Carolina Panthers Catch Break With Ronnie Brown’s Injury
When you are 4-5 in the NFC, you can use all the breaks you can get. Lucky for the Carolina Panthers, they caught a huge one.hey are at home tonight, against a Miami Dolphins team that is also 4-5 and fighting for their playoff lives. Call it a cheap ploy or call it great strategy, whatever you think of the wildcat formation one thing is for certain, when it comes into play for the Miami Dolphins; it works. The problem for the Dolphins this week is that the wildcat formation they run is lead by running back Ronnie Brown. Due to an ankle injury Brown sustained last week, he is not only out for the game but the entire season.
The Dolphins now have two options going into tonight’s contest at Carolina. They can either run the wildcat without their man main Brown, or they can scrap the wildcat altogether. It is most likely that the Dolphins will use the wildcat formation less, but still try to implement it with Ricky Williams at the helm. Ricky Williams has seen a re-emergence the past two seasons and is even averaging a career high 5.3 yards per carry this season. Ricky Williams is not the same back he was when Mike Ditka decided to trade an entire draft for him. I personally don’t see him keeping up that average without Ronnie Brown there to be the focal point. I look for Williams to only average around 3.8-4.2 yards a carry for the rest of the season. Ronnie Brown is the motor that made this boat run, and it’s not going to be easy to replace him. I wonder if the Dolphins would be better keep Ricky Williams in his current role and just increase his carries a game by five or so. Then insert the dangerous return man Ted Ginn Jr. to take the snaps as the ringleader of the wildcat formation.
The Carolina Panthers run defense has been just a little shy of awful this year. This means that Ricky Williams will probably still have a decent game this week, before falling off even more in later weeks. Eventually, we might even find out what it looks like when the Dolphins only implement the wildcat formation for three to four plays a game. With the lack of a passing game and the injury to Ronnie Brown, the Panthers defense should be able to hold up enough to even up their record with a home victory. It also helps that the Panthers boast the third best rushing attack in the league that is led by one of the NFL’s best-kept secrets, Deangelo Williams. For a team that started the season a disappointing 0-3, this is the help they needed to save their season and give them a chance at the playoffs, even if it is still a slim one.
