CHARLOTTE — Coming off one of his worst days with the Panthers, wide receiver Robby Anderson walked in Monday talking about "accountability."
Anderson had the late touchdown which gave the Panthers the ability to send the game to overtime, but he also had a number of egregious drops during Sunday's loss to the Vikings.
And he owned those mistakes, saying they came down to "simple things," and that he planned to focus this week on correcting the fundamental problems.
Teammate DJ Moore described Anderson as "pretty upset," and Anderson said that was a fair assessment.
"Yeah, definitely," Anderson said Monday. "I hold myself to a high regard. And more importantly, a high regard for contributing and helping my teammates. I feel like there were a few plays early in the game I could have made that would have been more beneficial. But it's not how you start; it's how you finish sometimes, and I kept fighting, and it came down to crunch time, and I kept my head in it and made some plays that contributed to us having a chance.
"Things aren't always going to go in your favor and go how you expect it to, but I definitely don't not care. It's not cool for me, it's not funny for me to not play to my standard or expectation. So I'm definitely going to go hard this week to get it corrected."
Panthers head coach Matt Rhule said the key for Anderson — and extending the point to the the whole team — was to avoid the distractions and get back to work, rather than dwelling on the mistakes of last week, which they can't do anything about now.
"I think Robby has to come out and have a great week of practice, a great week of meetings; he has to put aside all the distractions of what happened last week or the week before, and come out and have a great week this week," Rhule said. "Is that really simple? Yes. But it's really hard to do. It's hard for all of our players to do this day and age. . . .
"I think sometimes when we have adversity, and we don't have the production we want, all of us start trying to look for other things, maybe I'll do this or do that. All of us, as a team, need to go back to the simple things. The fundamentals of getting open and catching the football and blocking and playing hard. The fundamentals of pass-protecting and pass-rushing. If we go back to the fundamentals, get the football right, we're not a bad football team; we're a good football team. We're beating ourselves right now. And it's got to get corrected."
— Rhule said he hopes that new cornerback Stephon Gilmore is able to play Sunday against the Giants, the earliest he'd be eligible after coming over in a trade two weeks ago.
The veteran cornerback is on the physically unable to perform list related to last year's quad injury, though he has been running and working on movement with the Panthers athletic performance staff since getting here.
Rhule said the key would be how the 31-year-old Gilmore responds to practicing again and how he recovers. He hasn't played since Week 15 last year, after which the Patriots put him on injured reserve.
"I'm hoping he plays on Sunday. That's been kind of the plan all along," Rhule said. "That being said, I'm not going to put a guy out there before he's ready. Sometimes it's hard for guys to get ready in one week of practice. We'll practice him, and see how he looks, see how he feels, and at the same time see how he responds afterward."
— Rhule was also encouraged by the physicality of guard Michael Jordan, who took over at left guard for Dennis Daley early in Sunday's game against the Vikings.
"Like we've had with other guys, he had some issues in pass protection, but I thought he was excellent in the run game," Rhule said of Jordan. "He was a tone-setter in the run game.
"I thought Michael did some good things, and is going to bring a physical presence to the line that we're looking for."
The Panthers claimed Jordan off waivers from the Bengals at final cuts. The former fourth-rounder from Ohio State had started 19 games the previous two years in Cincinnati.
— The Panthers used one of running back Spencer Brown's two elevations from the practice squad last week, but deactivated him for the game. Rhule said the initial plan was to have Brown active as a third back behind Chuba Hubbard and Royce Freeman, but with a few offensive linemen dinged up, they made a late decision to keep nine linemen active instead.
