Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Julio Jones owned Carolina Panthers cornerback Josh Norman on Sunday. He delivered an unstoppable performance consisting of 178 yards on nine catches, including a 70-yard touchdown.
Norman simply had no answers for Jones in what wound up as the first loss of the season for the Panthers.
Head coach Ron Rivera plans to have a conversation with his cornerback about the poor performance, which he partially associates with last week’s emotional and physical battle with New York Giants wide receiver Odell Beckham.
“Sometimes there may be a little carry over, but we brought it on ourselves – that’s the truth,” Rivera told reporters Monday via NFL.com. “If you really wanna look at it, pregame you looked at it: the referees were all lined up at the 50-yard line straight across. Unfortunately when you have a game like we previously had, there’s gonna be a little bit of carry over, but we brought it on ourselves, nobody else did.”
Rivera, who is one of the best coaches in the business, needs to be sure that past incidents such as the OBJ issue doesn’t linger around and impact the output of one of the top covers in the NFL. This is especially crucial with playoffs approaching.
In the final week of the season, the Panthers host the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, whose receivers should challenge but not dominate Norman.
This is when we’ll see if Rivera’s pep talk has sunk in and Norman rebounds to his usual level of performance. Until Sunday’s embarrassingly one-sided battle, Norman had been one of the best cover cornerbacks in the league.