record.
The Panthers faced big issues with injuries in defence leading to no-stop shuffling of their secondary which resulted in coordination problems.
Due to this the franchise lost most of its games even though they built up some big leads in the first half of their games.
Coach, Ron Rivera also felt that injuries were the biggest issues in defence facing the franchise and this year the secondary will improve considerably if his players remain healthy.
Speaking to the Charlotte Observer on Sunday he said.
“The biggest problem we had more so than anything on defence really was getting healthy.”
Adding further he said.
"Once the injuries started coming, we had to change the personality of how we wanted to do things and what we wanted to do.”
The Panthers could have even secured a wildcard spot in the playoffs last year if the team had managed to keep their opponents offence in check.
Rivera though believes that the return of linebacker, Jon Beason’s return to the defence will take care of any problems with communication.
Beason missed most of the 2011-12 season after a suffering a season ending injury.
“I love Dan Connor, but Dan Connor's not a communicator. And that was tough on our safeties. But now you've got Jon Beason, who communicates like you can't believe. You've got Luke Kuechly, who shows he knows how to communicate. So right through the middle of our defence we've gotten better.”
Hopefully, the Panthers defence can remain healthy this season after suffering heavily with injuries. Even after missing some of their best players the franchise played considerably well.
The team will be looking towards quarterback, Cam Newton, to continue his wonderful form once again and become even better in the upcoming season while the defence will have to make sure to curtail the opposition.
It will be interesting to see how the Panthers perform this year with some analysts even predicting them to win the National Football Conference (NFC) South division conference.
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