Panthers NFC Championship playoff tickets sell out in minutes

When he held onto that bouncing ball Sunday, the longest-tenured Panther gave himself a second shot at the Super Bowl.

Brady, who has four Super Bowl rings to their combined one, was taken 199th overall. “Right now, we’re focused on the Arizona Cardinals”. On two occasions after reaching the line he was forced to call timeout either because he was unhappy with the play or his team wasn’t set. Seattle got the ball one more time, and settled for a field goal with 1:16 left in the fourth quarter.

Lynch appeared ready to return for the NFC wild-card game at Minnesota, but backed out of making the trip to Minneapolis on the Friday before the game telling the team he didn’t think he could play.

“For whatever reason, we got into protect mode”.

“We are not done yet, we need to continue to keep fighting” said Panthers cornerback Josh Norman, whose likely will be covering Fitzgerald.

“They played better than us in the first half, we played better than them in the second half”.

“We wanted that missed field goal in Minnesota last week”, Panthers safety Tre Boston told Panthers.com after the game.

The Panthers are now 2-0 in close games against Seattle this season after managing an abysmal 0-4 record the past three seasons.

The two-time NFC champs are done with football in January for the first time since the end of the 2012 season when this group of Seahawks were experiencing the postseason for the first time and fell short in the divisional round at Atlanta. Doug Baldwin tied for the NFL lead with 14 touchdown catches despite being tied for 29th in the league in targets.

“His style, he’s relentless with his running, so it’s going to be hard for one guy to bring him down, because he takes a lot of pride in not letting one guy tackle him”, Shula said. Wilson passed for three second-half touchdowns, cutting the big Carolina lead to 10 with 6:04 to play.

Seattle stormed back, getting two touchdowns in the first 7:20 of the third quarter.

Carroll was speaking to the potential the Seahawks still possess, even though their season ended two rounds earlier than it had in each of the past two seasons. In their second season as a franchise, the Panthers faced the eventual Super Bowl Champion Green Bay Packers in the 1997 NFC Championship, losing 30-13. Although offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski left after two seasons, the Panthers promoted quarterbacks coach Mike Shula to that role and the rest of the staff has pretty much remained intact since 2011.

By half-time, the advantage had been extended to 31-0 when Stewart dived in for another touchdown from one yard, before quarterback Cam Newton hit Greg Olsen for a 19-yard score.

“They are coached extremely well, and they have a lot of great players”, Wilson said.