Jaguars vs. Panthers: Full highlights and recap

It wasn’t the most exciting game heading into Sunday, and it ended up being exactly what we expected. The Jaguars and Panthers are not teams that light you on fire when you think of them, and they were slow to roll out of the gate in Week 1.

Eventually, because they’re not the Jaguars, the Panthers were able to get the upper hand and pull away from Jacksonville to get a huge win to start the season. It’s not a huge win in that it’s was hard fought or well earned, it’s because any win in the NFC South gets you one win closer to clinching the league’s worst division halfway through the year.

The biggest reason this game was relevant was because Luke Kuechly left the game after a scary head injury that was eventually diagnosed to have given the linebacker a concussion. This came on the heels of a fresh extension he signed with the Panthers, but the injury wasn’t as serious as it originally looked.

As for the Jaguars, it was exactly what you expected out of them. Blake Bortles was average, but his mistakes late in the game swung the momentum all the way towards the Panthers and allowed them to seal things up with relative ease.

Highlights

What’s a Jaguars game without a pick-six by Blake Bortles?

Three Stars

1. Cam Newton

It wasn’t  pretty game for Newton, who threw for less than 200 yards and tossed a pick, but he managed the game and didn’t mess things up. That’s really all the Panthers could hope for in this game, as the Jaguars aren’t a hard team to beat unless you help them by beating yourself — something that Newton has done in the past.

2. Josh Norman

The real game changer was when Norman picked off a suspect Blake Bortles pass and housed it when it was, at the time, a 10-9 game. Jacksonville failed to score again the rest of the game, while Norman’s pick-sick was one that officially and completely swung the momentum in the favor of the Panthers.

3. Jonathan Stewart

While there wasn’t a whole lot to be excited about on offense for the Panthers, Jonathan Stewart at least looked like someone who might be capable of filling in the hole left by the absence of Kelvin Benjamin. He only rushed fir just over 50 yards but he was an effective pass catching option for the Panthers — who have seldom had any of those to deal with over the last year and can never get enough of.

Odds

Carolina was favored by 3 points and easily covered the spread by winning 20-9.

Next Week

The Panthers will host the Houston Texans (0-1) while the Jaguars will stay in Jacksonville to host the Miami Dolphins (1-0)