I see that Mike Shula, the offensive coordinator in Carolina, says the Panthers are going to incorporate more short passing in their offense. He wants Cam Newton to take a lot more easy completions, reducing the number of hits he takes by getting the ball out of is hands. Shula points out that Tom Brady takes a lot of short completions to backs like James White and Dion Lewis.
That was the reasoning behind Carolina selecting Christian McCaffrey, who seems to be really good as a pass catcher. They also selected Curtis Samuel, who’ll play in the slot for them.
Sounds reasonable enough. I’m just not sure Newton will be effective on short passes anytime soon. Accuracy, timing and decision making, I think, aren’t his strengths. He rifles a lot of fast balls over his receivers heads. A few years back, Carolina was selecting big receivers (Kelvin Benjamin, Devin Funchess) because they wanted players with larger catch radiuses. With a lot of those shorter routes, the timing has to be right – throw them too early or too late, and the play gets blown up.
The Panthers have to get all this figured out with Newton being on the shelf until training camp after undergoing surgery on his shoulder.
Playing with a different mentality, Carolina in each of the last two years has completed fewer passes to running backs than any other team.
| TEAM RUNNING BACK RECEPTIONS (2015-16) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Team | No | Yards | Avg | TD |
| New Orleans | 254 | 1,948 | 7.7 | 13 |
| Baltimore | 245 | 1,604 | 6.5 | 8 |
| Detroit | 224 | 1,915 | 8.5 | 11 |
| San Diego | 208 | 1,840 | 8.8 | 9 |
| Philadelphia | 208 | 1,532 | 7.4 | 6 |
| New England | 193 | 1,761 | 9.1 | 14 |
| Oakland | 191 | 1,609 | 8.4 | 8 |
| Atlanta | 190 | 1,721 | 9.1 | 11 |
| Cleveland | 190 | 1,644 | 8.7 | 3 |
| NY Jets | 185 | 1,402 | 7.6 | 6 |
| NY Giants | 175 | 1,451 | 8.3 | 6 |
| Pittsburgh | 166 | 1,307 | 7.9 | 4 |
| Minnesota | 158 | 1,191 | 7.5 | 4 |
| Tampa Bay | 155 | 1,410 | 9.1 | 6 |
| San Francisco | 154 | 1,245 | 8.1 | 6 |
| Arizona | 153 | 1,653 | 10.8 | 8 |
| Cincinnati | 151 | 1,300 | 8.6 | 3 |
| Green Bay | 150 | 1,225 | 8.2 | 8 |
| Washington | 149 | 1,207 | 8.1 | 6 |
| Houston | 148 | 1,032 | 7.0 | 6 |
| Miami | 147 | 1,231 | 8.4 | 6 |
| Indianapolis | 146 | 1,058 | 7.2 | 9 |
| Jacksonville | 143 | 1,045 | 7.3 | 3 |
| Tennessee | 139 | 1,143 | 8.2 | 6 |
| Dallas | 137 | 1,194 | 8.7 | 1 |
| Seattle | 133 | 1,059 | 8.0 | 6 |
| Buffalo | 132 | 1,040 | 7.9 | 6 |
| Los Angeles | 129 | 992 | 7.7 | 0 |
| Chicago | 125 | 1,206 | 9.6 | 6 |
| Kansas City | 123 | 1,135 | 9.2 | 6 |
| Denver | 116 | 891 | 7.7 | 3 |
| Carolina | 95 | 744 | 7.8 | 5 |
Best I can offer on behalf of McCaffrey is that if you go back to Newton’s rookie year, when they were passing more, Jonathan Stewart caught 47 passes. And McCaffrey seems to be a far better pass catcher than Stewart.
But no other running backs in the Cam Newton Era have caught more than 27 passes in a season.
I am not, therefore, optimistic that McCaffrey will step in and catch 60 balls. I’m putting him down for about 20 receiving yards per game. At 8 yards per catch, that would be about 40 receptions.
| CAROLINA'S LEADING RECEIVERS (RBs) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Player | No | Yards | Avg | TD |
| 2011 | Jonathan Stewart | 47 | 413 | 8.8 | 1 |
| 2012 | Mike Tolbert | 27 | 268 | 9.9 | 0 |
| 2013 | Mike Tolbert | 27 | 184 | 6.8 | 2 |
| 2014 | Jonathan Stewart | 25 | 181 | 7.2 | 1 |
| 2015 | Mike Tolbert | 18 | 154 | 8.6 | 3 |
| 2016 | Fozzy Whittaker | 25 | 226 | 9.0 | 0 |
—Ian Allan