Film room: How Dalton shredded Raiders’ secondary

Panthers’ quarterback threw for nearly 320 yards and three touchdowns in Las Vegas

Heading into the Week 3 matchup against the Las Vegas Raiders, the Carolina Panthers ranked second-to-last in the NFL with 102.0 passing yards per game or 204 total yards during the first two contests.

However, a quarterback change seems to have solved the Panthers’ issues as Andy Dalton completed 26 of 37 passes for 319 yards and three touchdowns on Sunday in Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, the Raiders secondary had been strong during the team’s first two contests of the year, ranking 10th with just 140.0 passing yards allowed per outing to make Carolina’s performance even more perplexing.

Granted, Dalton does have the Silver and Black’s number as he’s now 4-0 against the club as a starter. But, specifically looking at this past matchup, what happened? How did Las Vegas’ defense get picked apart by the veteran quarterback?

Let’s flip on the tape and find out.

To give Panthers’ head coach and offensive play-caller Dave Canales credit, he had a really good game plan and got the best of Patrick Graham on Sunday and this first clip is a good example.

With the ball on the far hash, Carolina uses spacing to its advantage by having two wide receivers line up outside the numbers and keeping the tight end attached to the formation. So, with Las Vegas running a fire zone, Tre’von Moehrig (the safety at the bottom of the screen) has to play wider than normal since he’s supposed to read the receiver first and then work back to the tight end.

Post-snap, Moehrig sees the outside receiver run a smoke screen and the slot receiver run a go route which makes the slot receiver Nate Hobbs’ man since the slot is the deep threat on the outside. Then, when Moehrig realizes he has to pick up the tight end running the seam route, the safety has too much ground to cover latterly to get to the tight end in time and have a chance at preventing the completion.

Also, the Panthers keep the running back in the backfield for a six-man protection to pick up the Raiders’ blitz and none of the pass rushers win. That gives Dalton plenty of time and a clean pocket to deliver a nice ball over Robert Spillane’s head for the first down.

That being said, something that can help Las Vegas on this play is if Spillane uses his hands and forces a re-route on the tight end. Then, Moehrig would have more time to get to the spot and maybe one of the pass-rushers could break through to at least get some pressure on Dalton.

Canales has another good play call here as he catches Graham in Cover 3 where Jakorian Bennett has to defend a backside dig route. That’s a tough assignment for the corner because his primary responsibility is not getting beat deep since he has no safety help. So, Bennett needs to get some support from the underneath defender to tighten the throwing window.

The problem is Marcus Epps rolls down into the hook-to-curl area and once Adam Thielen/the slot receiver passes him, Epps takes the cheese by stepping downhill against the checkdown route from the running back out of the backfield. Once Dalton sees that, he lets it rip to the dig route and it’s a fairly easy third-and-long pickup.

So, this is a good play call for Las Vegas’ coverage, but Epps has to do a better job of staying deep in his zone to help take the dig route away or at least make this a tougher throw. Especially in this situation, the defense wants the quarterback to throw the check down so they can rally and tackle to prevent the conversion.

This rep was pretty frustrating from the Raiders’ perspective and it wouldn’t surprise me if this is one that led to Antonio Pierce saying players made “business decisions” during his post-game press conference.

The Raiders show a double A-gap look pre-snap but they’re just running Cover 1 where the linebackers drop in coverage even if the running back stays in the backfield for pass protection. When Spillane drops, he needs to look to his left to see if a receiver is coming into his area on a crossing route, especially with Moehrig playing off coverage.

However, Spillane’s eyes are locked in the backfield and he doesn’t see Xavier Legette running a hook route between the two linebackers despite bumping into Legette. It looks like Spillane is surprised by the throw as he doesn’t even attempt to make a play on the ball.

On top of that, Moehrig just stops mid-play instead of driving on Leggette and at least being in a position to make the tackle right after the catch. Instead, the receiver tacks on about 25 more yards.

The lack of awareness and effort has to be maddening for the coaching staff.

To be honest, this is more of a great play by Dalton than anything else.

The Raiders are playing Cover 1 again where Jack Jones is in man coverage against Diontae Johnson, who runs a drag route and gets a step on Jones. Meanwhile, Tyree Wilson wins around the edge to get some pressure, so Dalton takes a couple of steps to buy some time while staring down Epps to keep the safety in the middle of the field.

Before Wilson can get the sack, Dalton makes a perfect off-platform throw while taking a hit to put the ball over Jones and Moehrig—who does a good job helping in coverage—and drops it right in the bucket for a touchdown.

Sure, maybe Jones can have tighter coverage but there isn’t much the defense can do against an outstanding throw like this.

Las Vegas switched the call up here a bit by running Two-Man (a.k.a. Cover 5) instead of Cover 1 and the Panthers still had a great play call for that.

The biggest difference between Two-Man and Cover 1 is the linebacker is in man coverage with the running back instead of being the low-hole player and reading the quarterback’s eyes. Also, the safeties stay deep and work wide instead of having one playing deep. Those two differences leave the middle of the field wide open.

So, when Nate Hobbs gets beat off the line by Johnson on the slant route, Johnson has plenty of room to run. To make matters worse, Epps misses his seventh tackle of the year (per Pro Football Focus) giving Johnson even more yards after the catch. On top of that, neither Jakorian Bennett nor Moehrig were particularly aggressive in making a tackle.

The end result is a short pass that leads to a huge gain.

We’ll end with another good play call from Canales where he attacks the Raiders’ coverage rules in Cover 4.

Against an empty formation, Las Vegas can’t have Moehrig (the safety at the top of the screen) cheat toward the three-receiver side and help on the seam route from the inside slot receiver. The reason is the Panthers have two threats to run deep routes at the top of the screen while the Raiders only have two deep defenders on that side.

So, Epps (the other safety) has to stay near the hash mark to take away the seam route since Moehrig won’t be able to help him. Meanwhile, Jones is reading the furthest outside receiver (#1) to the next inside receiver (#2 or Thielen in this instance). When #1 runs the short out route, Jones takes his eyes to #2/Thielen which is part of the reason why he’s late to pick up Thielen on the deep route.

Now, Jones can help himself out by backpedaling or working for more depth while he’s reading the outside receiver as he gets a little lazy with his technique, in my opinion. That would make it easier for Jones to keep Thielen in front of him instead of giving Dalton room over the top to throw a nice ball and complete this pass for a touchdown.

At the end of the day, the Raiders got beat by good play-calling, a lack of effort and a quarterback who was on top of his game and wasn’t missing many of his opportunities.