Uncalled Fair Catch Interference Penalties From Three Years Ago That I'm Still Mad About, and Other Existential Horrors

The stuff of nightmares.

Let me start by apologizing for my extended absence. It wasn't for any of the typical Armchair Linebacker reasons--I wasn't rampaging naked, covered in blood and feces, through the back alleys of the worst neighborhoods in the city, knocking over trashcans and gibbering incoherent, anguished rants at the gods while shaking my fists at the sky and being stared at from behind curtains by local residents whispering to each other, "That white dude's gone CRAZY!" I also wasn't wandering along the banks of any local streams or the paths carved through the countryside by railroad tracks, occasionally pausing to throw yarrow sticks and consult the I Ching, surviving only on what I could kill with my trusty hunting knife and refusing to return home until I'd completed my vision quest. No, I was just backed up at work, and couldn't find the time at the end of a succession of 12 hour days to knock out a worthwhile post.

But make no mistake, I am feeling every bit as uncertain and fucked up about the fortunes of my team right now as Neil and Raven are when they disappear to engage in their periodic mystical wanderings/psychotic breaks. The Pittsburgh game was the first true reappearance so far this season of the unending psychological torture that I've often seen from the Redskins over the past decade. I felt like the whole team's spirit was being broken on a Catherine Wheel or something. I mean, we were never once in that game. The Steelers got the ball first, went right down the field, scored a touchdown, and then totally shut down our offense on the following drive. After that, it was over. I could look it up but I don't want to, so right now my best guess is that we were never within 10 points of the lead for the entire rest of the game.

Every time the offense would get the ball, the entire apparatus would sputter and churn, and if any concrete advances were earned, they'd soon be derailed or offset by a succession of pratfalls and bonehead plays. Alfred Morris was trying to do his thing, but the Steelers run defense were solid enough that his ability to break through the line and gain some yardage on the ground was never more than intermittent throughout the day. And when RG3 took to the air, things were even worse. Over and over, I had to deal with the sight of Santana Moss or Leonard Hankerson or Josh Morgan dropping the ball. RG3's completion percentage was under 50% for the first time in his career, but it wasn't his fault--he went 16 for 34 but 10 of the 18 incomplete passes he threw hit his receivers in the hands and they just couldn't pull them in. Josh Morgan had a huge first down taken away by a drop, Leonard Hankerson whiffed on a sure touchdown, Logan Paulsen couldn't bring in a crucial third down pass--and just to prove that things were truly out of whack, Niles Paul actually did manage to hang onto one pass for a first down. It was Redskins receiver opposite day, and we were all suffering. By the end of the game, I felt like I was having a nightmare. And with the Steelers out there in those ridiculous bumblebee-jailbird uniforms, it even had an REM-state quality. You know, like when you see someone you know in a dream, but they don't look like themselves at all? And yet, you know it was them. Then you wake up and you're telling someone about the dream, and you're like, "I mean, they didn't even look right, they were wearing these weird black-and-yellow striped uniforms that made them look like rugby players from the 1920s. But somehow I knew it was the Steelers, you know?" It was like that.

Hold my breath as I wish for death...

The worst moment for me came towards the end of the game, when one of the commentators made some comment about the Redskins jeopardizing their playoff hopes with play like this. I managed to have my very own Jim Mora moment, and leaped off the couch. "Playoffs?" I yelled. "Are you kidding me? Playoffs?" I mean, what a joke, right? I never expected the Redskins to be good enough to make the playoffs this year, and they've certainly proven to me that I was right to have less than stratospheric expectations for the season. But at this point, I really would just like to see them win a damn game. I mean, against the Giants, I didn't feel so bad about losing by less than a touchdown. Even the Bengals, who had the most decisive victory over us this year before the Steelers game, had a significant period during the game where they could not stop our offense, and we were threatening to come back and take the lead. It never quite happened, but we were definitely in both of those games, and we were very close to winning against both the Rams and the Falcons. This really felt like a team on the rise even in defeat, during all of those losses. But the Steelers totally dominated us, and made us look like every single one of the crappy, half-baked teams we've been fielding for most of the past decade-plus.

I'm sure there are excuses that could be made--rain causing receivers to drop balls, or whatever the fuck. But I don't want to hear them. What I really want is to be given reasons to believe that that lackluster, worthless performance in Pittsburgh last week was an aberration, a random glitch on the way to building a truly solid team. I've been hearing people say things this week about how the Redskins have to beat the Panthers tomorrow to save their current season. Frankly, to me, that's a ridiculous concept. I haven't felt like the playoffs were in reach since week 2 or so--as far as I'm concerned, what we're doing this year is being done to lay the groundwork for league dominance circa 2014 or so, and to look at it otherwise is to delude oneself. But other people's delusions actually do serve my purpose here, because victory over the Panthers tomorrow is yet another necessary step in fighting for the immortal soul of this Redskins team. After years and years of mediocrity and delusional garbage from the front office, after a ridiculous succession of short-term quick fixes have all failed and we've started out from square one with every new season for nearly a decade, something has to be done to make a decisive break with the miasmic doldrums of the post-Y2K Redskins. I will grant an exception to this blanket description of the last 12 Redskins seasons to the 2005 Redskins, who had double-digit wins in the regular season and won a playoff game. But Spurrier, Zorn, the Gibbs/Saunders tenure, the early Shanahan years--it all just added up to a lengthy, doomed trudge to late-season irrelevance, despair, and learned helplessness.

"We're better than this. We beat ourselves."

This team needs redemption. This team needs a clean break with its ugly past. And in order to gain such things, this 2012 Redskins squad must win all of the games that it is clearly capable of winning--playoff possibilities be damned. Hell, we shouldn't even be thinking about the playoffs. The focus should be much more immediate than that. Right now, the Redskins have an aching need for a solid, cohesive program in which every player is playing at the height of their abilities, and the coaches are bringing those players together into solid units who execute at the levels to which they're capable. Some of these guys are not world beaters, it's obvious. There will be times where certain less-than-gifted players will be put into situations that we can't rationally expect them to handle. Reed Doughty is a solid backup safety who has been there for the Redskins whenever he could be for most of a decade. He's not Sean Taylor, of course, but nobody's Sean Taylor. And we couldn't have expected Reed to handle Andre Johnson by himself on a post pattern in week two of the 2010 season. But most of the time, the guy's a solid player who makes things happen on the field. Right now we just need him and all the other second-tier starters and situational backups on the team to do what they're capable of doing. If we lose more games this year due to problems equivalent to Andre Johnson/Reed Doughty-type mismatches (or, to use another example from this year, Victor Cruz/Josh Wilson mismatches), then that's a structural problem. We fix that during the offseason by making changes through the draft and free agency, and trying to upgrade the team.

But in midseason, heading into our bye week, we can't do anything about that stuff. What we need to concentrate on, instead, is getting the players we've got to coalesce into the best unit they can be. We need them to beat teams who are hurting just as badly as we are, or worse. We need to win games in which we should obviously be favored. The Steelers game was a total toss-up. I honestly thought we had a better shot against them than we did against the Giants, and that turned out to be very wrong. Maybe that had to do with longstanding NFC East rivalries, or our respective strengths and weaknesses matching up badly with those of the Steelers--I don't know. And it's over now, so really, I don't care. What I do care about is that Carolina has been one of the worst teams in the league this year, on both sides of the ball. They aren't in the kind of widespread organizational freefall that seems to be plaguing Jacksonville (I'll be surprised if that team puts together 3 wins this year), but they aren't far off. Cam Newton's development has sputtered, the running game that helped them put together a solid offense last year seems to have collapsed, their receiving corps and offensive line are ailing, and their defense is every bit as bad as it was last year (and it was TERRIBLE). The Panthers, much like the Rams, have spent several years using the Redskins as one of their consolation prizes, one of the only teams they could still beat even in a series of floundering losing seasons. Last year the Panthers game began the truly ill-fated John Beck starting stint, but the streak goes back further than that--does anyone else remember the horrific situation in which Panthers cornerback Captain Munnerlyn shoved Byron Westbrook into Antwaan Randle El, our punt returner, who was trying to call for a fair catch? That was in 2009. Since Munnerlyn hadn't touched Randle El himself, it wasn't considered fair catch interference, and the Panthers recovered the ball on our 12 yard line. Westbrook was injured on the play, and two plays later, the Panthers scored the touchdown that won them the game--after having been down by 8 points going into the fourth quarter.

Seriously, who the hell names their son "Captain" anyway?

So yeah, I'm still mad about that--what I consider to have been a dirty play that the league conveniently turned a blind eye toward (and I'll bet they still wouldn't do anything about it now, even with all the manufactured hoopla about concern over concussions--the secret where that's concerned is that they don't care as long as they still make money). And I'm mad about Cam Newton running all over us last year. And most importantly, I'm mad at the very idea that the Redskins, who are, despite their many failings (which I've enumerated in depth over the past few weeks), still a significantly better team this year than the Panthers are, might nonetheless lose tomorrow due to sheer insufficency of character. If we lose tomorrow, regardless of how it happens, it will ultimately be the fault of a team that can't seem to pull themselves together and be the best team they can be. Even if that's not the best team taking the field in the NFL in November 2012. The fact is that the Redskins, when they're working together and firing on all cylinders, are a good enough team to solidly and assuredly handle the 2012 Panthers. And if they don't do that, I for one won't even want to talk about the fate of the 2012 Redskins season. I'll just want to know how the hell this team is going to recapture their own soul.

NFL 2011: Week 2 - NFC South & West (1st Quarter)

So this is week one of my weekly NFL round-up type shits, which sometimes in past years has been at websites that would give me scraps of money, but really, it's not worth making lists of 12 Hot Pictures of Islamic Women Camel Toes and finding pictures to do the type of shit that is considered freelancing anymore. So I do it for love of the bullshit, in the way it was meant to be done - at my kitchen table with a creepy clay coffee cup that has a finger for the handle (pretend, not real finger) full of mushroom tea, chewing on eleuthro root, like a fucking man. The way I've done this is to break up the NFL season into four quarters, like a game, because it follows that pattern. First quarter of the season, we stroll through the league, and shit's just started, so things are settling in, and the way things look very well may not be the way they shake out. Most football nerdernet writing people would not admit this to you; they want to seem all-knowing and ever-present like the pyramid eyeball. But I'm no Illuminaut, bros, I'm just a rock solid dude with a heart of whatever is the working man equivalent to gold, who keeps up with shit with a half-assed mathematical formula which actually calculates but also involves drawing pentagrams in goat's blood under a red light in the tiny non-working bathroom of the 18 foot camper trailer a French Canadian Jewish Gypsy woman left on my property a while back. I do some crazy shit in that camper, and if they did that blacklight semen looking thing in there, man, it'd be ugly and unexplainable. But hey, that's life, when you're actually living it.
First quarter of the season, we'll go through two divisions a week, from the same conference, roughly worst to best, judging by collective record. From that criteria, since most every division went 2-2 last weekend, I thought it was gonna be hard to get two geographically attached divisions to roll with. I mean, I knew one of the West divisions would represent, because they both tend to suck. In a lot of sports, there is claimed to be an east coast bias, which is probably true, but not so much a bias as it is just the way shit is when games are played at 2 in the morning our time where most of us in this country live. You should be thankful you don't live around as many assholes as I do, and accept your sports teams being slightly overlooked as a little yang for that yin, you know?
But at the same time, there's no denying in the NFL the west coast ain't representing enough to really claim a bias. However, first week of the NFL season, every division, including both western divisions, went either 2-2 or 3-1, except one - the NFC South. Yes, the division that many (including myself) was touting as potentially the NFL's best went 0 for the weekend, including get outright punked in 3 games with the NFC North. I decided to attach the NFC West to that because even though they went 2-2, just like the NFC East, if it wasn't for game within the NFC West, or against the Panthers, they wouldn't have won a single game. So let us go through this first week of rankings of the NFC West and South teams, with their overall rankings according to my NFLuminati Index in there as well, for you to be like, "Oh yeah, this shit looks kinda scientific, but also metaphysical, like real life shit; it's a shame stupid fucking grantland ain't more like this, so I think I'm gonna click that button on the right and donate $5 so that Neil and Raven can share hallucinogens at next year's Gathering of the Juggalos"...
#1: NEW ORLEANS SAINTS (0-1, 12th overall) - Yeah, even with an opening night loss, the Saints are still sitting the highest. It's hard to really punish a team, even in nerd formulas, for losing on the road against last year's champion. The Saints look to be a better version of what they were last year on offense, as Mark Ingram - goal line stuffage ignored - is a definite upgrade at their premium RB position, and has the potential to be the first top-tier feature back they've had since Deuce McAllister went away. Their defense looked shitty against the Packers, but you know, probably anybody would've looked shitty in that light. So let's see what these fuckers in gold and black look like hosting the Chicago Bears this weekend.
#2: SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS (1-0, 13th overall) - So Coach Jimbo Harbaugh comes out the gate after one weak ass victory over a shitty Seahawks team, going "How come ain't nobody talking about us? Where's our highlights?" already going to the west coast bias card. Or worse yet playing the "No one respects us" schtick to his locker room. I think that's an overrated method, because it only works while you are shitty. Once you get to a good level, the motivation behind that is gone, and what's left to prove? I really like the idea of Jim Harbaugh, but already he's coming across as kind of a douche. It must be something about San Francisco, because who didn't love Mike Singletary before he coached there. He's in the fucking graphic at the top of this website. But now he seems kinda like a dumbass after what happened in San Francisco. There's something not right about that 49ers place. Bill Walsh has cast some sort of NFL Illuminati voodoo spell over that shit, that only George Seifert was allowed to bypass. There's always been something slightly ominous and unsettling about that color scheme they have. Anyways, lucky for them they are in the NFC West, so a team full of half-witted retards and Afghanistan war vets with one prosthetic leg each could contend to win the title.
#3: ARIZONA CARDINALS (1-0, 18th overall) - The Cardinals are like the rebound team, where jaded people go to get pretended over. Kurt Warner post-Rams, or Kevin Kolb post-Eagles. Cardinals fans are Cowboys fans with nothing better to do. They've never been an actual team it seems, just this thing that exists out in the desert that pretends it was once a team and will again be a team but has to go through the purgatory of the transition, forever. That's the Cardinals. When Larry Fitzgerald signed his gazillion ear dollar deal this past offseason (or was it last?) all I could think was, "Aww, poor Larry Fitzgerald." But then I remembered NFL deals don't really mean anything, as it still works under the pre-housing bubble refinancing every two years scheme.
#4: ATLANTA FALCONS (0-1, 19th overall) - Last week, people were talking up the dirty birds to go to the Super Bowl. This week, they are like, "Shit man, what went wrong with the Falcons?" Chill out bros; football is not as immediate as the interwebs, and the Falcons will be okay. They won't be a Super Bowl team, but they really weren't anyways. They will be good. In fact, Julio Jones should help make them even better than last year, or at least exciting as fuck to watch, with the collection of WRs/RBs/Tony Gonzalezes they've collected for Matt Ryan to toss the ol' pigskin around to. Personally though, I think they should get Denny Green to be their coach, like right away. They'd be cooler if they did.
#5: ST. LOUIS RAMS (0-1, 22nd overall) - Haha, the Rams are like last year's Lions, coming into the season thinking, "Maybe we'll be better finally," and then wracked with injuries and doom right out the gate. I think like half their team got injured last week. They do have the makings of a strong defense though, which is going to be necessary because if Sam Bradford is already getting banged up, with him looking about as tough as a Boy Scout in his staunchest mode, that multi-million dollar investment is going to not be so wonderful on the dividend tip. Also, Stephen Jackson is already banged up, as is that Danny Algondola dude or whatever who was their best receiver by default last year. They might just have to start punting the ball on 3rd downs.
#6: TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS (0-1, 26th overall) - The Bucs got beat at home by the Lions, and I don't care how much more improved the Lions are supposed to be, you cannot lose a home game if you are a potential fringe element playoff team to another fringe element playoff team. That's like a best of three series you'll play like three times this year with other teams in that predicament, and now the Bucs are down one game, after one week, in that spot. This week they go on the road against the Vikings, who I'd say aren't even a fringe element playoff team, but if the Bucs get duked in that one, count them out this season, which is gonna suck, because I have stupid Josh Freeman on my stupid fantasy team.
#7: SEATTLE SEAHAWKS (0-1, 27th overall) - The Seahawks are not only a shitty godawful team, but they are coached by a shitty godawful dude, who somehow seems perfectly Seattle-ish. I imagine him with a chai latte in hand, parking his Prius in the coach's spot, heading into Seahawks facility which is wind-powered, to do yoga with players in a unitarian universalist chapel before film study. Tarvaris Jackson as your starting QB is a good sign you've given up on the year though, so I guess they're just riding out the season, hoping to get Andrew Luck, so Pete Carroll can continue to pretend by amassing every former Pac-10 star there ever was in one place, he can recreate the magic he had at USC.
#8: CAROLINA PANTHERS (0-1, 29th overall) - So Cam Newton didn't suck like people thought he would, and played air guitar on the football to celebrate a TD. Haha, and it all happened against the Cardinals. Panthers fans are convincing themselves that Cam Newton was not a wasted pick as franchise QB because he had a good game against the Arizona Cardinals. Hahaha, good luck with that. Green Bay's coming to town this weekend, Mr. Newton, so let's see how many air guitar solos you get this week, brah.

NFL ACLB PREVIEWS - #31: CAROLINA PANTHERS

PERTINENT DATA: 2-14 last year; 125 to 1 odds to win Super Bowl XLVI.
BEST CASE SCENARIO (Raven): Pro football needs to break out of its tired old racist ways in regards to the QB position. A pure talent like Cam Newton, who most likely is a renegade in regards to morality, which will be a great fit in Cackalacka, which is a great soulful somewhat immoral yet God-fearing place, where one can attend clubs with pajama parties and you can get good barbecue in 30 miles anywhere in the state... But a pure talent like Cam Newton, rather than being over-analyzed as how "he's not a traditional QB, not a dropback blah blah blah boring old bullshit from black-and-white films", he should be embraced. My homey Mavpa had come up with a two-QB system a while back that he tried to run on a semi-pro football team, and the key is to be like, "Fuck tradition." Think about how teams are all moving from having the one feature RB to having a pair, maybe three they use in this role, to rotate. Why not do this with mobile QBs? Fuck your wildcat formations as a trick, just get you a Cam Newton, and have an older Cam Newton, like Vince Young or Michael Vick, and get you a third dude who may be traditional who can air it out on 3rd and long or just be brought in as a decoy under center when you actually do some wacky next level shit. Hopefully with a new coach and Cam Newton, this is what they are ultimately conjuring up in Carolina, and young black rappers throughout the south will be wearing airbrushed Carolina Panthers t-shirts for years to come, because even if they only go 8-8 every year, they will do the most amazing shit ever each and every week.
WORST CASE SCENARIO (Neil): The worst case scenario for the Panthers probably involves the phrase “In the running for the number one overall pick” again. Which, let’s face it, is a very, very real possibility. Of course, this will involve a meltdown by Cam Newton, an epic failure by the new coaching staff, DeAngelo Williams getting hurt again, and, well, everything that probably will actually happen to the Panthers. The Panthers suck and they’re probably going to suck no matter what, and so honestly, we shouldn’t even be looking at it from that angle. We should be looking at the future, and the worst case scenario there is that Cam Newton melts down and is found sucking dick in a back alley somewhere after getting addicted to coke or something like that, which I’m not saying is going to definitely happen but I’m not saying it definitely won’t happen either. Let’s just remember: this is the worst case scenario. I mean, technically, the worst case scenario is probably something none of us can even picture, like the universe becoming inverted and us being conquered by aliens from another dimension with asses for heads who spew literal shit whenever they talk and giant penis guns that drown us all in semen. Given that scenario, the idea that Cam Newton gets caught blowing dudes in a back alley seems rather tame, you know? I’m just saying, let’s try to keep things in perspective.
PLAYER TO PULL FOR (Raven): It seems too easy to say Steve Smith, who although a tough-as-nails veteran WR who always gets touted by talking heads as a solid dude, he's also a borderline primadonna in the league, and came from Utah. What kind of fucking black dude comes from Utah? So I'm going to go with LB Thomas Davis, simply because he made a short trek to Carolina from the University of Georgia, which means he's a new south brother, and I've seen rides of his in Donk Box & Bubble magazine a couple of times. Any simple southern black dude who becomes a millionaire and decides a proper thing to do is figure out how to put 28-inch rims on a 1967 Buick, and then take pictures of it parked in front of an antebellum mansion you bought, that's a solid new south dude, and makes me hopeful for our collective future.
PLAYER TO HATE MOST (Neil): Cam Newton. There is just something slimy about this dude, and not slimy in a good way but slimy in an entitled and assholish way. Like, none of his scandals involve him getting caught with a bunch of hookers and a mountain of blow, which is a respectable scandal to get caught up in. Instead, all of his scandals involve him weaseling something out of somebody, like some self-important prick frat boy who’s never been slapped around before. That dude will turn out to be a sociopath who just takes whatever the fuck he wants no matter what and those dudes suck. Plus, he is the son of a preacher man, and not even the good kind of preacher man who is kinda crazy and has a poor ass church and who is probably porking the church secretary with the big ass because even though it’s a sin he just can’t help himself and it’s an open secret but nobody cares because that dude is pretty awesome and actually cares about things like helping poor people out and trying to make shit better. No, Cam Newton is the son of the sort of preacher man who’s into the whole fake smile megachurch thing and who would probably sell his congregation to slavers if it meant he could get a gold toilet installed in his office. You just can’t trust someone who was raised with those kind of values, especially if that dude is supposed to be the leader – and therefore de facto pastor – of your team.
BEST NAME ON TEAM: Mackenzy Bernadeau, who even played at a Bentley College, which makes him sound even more swank as fuck. That sounds like some Rolls Royce DNA to me.
IN A PERFECT WORLD (Neil): In a perfect world, Cam Newton somehow proves me wrong and becomes the savior of the Carolina Panthers, but . . . honestly, my heart’s not in that shit and while that may not be fair to the people of Carolina, I don’t really give a fuck. In my perfect world, Cam Newton quickly flames out and the Panthers spiral even further into the abyss until Bill Richardson (That’s who owns this shitbird franchise, right?) is forced to sell the team to an anonymous billionaire who hires Ric Flair to be the front man for the team and Slick Ric remakes the team in his image and cuts wild promos every week on the Panthers opponents and is always getting busted trying to bribe the refs and then maybe he can feud with Sheriff Goodell and they can fight each other on the Superbowl undercard. I mean, fuck it, why not? Super Bowl Sunday is like 118 hours long anyway. You might as well cram something awesome in there in between all the pointless Bermanesque blathering. Oh, and maybe the anonymous billionaire is revealed to be, like, Larry Flynt or somebody like that.
PROGNOSIS (Raven): There is no one remotely as bad as the Panthers in the NFC South, so a 2-14 repeat is likely, just missing out on the number one draft pick, which shouldn't be such a stigma as it once was with the new rookie salary restrictions. Still though, they ran John Fox off for this? What happened to Bill Cowher? Remember what he did with Kordell Stewart? Yep, I see you working here Carolina.

Carolina Quarterback Blues

We Panther fans knew coming into the season that Jake was losing it. The pundits lauded him for coming back after Tommy John surgery to repair his elbow, and for a while he seemed to be fine. But, psychologically, he wasn't fine. As the season wore on his mistakes became more and more outrageous, and while his taking all the blame on his shoulders was admirable, it was also repetitive. But John Fox was determined to keep him in at all costs... even when the cost was a chance at the Super Bowl.

Jake spent the off season apologizing and saying he was going to put the final game behind him. His contract came up, and for some reason was renegotiated for an insane amount of money. What did Fox know that we didn't?

From the debacle that unfolded Sunday afternoon, I say not a whole hell of a lot.

Jake underthrew Steve Smith, overthrew Muhsin Muhammad, and was so obvious with his hand-offs that the running game was quickly shut down. He had an interception and a forced fumble, both leading to Philadelphia touchdowns, within minutes of each other. And yet he was kept in the game until there was no chance of making a comeback. Then, finally, as the boos rained down every time the offense took the field, as Steve Smith sat by himself on the defense's bench,

John McCown, unfortunately, did not last long. He managed a couple of throws before being smashed into the next zip code and leaving the game with leg injury. That left Matt Moore, who did what he could with a dispirited offense and a frustrated crowd. The only good part about Moore coming in was that it meant that Jake could not return the rest of the game. After the game, Fox repeated his support for Jake and his starting position. His teammates mouthed the party line, and nothing seemed to be changing any time soon.

But then it was reported late Monday afternoon that Josh McCown had been put on the IR, effectively ending his season and leaving the Panthers with only two quarterbacks. Right after that, they signed A. J. Feeley... who was last seen throwing interceptions for the Eagles.

It's going to be a really, really long season for the Panther fans.

How the Carolina Panthers continue to kill me

Somehow, the Panthers managed to do jut about everything wrong during the off season. They never signed or even tried out more quarterbacks, but instead signed Jake Delhomme for millions of dollars and five more years of him taking the blame for throwing to the wrong team. They didn't get anyone to back up Steve Smith and the aging and no longer in his prime Muhsin Muhammad, and basically the entire offensive line is two injuries away from a total collapse.

Then there's the whole Julius Peppers debacle. He didn't want to play, and instead of letting a guy who says repeatedly that he doesn't want to play your defense go, you slap a franchise tag on him and screw your cap for the year? With the knowledge that we'll just have to go through this again next season?

This is going to be an ugly season. I'll be surprised if the Panthers manage to break even.