Panthers have been a step short all season

By Darin Gantt - dgantt@carolina.rr.com

CHARLOTTE -- We're still at least a few weeks away from being able to make a declaration about the 2-3 Carolina Panthers, whether they have a chance to fix it or whether they're truly and finally sunk.

But what we saw last week proves that no matter what they do, there is a fundamental flaw to this team, something that's just a half-beat off, a underlying sense that no matter what they do, it's not going to turn out quite right.

If there's a one-play metaphor for the entire season, it was Dante Wesley's vicious launching of himself at Tampa Bay return man Clifton Smith.

All season long, the Panthers special teams have sagged under their own weight. They don't have enough athletes running down kicks, and they definitely lack the proper attitude. Wesley is as close as they have to someone like Michael Bates, Karl Hankton or Nick Goings, the kind of bell cow player in the kicking game who can define things by the sheer force of his willingness to throw himself headlong.

Unfortunately for Wesley, he threw himself at Smith too soon, and if the Bucs weren't as inept as they are, it could have been the kind of turning point for the other side.

If Wesley was a step later, and Smith had caught the ball, it would be the kind of percussive shot that would have pealed through the stadium. He would have been given a game ball, headlines, and pats on the back.

But like the Panthers season so far, he missed it by that much.

If nothing else, he has plenty of company in that regard.

Go through the litany of moves and nonmoves for the Panthers this offseason. At the time, all of them seemed logical, reasonable, if not a bit inevitable because of the one big call they made.

Even if you didn't agree with them, you could at least understand their logic.

I've said in this spot for roughly 10 months now that tagging Julius Peppers to keep him seemed counterproductive, that twisting a man's arm until he said “uncle” was no way to buy his loyalty, to invest him in your program. Even with that, you understand general manager Marty Hurney's unwillingness to give away an asset.

For three weeks, he was a million-dollar-a-week flop. The last two weeks, he's earning his money (hey, it's not mine), but there still seems to be something missing from this defense.

It's getting there, it's getting better, but it's doing so against the young and dysfunctional.

It's not that the Buffalo Bills are anything different, so it's not that throwing them on lockdown will prove anything.

Granted, if they lose to the Bills, it will teach us much.

The biggest thing they have to do is get Jake Delhomme's head on straight, because that has been the biggest mystery of the year.

The notion that Delhomme has always been this bad is a myth — he's a good quarterback playing poorly, not a bad quarterback.

Mostly, he doesn't look like himself.

It's nothing tangible, nothing you can point to and say “this is the one reason why.”

Like everything else with this team this year, it just doesn't seem to fit.

They hadn't run well all year, and then they ran. They haven't thrown to the tight end in generations, and now it's all they can hit. The key piece is still missing, and no one seems to know why.

The Panthers have a week to fix it, before they enter the meat of their schedule.

And based on what we've seen so far, there's no real conclusion to draw other than they might get close, but might not get there all year long.