Panthers TE Ed Dickson’s message to Saints, rest of NFC South: We’re not going away

Carolina Panthers tight end Ed Dickson doesn’t have big plans for the bye week, saying he wants to rest and spend time with his family.

But come Sunday afternoon, Dickson figures he’ll check in on the New Orleans Saints for all or part of their game against Washington.

“It’s hard not to watch them,” Dickson said. “They’re playing really good right now.”

When the Panthers (7-3) return from their bye next week, they’ll have six games remaining – a Thanksgiving weekend matchup with the Jets followed by five games against NFC opponents.

And while anything can – and usually does – happen in the NFL, it certainly looks like Carolina and New Orleans (7-2) are on a collision course to decide the fate of the NFC South.

The Saints have reeled off seven consecutive wins, joining the 1993 Cowboys as the only teams in the Super Bowl era to win their next seven games following an 0-2 start. (Dallas won the Super Bowl that season.)

New Orleans’ win streak started with a 34-13 thrashing of the Panthers in Week 3 in Charlotte. The teams meet again in New Orleans on Dec. 3, a game that Fox flexed from 1 p.m. to a higher-profile 4:25 p.m. start.

“It’s shaping up to be a matchup down there in (their) stadium. We know they’re not going to give up the division like that. They’re the frontrunners right now,” Dickson said. “So we’ve got to maintain and hold up our half, and then we can have a showdown.”

The Week 13 game in New Orleans will hold huge playoff implications. A Saints victory would give them a sweep of the season series, which is the first playoff tiebreaker.

“You want to be able to win your division for all the good reasons – the home playoff games and stuff like that,” Panthers coach Ron Rivera said this week. “We’ve got a goal obviously, and we’ve got to take them one at a time to achieve it.”

The Panthers became the first NFC South team to win three consecutive titles from 2013-2015; no team had ever won the division two years in a row.

The Falcons ended Carolina’s run last season, but at 5-4 are suffering through some of the same post-Super Bowl blahs that affected the Panthers last year.

Meanwhile, the Saints have grabbed the division lead behind one on the NFL’s best offenses (expected) and a resurgent defense led by rookie cornerback Marshon Lattimore (not as expected).

Saints quarterback Drew Brees is in the midst of another Canton-worthy season, completing a league-leading 71.7 percent of his passes for 2,398 yards, with 13 touchdowns and four interceptions.

But it was New Orleans’ rushing attack that crushed during an impressive 47-10 win at Buffalo last weekend.

Mark Ingram and Alvin Kamara both topped 100 yards as the Saints ran for 298 yards and a franchise-record six touchdowns against the Bills.

Keeping pace

The next day the Panthers set off their own offensive fireworks in a 45-21 victory over Miami on “Monday Night Football.”

The Panthers amassed a team-record 548 yards, just missed their single-season rushing record with 294 yards and scored more points than they’d accumulated in the three previous games combined.

It begged the question: Were the Panthers inspired to one-up the Saints’ performance from the previous day?

Wide receiver Devin Funchess said that wasn’t the case.

“That’s what they’re doing,” he said. “We’ve got to worry about what we’re doing.”

Quarterback Cam Newton spearheaded the charge vs. the Dolphins, throwing for four touchdowns and rushing for 95 yards. In the process, Newton joined former Eagles great Randall Cunningham as the only quarterbacks in NFL history with two games with at least four touchdown passes and 95 yards rushing.

Newton said before the Dolphins game he wanted the offense to start matching the Panthers’ top-ranked defense. After the record-breaking effort Monday, Newton said it was a good start – but only a start.

“That’s really good. Those were great accolades, but I feel like we’re still just scratching the surface with our potential and things that we can do as a whole in this offense,” Newton said. “We still left a lot of plays out there.”

The next step

The lopsided win made for a fun night at Bank of America Stadium, where Newton was playing to the crowd with his signature first-down signals and other impromptu celebrations.

It also should make for a more enjoyable bye. After a team meeting Wednesday, players are off until Monday, when preparations for the Jets begin.

“It’s just good going into the bye week. You don’t have to mope and sulk about a loss,” Funchess said. “We got a W. So going in there having fun, come back, get ready to get another W.”

Following the Panthers’ holiday weekend trip to New York/New Jersey, the Saints await.

“We’re not going away. We know we have to take the division,” Dickson said. “We know that in order for us to get back to division champs, we’ve got to go through them.”

“We’re playing good football. They’re playing good football. That’s all I can say. If we handle our end of the bargain, we’re going to have a really good matchup in two weeks.”

This story was originally published November 15, 2017 at 4:26 PM with the headline "Panthers TE Ed Dickson’s message to Saints, rest of NFC South: We’re not going away."