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Injured Kelvin Benjamin says balance key to Panthers success
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Injured Kelvin Benjamin says balance key to Panthers success

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Kelvin Benjamin's season-ending ACL injury was just a bump in the road to the Super Bowl for the Panthers.Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

Kelvin Benjamin’s season-ending ACL injury was just a bump in the road to the Super Bowl for the Panthers.

CHARLOTTE — This wasn’t the Giants’ one-star constellation of a receiving corps. And that’s why Kelvin Benjamin always knew the Carolina Panthers passing attack would propel the team to shocking success in 2015.

Long before the magic carpet ride took the Panthers here, bound for Santa Clara and Super Bowl 50, there was a club that seemed headed for a crisis on August 19. That’s when Benjamin, the 6-5, 243-pound behemoth who was supposed to be the headliner of the Panther’s unheralded receiving corps, was lost for the season with a torn ACL. And that’s when many started writing the Panthers off as contenders without their star receiver.

Except they never needed a star receiver. To Benjamin, they never needed an Odell Beckham Jr.

“People got it all wrong when you at a receiving corps,” Benjamin told the Daily News. “Yes, you have one receiver, but you need a corps. That one receiver cannot do it by himself. Like Odell, he’s a tremendous player, but they (the Giants) didn’t have other receivers around him. So once they went into a game, once you lock down that one receiver, you’re pretty much done.”

So memo to new Giants coach Ben McAdoo: Don’t build around Beckham too much next season. Few passing attacks were as reliant on one player as the Giants were on Beckham, who saw 26.7% of Eli Manning’s targets in 15 games in 2015. Beckham made 96 catches for 1,450 yards and 13 TDs. But Rueben Randle, who finished the year with 797 receiving yards, was the only other Giant with more than 500 receiving yards in a one-dimensional attack that left the Giants to a 6-10 record.

That was vastly unlike the Panther attack without Benjamin. After a rookie season in which he piled up 1,008 receiving yards and nine TDs, Benjamin was supposed to be Carolina’s Beckham, combining with quarterback Cam Newton to give the Panthers a dangerous passing game for years to come.

Instead, veteran tight end Greg Olsen was Newton’s most reliable target, drawing 123 looks and piling up 77 catches for 1,104 yards, but the quarterback also utilized speedster Ted Ginn Jr. frequently, looking for him 96 times. Ginn finished with just 44 catches, but his speed stretched defenses deep, and he scored a team-high nine TDs.

“This team, (defenses) couldn’t lock down nobody,” Benjamin said. “They didn’t know who was going to have that good game.”

Indeed, five different Panthers — Olsen, Ginn, ex-Jets journeyman Jerricho Cotchery, rookie Devin Funchess and fourth-string receiver Brenton Bursin — led Carolina in receiving yards in a game this season. And in Sunday’s NFC title game thrashing of the Arizona Cardinals, a sixth receiver, Philly Brown, emerged, piling up 113 receiving yards to tie Olsen for game-high honors.

Add in a consistent run game powered by Jonathan Stewart and the Panthers’ balance was a handful, a key reason Carolina delivered a league-high 31.3 points per game. It’s an attack Benjamin grew to love, even if he could only watch it from the sidelines.

“I knew those guys could get up like that,” he said of his fellow Panther receivers. “When I got hurt, they just had to step up and do the job.”

Not that it was fun for Benjamin to watch. He admits that it was “real tough” to watch the Panthers thrive early on, but as Carolina rattled off win after win, he gradually embraced his role as king-sized cheerleader.

“Maybe when we got to 12-0,” he said, “I was all right.”

And now, the player who was supposed to star in the Panther passing attack loves watching Carolina’s star-less receiving corps in action.

“All I can do is help my teammates and be a cheerleader,” he said. “And hey, if we win, I get a ring, too.”

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