Analysis: What Teddy Bridgewater’s performance tells us about his future with Panthers
How has Teddy Bridgewater played in the second half of the 2020 season?
The Carolina Panthers quarterback has played well at times. His and the offense’s late-game woes have been the focus of much attention, but it’s far from the only problem area. The 3-8 record in close games also doesn’t just fall on him, though he shares the responsibility.
The Panthers will go into the offseason and evaluate the quarterback position.
“It’s a question of who can be that guy that can help you win,” Panthers owner David Tepper said last week. “That’s the most important position on the field. And to say that unless you have that guy for sure that gets you to playoffs and Super Bowls, you have to keep re-evaluating that, because that’s the only thing that matters is Super Bowls. And until you have that guy, you’re evaluating, evaluating, evaluating every year.”
That evaluation has already begun with the team expressing initial interest in former Washington Football Team first-round pick Dwayne Haskins. Nothing is imminent on that front, per a person with direct knowledge of the situation, but it does confirm what Tepper said. The team will be seriously evaluating every aspect of the position, both inside and outside the building. That includes Bridgewater.
When Carolina evaluates, what will they see? The eight end-of-game drives that failed to win the game or tie the score? Sure.
As Bridgewater prepares for a second game against his former team this weekend, it’s worth looking back to his first game against the New Orleans Saints. In what was his best outing of the season, he completed 23-of-28 passes (82.1%) for 254 yards and two touchdowns. The only sack he took was on a third down near the end of the game that left kicker Joey Slye with an almost impossible field-goal attempt. A bad decision, but not all on him.
Since then, Bridgewater has played in seven games, as he missed the win over the Detroit Lions with a knee injury. His numbers have declined in the seven games after that solid performance in New Orleans. In the Thursday game against the Atlanta Falcons that followed, Bridgewater — and the entire team — had a rough outing. He also hurt his neck at the end of the game.
| Weeks 1-7 | Weeks 8-15* | |
| Cmp/Att | 169/234 | 158/235 |
| Cmp pct. | 72.2% | 67.2% |
| Yds/Att | 8.3 | 6.9 |
| TD-INT | 8-5 | 7-4 |
| Sacks | 13 | 17 |
| Rush TD | 1 | 4 |
*Bridgewater missed one game due to injury and the Panthers had a bye.
More recently, Bridgewater has been having his worst stretch of the season. In the last five games, he has completed 65.6% of his passes, thrown four touchdowns to three interceptions and been sacked 12 times. He also lost two of his three fumbles this season, all in the last two games. There’s no dramatic drop-off, but there has been a difference.
A variety of factors are involved, including opponents picking up on offensive coordinator Joe Brady’s scheme. Key players have missed games — left tackle Russell Okung has been in and out of the lineup.
Five of the failed offensive drives at the end of games have come in the last seven games — compared with three in the first half of Bridgewater’s season. Bridgewater, in part because of the Panthers’ bye week, went almost a month between passing touchdowns when he had none in back-to-back losses to the Denver Broncos and Green Bay Packers.
After the Broncos game, Brady said he and Bridgewater focused on making sure all of the QB’s fundamentals were sound, something the coordinator said looked better in the loss to the Packers.
“You lose sight on just watching the fundamentals and the footwork and your lower-body mechanics and those things. That’s something that we all have to just stay on top of on a consistent basis,” Brady said. “Obviously, Week 14, you sit there and say hey, ‘It shouldn’t have even got to this point,’ but it’s just something that, just throughout the game, just continue to remind ourselves of.”
Bridgewater’s performance has been more down than up as the season progressed, but the same could be said for the offense as a whole. That falls on the coaching staff, too. He has still put together some solid drives, has been accurate and is actually putting up a career-best season statistically. Being able to move around with his legs in 2020 has been an unexpected positive.
Among the larger offensive issues has been an decrease in productivity on third down. From Weeks 1-7, the Panthers converted 46.9% of third-down attempts. Since then, the offense has been successful on third down 35.2% of the time.
“I think Teddy’s done a really nice job of extending drives by running the football, but I’d like to see excellence from all of us in third down,” head coach Matt Rhule said when asked what he’d like to see from the offense this week. “I think when the opportunity is there to push the ball down the field. ... I think, our receivers, they have to go up and get it.”
While improving on third downs is a focus, Bridgewater acknowledged that it would be rewarding if the team can finally put together one of those game-winning drives to end the season on the right note.
“To go down there and put together a game-winning drive, I think, for one we owe it to ourselves. We’ve worked extremely hard this year, and we want to show that we can execute in those situations,” Bridgewater said. “I think it would be good just moving forward into the offseason, being able to just learn from the different experiences that we’ve had this year and what better way (than) to put one together this week.”
Bridgewater’s three-year contract has always set him up to be around Carolina for another season. The wins and losses the Panthers will use to measure him, as Tepper said, are only part of the judgment on a starting quarterback. There are pieces this offense needs — like a pass-catching tight end and Christian McCaffrey’s presence — but improvement over the second half of the season, similar to what is happening on the defensive side of the ball, isn’t there quite as much.
Keep in mind:
▪ The Panthers already have two 1,000-yard receivers this season: DJ Moore and Robby Anderson. Mike Davis also now has 1,000 scrimmage yards and Curtis Samuel is 70 yards away from joining him. In the Super Bowl era (since 1970), only four teams have had four players with 1,000-plus scrimmage yards in a season (2004 Indianapolis Colts, 1995 Falcons, 1990 Houston Oilers, 1989 Washington Football Team).
▪ In fourth quarters this season, Bridgewater has the lowest touchdown percentage on throws of any quarterback who has averaged at least 3.1 fourth-quarter throws per team game (38 quarterbacks). He averages a touchdown on 0.8% of throws.
▪ Seven of his interceptions have come when under pressure this season, tied for the second-most in the NFL.
▪ Bridgewater is set to finish the season with a career-high in completion percentage (69.7), yards per attempt (7.6) and yards per game (254.1). This would be the only season of his career where he has played in six-plus games and not had a game-winning drive or fourth-quarter comeback (played at least six in 2014, 2015, 2019 — six combined drives and five comebacks).
This story was originally published December 30, 2020 at 7:00 AM.
