For the first time in three years, the Carolina Panthers beat a team with a winning record on Sunday -- and not any winning record, but the best record in the NFC.
Rookie Ryan Fitzgerald kicked a 49-yard field goal on the final play to lift the Panthers to a 16-13 victory over the Green Bay Packers, who entered the game with a 5-1-1 mark.
Carolina won as quarterback Bryce Young returned to the lineup. Young missed last week’s 40-9 loss to the Buffalo Bills because of an ankle injury. But the Panthers have won four in a row with the former Alabama All-American quarterback on the field.
Carolina got the winning points on Sunday after taking possession at its 29-yard line with the score tied with 2:32 remaining.
“As an offense, we always want to be ready,” Young said. “We always want to be prepared. That’s a really good team on the other side, so our defense, I mean, balled the entire game. But we knew at some point we’re going to have to go win it. We at least just want to be prepared for that, so confidence never wavered as a group, as a unit.
“Those two-minute opportunities, again, that’s why you play football. Everyone’s in the backyard when you’re a kid, wishing you’re in a historic stadium like this, getting a chance to go win the game. And we get to live out those dreams, so it’s a blessing.”
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Young had completions on successive second-down snaps to get the final drive moving to the 50-yard line before running back Rico Dowdle sliced through the line for a 19-yard gain.
Dowdle had 130 yards and two touchdowns on 25 rushing attempts, including two plunges into the line for no gain after his clutch carry had moved the Panthers to the Packers 31-yard line.
Fitzgerald came on to try a tiebreaking field goal with one second to play. After Dowdle scored on a 1-yard run to give Carolina a 13-6 lead with 2:12 left in the third quarter, the running back had gotten an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty. That left Fitzgerald facing a 48-yard extra-point kick, and it came up short.
Green Bay tied the game with a 12-play, 71-yard drive capped by former Alabama running back Josh Jacobs’ 1-yard touchdown plunge and the extra point with 2:32 left to play.
Fitzgerald’s game-winning field goal was 1 yard longer than his missed extra point. But there was bigger difference: On a windy day at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Fitzgerald tried the extra point into the wind; he kicked the winning field goal with the wind at his back, making a strategy employed at the opening coin toss pay off.
“I got to give a lot of props to (special-teams coordinator) Tracy Smith,” Carolina coach Dave Canales said. “He and I were talking before the game, and he was like, ‘If we take the ball, we can set ourselves up to have the ball with the wind to our backs to finish the game to give us an opportunity.’ And it played out just like that. It was unbelievable, but it took all of us doing right to make it happen. So it was a little bit of a change from what we normally do. We’d normally defer in that situation, but the wind was a factor in that decision.”
The Panthers posted their first victory against a team that entered the game with a winning record since a 30-24 win over the Seattle Seahawks on Dec. 11, 2022. The Seahawks had a 7-5 record before the loss to Carolina.
The Panthers won seven games in the intervening two seasons combined, but Carolina will play the New Orleans Saints in an NFC South game on Nov. 9 with a 5-4 record in the 2025 NFL season.
Asked if he thought the victory could be a breakthrough for the Panthers, Young said: “I guess we’ll have to see.”
“We can only take it week-by-week in this league,” Young said. “… We’re enjoying it, but after that, we have to come back and turn our focus on the next week. We can only control what we control. When you look too far ahead, it can be harder to focus on what’s in front of us, so, again, it’s great right now. When we come back and watch the tape, it’ll be all about next week.”
Young completed 11-of-20 passes for 102 yards with no touchdowns and one interception against Green Bay. He was sacked once and ran twice for 9 yards.
Young had his fewest completions, passes and passing yards this season. But Canales liked the way Young operated against the Green Bay defense.
“I think the best part of it was he functioned so well and he anticipated, he operated quickly,” Canales said. “This is a group that we really respect defensively speaking with their pass rush and the challenges that we knew they were going to present to us, and Bryce did a magnificent job of getting the ball out in rhythm. You get one hitch and that ball better come out. But it was good to see him move around, pick up a couple of first downs with his legs as well. And that’s just a tribute to him being aggressive, knowing when to hold, knowing when I got to go, and being decisive really, really helped us there.”
Former Alabama safety Xavier McKinney spoiled the Panthers’ first scoring chance by intercepting Young in the end zone with 12:55 left in the second quarter. That wrecked a 15-play, 70-yard series that included Young’s 4-yard run on fourth-and-1 at the Carolina 41-yard line.
Dowdle reached the end zone from 5 yards out on the Panthers’ next possession for a 7-3 lead with 2:22 left in the first half. The 10-play, 76-yard drive featured a 29-yard run by Dowdle on the first snap and a 22-yard Young-to-Xavier Legette completion to the Green Bay 20-yard line.
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