Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Carolina Panthers by the numbers after Week 2

Each Tuesday during the NFL season I am posting in this blog some significant and weird numbers about the Carolina Panthers. Today's edition:

1: Heisman Trophy winners who have ever intercepted another Heisman winner in the NFL. It happened again Sunday, when Charles Woodson (1997 winner) picked off Cam Newton (the 2010 winner) twice. In his career, Woodson has now picked off four former Heisman winners -- Matt Leinart, Carson Palmer and Vinny Testaverde are the other three.

2: Panthers' current offensive rank in total yards per game, after ranking dead last (No.32) in 2010. They trail only New England. Amazing.

3: Teams in the NFC South that won last weekend, after zero won games during the first week. That puts the Panthers (0-2) back into their accustomed last-place position in one of football's toughest divisions.

29: Panthers' current NFL team rank in rushing yards per game.

40: Panther regular-season games between Nov.15, 2009 and the end of this season. By the time this year ends, Thomas Davis will have missed 38 of those 40 games due to tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee on three separate occasions. Talk about snakebitten.

334: Steve Smith's receiving yardage after two games, which gives him at least a 63-yard lead over everyone else in the NFL.

827: Kurt Warner's record for the most passing yardage ever in the first two games of an NFL season, which he set in 2000. It got broken -- twice! -- last week. Newton actually held the new record for a couple of hours with 854 yards, until Tom Brady shattered it with 940.