We wondered out loud about the offensive coordinator’s football smarts a couple weeks ago, now there is more evidence. That evidence would be calling the same sprint draw you fooled the Falcons with earlier in the game for 21 yards on a 2nd and 24 at the Panther 6 with six minutes left in the final quarter.
You trail 31-21 and your defense has shown little ability to stop the Falcons, yet you’ll need the ball at least once more to tie the game. Punt it away on this drive without a score and Atlanta will have a 10 point lead, the ball, and only about five minutes left on the clock to burn. The down, distance, and field position are all horrible, but to have a chance at winning you need to pick up about half the 24 yards on this down.
So Davidson opts for the sprint draw. Again. Atlanta is waiting for it this time. DeAngelo Williams is smothered for a loss of four. Ballgame. For good measure, the Falcons bring the 4th down punt back 61 yards for a TD. 38-21. Good night.
Oh, sure it is easy to call out the defense that gives up 45 points. But we’ve known since September that Mike Trgovac will sit back and wait for a rookie or backup QB to make mistakes rather than force the issue. Guess what? That does not work anymore in the NFL.
Donovan McNabb and the Eagles found that out against Joe Willie Flacco. Career clipboard guy Matt Cassel went for 415 yards versus a decent Fins defense. In Miami. That’s Cassel’s second-straight 400-yard game.
Offenses do not go vanilla with inexperienced QBs anymore. At least not the ones who want to win. They continue to attack the best they can, getting the ball down field. On the flip-side veteran QBs like McNabb and Delhomme get attacked by defenses intent on taking away what they do best. The Panthers’ braintrust is ill-suited for this new NFL reality, but both Trgo and Davidson reflect the Foxy slow and steady approach to football. In truth, neither guy is going anywhere as long as John Fox has his head on his shoulders.
But if the Panthers continue to play like this in the closing weeks of the season that’ll all take care of itself. Lambeau Field has become do or die.
Bonus Observation: The Richardsons need to read — Marty Hurney can read it to Mark and Jon-Jon — Bill Simmons’s thesis that the NFL has pretty much stamped-out a meaningful home field advantage for many teams by catering to the corporate skybox crowd. The Panthers are not quite yet to that point, but the Richardsons have stood arm-in-arm with the Uptown crowd while some of the best tailgating surface parking lots got ate up by Uptown “attractions.”
Simmons explains the peril in this via Patriot super-fan Bug:
I’ve attended three Pats games in the Gillette Mausoleum and always felt like I had been transported into a David Lynch movie in which everything looked slightly the same, only it isn’t even remotely the same. Throw in the dirty secret that it isn’t really fun to attend an NFL game in the 21st century — the routine of “kickoff, TV timeout, three plays, punt, TV timeout, five plays, field goal, TV timeout, kickoff, TV timeout, someone gets hurt on first down, prolonged TV timeout, three more plays, touchdown, extra point, TV timeout, kickoff, TV timeout” gets old after about 25 minutes — and by 2006 Bug’s friends were making pro-and-con lists for keeping their tickets.
So, why haven’t they given them up yet?
“The tailgates,” Bug says grimly. “If we could take the tailgate and replicate the camaraderie in our backyard, we’d do it.”
Yikes. Even those tailgates became less enjoyable when the Patriots opened Patriot Place this season, a super-mall/mega-complex that bumped fans out of the main parking lot unless they paid an extortion fe— er, a premium fee. Team Buggy now tailgates on the other side of Route 1 for $50, crammed between a zillion other cars in a miasma of charcoal fumes. It takes them 35-40 minutes to walk from this space and find their seats inside. It takes them another 90 minutes to get home because common fans can’t use the special access road for high rollers. Suddenly, it’s an 11-hour commitment — and a relatively expensive one — to hang out and support their favorite team in an increasingly somber stadium.
Heaven help Panthers fans should Carolina ever win a Super Bowl.
