There were things about Sunday — specific to the game against the Packers — that the Panthers will remember fondly.
But there might not have been a moment quarterback Cam Newton enjoyed more than catching Clay Matthews off guard, and the viral video that ensued.
In one of the cooler moments of audio captured on-field ever, Matthews began calling out what he thought was about to be a specific play by Panthers running back Christian McCaffrey.
The Packers linebacker cautioned his teammates to “watch that wheel route; it’s that wheel route,” when he saw what he thought was a familiar tendency.
“You’ve been watching film, huh?,” Newton replied. “That’s cool. Watch this.”
McCaffrey did not run a wheel route, instead breaking inside for a wide open touchdown, as the Panthers rolled to the win.
“I’m mad they didn’t see me and C-Mac’s reaction to when he said that,” Newton said, via David Newton of ESPN.com. “It was funny. You could hear it clear as day, ‘Watch the wheel route, watch the wheel route.’
“Then there was, like, a pause, and the referee was right there, and I’m looking at C-Mac, C-Mac is looking back up at me, and we’re like, ‘Yeah, it’s the wheel route.”’
Of course, it will cause the Panthers to do a little more prep work for this week’s game and beyond, to make sure others aren’t picking up on their tendencies.
“You can guarantee one thing about it, we’ll have a new signals meeting a couple times this week,” Newton said. “We don’t want the Buccaneers to get any ideas.”
Of course, if McCaffrey had run the wheel route on that play, he might have scored anyway. But that would have been rubbing it in.