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CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (Ticker) -- The battle of the 1995 expansion teams was anything but a mismatch. The Jacksonville Jaguars entered today's game as the heavy favorite but barely escaped with a 22-20 victory over the Carolina Panthers. James Stewart replaced an injured Fred Taylor and rushed for 124 yards and two touchdowns and Mike Hollis kicked three field goals, but the Jaguars needed to stop a two-point conversion attempt to avert overtime against the Panthers, who appear vastly improved under new coach George Seifert. "We had an opportunity to win the game, but we didn't do some things," Seifert said. "Certainly we had some things we can build on." Taylor, the AFC's top rookie last year, left the game after the first quarter with a strained left hamstring and did not return. He finished with 27 yards on five carries. Stewart, a first-round pick of the Jaguars in 1995, handled the workload in Taylor's absence. "When Fred went down I knew I had to step up," Stewart said. "All I felt was that we had to win the ballgame." After Stewart broke off a 44-yard touchdown run to give the Jaguars a 22-14 lead with 1:48 left, the Panthers drove 70 yards in just 77 seconds against a defense that is being run by former Carolina coach Dom Capers. Steve Beuerlein, an original pick of the Jaguars in the 1995 expansion draft, completed 6-of-8 passes for 65 yards to spearhead the drive. He hit Rae Carruth with a 16-yard pass to the Carolina 48 on a 4th-and-8 play to keep the Panthers alive. Later in the drive, Beuerlein connected with Muhsin Muhammad on a 20-yard pass to the Jacksonville 15. After a delay for replay, which upheld the completion, Beuerlein hit tight end Wesley Walls over the middle for 14 yards to the Jacksonville 1. Two plays later, Beuerlein rolled to his right and flipped a one-yard TD pass to Walls in the back of the end zone to pull the Panthers within 22-20. On the two-point conversion attempt, Beuerlein intended to hit Walls over the middle but the pass was batted away by linebacker Lonnie Marts. "The read was to go to him (Walls)," Beuerlein said. "But looking back, I should have run around and bought some time. They bumped him hard off the line." Reggie Barlow recovered the ensuing on-side kick to seal the win for the Jaguars (2-0), who were coming off a 41-3 rout of the San Francisco 49ers. The Panthers fell to 0-2. "I told you it would be a close game all week," said Jaguars coach Tom Coughlin. "The season opener at home against your old coach. You knew they were going to be pumped." Beuerlein was 16-of-26 for 216 yards and three touchdowns. Muhsin Muhammed had four catches for 103 yards, including a 60-yard TD. Mark Brunell completed 20-of-32 passes for 214 yards for Jacksonville. Jimmy Smith had 10 receptions for 115 yards. "There's going to be games like this over the course of the season," Brunell said. "We knew it was going to be a close game. James Stewart and Tavian Banks came in and stepped up." It was the second regular season meeting between the 1995 expansion clubs. The Jaguars won the first meeting, 24-14 at Jacksonville in September 1996. Ironically, that was the year the Panthers and Jaguars were one win away from meeting in Super Bowl XXXI. However, the Panthers lost to the Green Bay Packers, 30-13 in the NFC championship game and the Jaguars fell to the New England Patriots, 20-6 in the AFC championship. Capers was the coach of the Panthers for their first four seasons. But after a disappointing 4-12 finish in 1998, the Panthers fired him and named Seifert as his replacement. Coughlin promptly hired Capers as his defensive coordinator to improve a unit which ranked 25th overall last year and managed just 30 sacks. The move paid immediate dividends as the Jaguars kept the high-powered San Francisco 49ers out of the end zone and limited them to just 11 first downs in the season opener. Today, the Jaguars blanked the Panthers in the second half until Carolina's final drive. Hollis has converted his last 20 field goal attempts. He kicked a 36-yarder with a 5:41 left in the first quarter and a 40-yarder 2:10 into the second quarter to stake the Jaguars to a 6-0 lead. Jacksonville thoroughly outplayed the Panthers in the first quarter, outgaining them, 125 yards to 29. But the Panthers turned it around in the second quarter, outgaining the Jaguars, 156 yards to 26. Two touchdowns in a span of 1:38 late in the second quarter gave Carolina a 14-6 lead. Beuerlein hit Walls with a 10-yard TD to cap a 10-play, 71-yard drive with 3:06 left and connected with Muhammed on a 60-yard scoring play with 1:28 remaining in the half. The Jaguars opened the second half with a 15-play, 79-yard scoring drive which lasted nearly 7 1/2 minutes. Stewart's one-yard run capped it and pulled the Jaguars within 14-12, although they failed on the two-point conversion. In the third quarter, Jacksonville outgained Carolina, 144 yards to 33. A 31-yard field goal by Hollis gave the Jaguars a 15-14 lead with 10:22 left in the fourth quarter. Stewart's 44-yard scoring run came after the Panthers failed to convert a fourth down play. "They blitzed, brought everybody and the hole popped open," Stewart said.
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