No question Panthers QB PJ Walker must start after performance in big win against Bucs
In one of the more startling wins in Carolina history Sunday, the Panthers looked like they had finally found a starting quarterback.
It was only one game, and it all could deteriorate again quickly. But quarterback PJ Walker gave Carolina better QB play than Baker Mayfield has all season — and better than Sam Darnold did almost all of last year — in the Panthers’ stunning 21-3 win against Tampa Bay.
Walker was Carolina’s fourth-string quarterback in training camp. But now he absolutely has to be the starter, and I don’t care who gets healthy. You’ve got to roll with PJ.
Walker’s touchdown throw on a corner route to tight end Tommy Tremble was a 29-yard thing of beauty and sealed the game in the fourth quarter before a stunned Bank of America crowd, but he was good all day. He never made the big mistake, he completed 16 of 22 passes for 177 yards and two TDs and he moved his team more effectively than Tom Brady did.
“It was about beating the Bucs, not Tom,” Walker said afterward, all smiles and after receiving a game ball for his performance. The Panthers had been a 13-point underdog and yet won by 18.
Where has this been all year? That’s the question for the Panthers, who are now 2-5 and amazingly not at all out of it in the NFC South. That division doesn’t have a single team with a winning record and is led by Tampa Bay (3-4) and Atlanta (3-4).
Carolina once won a division title with a 7-8-1 record in 2014; it’s conceivable that someone is going to win the NFC South going something like 8-9 this year. The Panthers, still losers of 12 of their past 14 games, are an actual playoff contender at the moment, as strange as that sounds.
All this came after a week in which Carolina traded its best offensive player in Christian McCaffrey — “it was a heartbreak for all of us,” Walker said — and its fastest wide receiver in Robbie Anderson. Somehow, all this addition by subtraction worked, at least in the short term, as Carolina ran for 173 yards (118 by D’Onta Foreman) and dominated the Bucs.
It was a weird day in the NFL. Brady, 45, looked every bit his age and was outplayed by Walker. In another game, former Panthers quarterback Taylor Heinicke outplayed Aaron Rodgers as Washington upset Green Bay.
What wasn’t happening in Charlotte on Sunday was tanking, and interim head coach Steve Wilks made sure to make that point in his opening statement.
“That definitely wasn’t a team out there today that was trying to tank it,” Wilks said. “These guys right here have come together.”
As for whether Walker will start next Sunday in a suddenly critical NFC South game at Atlanta, Wilks said: “PJ had an outstanding performance. When you look at what he did today — still gotta evaluate the tape — it’s going to be hard to try to pull him out.”
Brady’s reaction to no TDs
Walker gave a politically correct “it’s not my call” about the starting question. But you can’t skip out on the hot hand here if you’re the Panthers. Carolina made the mistake of doing that last year, when Cam Newton made the headlines but Walker really did more to win the game in Carolina’s 34-10 win against Arizona in November 2021.
Matt Rhule started Newton the next week, and that was an error. He should have stuck with Walker, who had gone 22-for-29 in that Arizona game. Newton would end up going 0-5 as a starter at the end of 2021, as a 5-5 team morphed into a 5-12 one.
Quarterback play has been Carolina’s bugaboo ever since Newton got hurt halfway through the 2018 season. But in a period where nearly every Panther QB has lost and lost and lost, Walker is actually 3-1 as a starter in Carolina. It’s a small sample size, sure, and of course Carolina can improve on the position in 2023 by devoting a No. 1 draft pick to the right guy.
But for now, this looks like Walker’s team. Players play hard for him. He’s popular in the locker room.
“I mean, he’s a dog,” offensive tackle Cam Erving said. “Every day in practice, whether he’s on the scout team or taking reps with the ones (the starters), he tries to attack and play ball the way he plays ball.... He has the arm to make any throw out there on the field.”
As for Brady, he was flummoxed by the Panther defense. Brady is now 7-4 in his career against Carolina. In the last six games he has played against Carolina, his teams’ point totals have gone like this: 30, 31, 46, 32, 41 and, on Sunday, three.
“No one feels good about where we’re at,” Brady said. “No one feels good about how we played or what we’re doing.”
Everybody felt good in the Panther locker room, where music was blaring and players were celebrating. “I don’t think it’s ever been quite like this,” said Panther defensive end Brian Burns, who is a trade target and isn’t guaranteed to be here by the Atlanta game, either. “You would have thought we won the Super Bowl.”
11 straight completions for Walker
Walker was truly the No. 4 quarterback in training camp, hardly getting any reps at all, and the plan was for Carolina to put him back on the practice squad had he cleared waivers.
In that scenario, Carolina would have kept Mayfield, Darnold and rookie Matt Corral. Instead, all three of them got hurt, and the position temporarily became Walker’s by default.
Last week, hampered by an absolutely embarrassing game plan written by offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo and ordered by Wilks, Walker never got to throw the ball further than five yards downfield and ended up with only 60 yards passing on 16 throws. It was all about runs and safe screens and trying to make sure Walker didn’t lose the game, which Carolina did anyway, 24-10, with the only Carolina TD coming on a defensive touchdown.
This time the Panthers opened it up, starting with their first play, which would have been a 38-yard completion to Terrace Marshall Jr. had Marshall caught the ball. After that, Walker completed 11 in a row.
“I can be trusted with the football in my hand,” Walker said afterward. And: “I can make every throw. But every throw doesn’t have to be made.”
And while Walker wasn’t exactly taking deep shots on every play, he threw enough of them to keep Tampa Bay honest.
Carolina’s defense played so well that all the Panthers needed in this game was somewhat adequate QB play. Walker was better than that, though. His previous problem with throwing bad interceptions was nowhere in evidence.
As long as Walker is playing like that, the Panthers can’t worry about hurt feelings among their higher-paid QBs. They have to play PJ.
This story was originally published October 23, 2022 at 5:31 PM with the headline "No question Panthers QB PJ Walker must start after performance in big win against Bucs."
