Or knows nothing about football. Pick one.
His lame smack-down of Jake Delhomme completely misses what ails the Panthers. To paraphrase Rick Pitino from his Celtic days, Peyton Manning ain’t walking thru that door; Troy Aikman ain’t walking thru that door. Jake is a functional, if flawed, NFL QB. Show me the list of QBs with road playoff game wins under the their belt.
Uh-huh. There. That was fast. Jake will have to do. Jake should do.
As I pointed out before, 13 points should have beaten the sorry, no-account Skin offense. But, no, John Fox’s counter-punching defense could not roll out and deliver a blow when it counted. Contrast his no-blitz gameplan vs. DC to the Ravens’ Super Bowl team which attacked every play of every game; to the Bucs’ trophy-grabbing run. Both teams featured deeply, deeply flawed offenses with nary a weapon like Steve Smith, but yet they somehow managed to win big.
Why? Because they played to win. Not keep it close and win on a John Kasay 50-yarder as time expires. The Panthers cannot do that anymore, they cannot counter-punch because they are getting everyone’s best punch from the coin flip on. The Panther braintrust acts like they can ink Keyshawn in the offseason, get on everyone’s Super Bowl short-list and still play like a plucky wild card hopeful coming off a 1-15 outing. Nope.
You cannot counter-punch if you are getting hit in the mouth all game long. Other teams are going to take Steve Smith away and dare you to do something about it. Ideally, the Panthers’ OL could dictate a running game. That is not here this year. Get over it. Next?
How about taking those millions you spent on the defense and going on the offense? Why not actually blitz a second-game starter with 6, 7, 8, 9 guys as the default mode, rather than the change-up?
Again, this is not second-guessing, this was predicted on Friday. So was the Chris Cooley career day. The NFL is not that hard. For some of us, anyway.
Here’s the current state of the NFL in Charlotte: Local official media outlets are afraid to criticize John Fox and GM Marty Hurney for a season gone bad.* Consequently, the franchise’s manifest unwillingness to trust Jake with ballgames is twisted to be only Jake’s fault, rather than a faulty game-plan assumption. I half-wish that Fowler gets his wish and Chris Weinke gets some meaningful snaps in the next few weeks.
The results for the Panthers will be exactly the same or worse as with Jake, barring a change in defensive attitude and schemes. Now back to the crack rocks.
*Make no mistake, the way the Panther organization knee-capped radio voice Bill Rosinski for wondering out loud about an NFC Championship ring in 2003 left a big horse-head in the Charlotte media landscape. Message: Team player. Or else.
