With or without running back Christian McCaffrey, the Carolina Panthers routinely come up short on the final drive to end games.
It was no different Sunday at Kansas City.
For the fourth straight week, the Panthers had a chance to either win or send the game into overtime, and for the fourth straight week, Carolina couldn’t do it, losing this time 33-31 to the Chiefs.
Carolina was unable to put itself into realistic field goal position at the end, and instead of opting for a Hail Mary, head coach Matt Rhule chose to try a 67-yard field goal attempt by Joey Slye, which ultimately sailed wide right.
The Panthers have lost four straight to drop to 3-6.
"We had every opportunity to win the football game and we did not," Rhule said. "Coaches, players, staff - not any one person, all of us - did not make the plays to win the game. We came here to win, we didn’t get it done and so we’ll head back to Charlotte and continue to work on getting ready for next week."
The big news going into the game was the return of star McCaffrey, who’d missed the last six weeks with a high ankle sprain.
McCaffrey looked like he normally does, scoring two touchdowns and gave much-needed help to Carolina in the red zone, where it scored three touchdowns in three attempts, after entering ranked 26th in that area.
Without McCaffrey, the Panthers only scored touchdowns roughly 50% of the time when inside the 20.
“He’s a great player and great players show up in crucial areas at crucial times – third down, red zone, two minute, all those things,” Rhule said. “He showed up in those areas today. … But our ability to run the football results in way more red zone touchdowns and he did a good job.”
But 11 penalties, giving up big plays on defense, and going 6-for-14 on third down put the Panthers in a position to have to fight back after giving up an early 14-3 lead.
"A game like today, it pisses you off, especially when you play a team as good as the Chiefs are,” quarterback Teddy Bridgewater said. “That’s a great football team and we don't want it to be a common theme of being right there."
The story felt all too familiar in the fourth quarter with the Panthers having to keep it close and fight back to win. However, this time, they had McCaffrey back as a weapon.
With 1:55 remaining, McCaffrey scored his second touchdown from a yard out to trim the lead to two. Carolina forced the Chiefs (8-1) to go three-and-out and give the Panthers one more shot at winning.
Carolina started its final drive from its own 9 with 1:26 remaining and no timeouts.
Clock management was an issue as players had hard times getting out of bounds to stop the clock after a catch.
The Panthers managed to get it to midfield after a big pass to receiver Curtis Samuel, but they were unable to advance it any further in large part because of a penalty right after the catch.
That set up Slye’s desperation kick. It would have been an NFL record if made.
Rhule said he thought trying the field goal had better odds of succeeding over a Hail Mary.
“We had the wind at our back so we thought our best chance was to kick it,” he said. “Obviously, it didn’t work but it was a long way to go which the penalty certainly didn’t help."
The Panthers jumped to a 7-0 lead following a 15-play, 8:53 drive, capped by a McCaffrey touchdown catch on 4th-and-3.
In the second quarter, Carolina succeeded on a fake punt in its own territory to continue a stalled drive, which led to another touchdown for a 14-3 lead.
However, the Chiefs slowly chipped away with field goals and by the end of the third quarter, they had a 20-17 lead.
Of course, Carolina didn’t help itself by managing to compile just 30 offensive yards, missing a 51-yard field goal.
"There are no moral victories," Bridgewater said. "With a game like this where you come up short, you can measure yourself next to the defending champs but at the same time, you don't want to be satisfied for coming up short.
"We play this game to win. We can easily say we fought, we played tough, and that's what we did, but we didn't come up with the victory."
While having McCaffrey back helped the Panthers solve some of their red zone issues and stay toe-to-toe with the defending champs, the results were the same.
"The Chiefs are a great football team," Bridgewater said. "They did everything to win that game, and we did everything to not win that game."