Panthers working out issues from last season's playoff loss to Cards

By Darin Gantt - daringantt@carolina.rr.com

CHARLOTTE -- The Carolina Panthers deny there has been a lingering effect from January's home playoff loss to Arizona.

But it's worth noting heading into today's road rematch that the Panthers simply haven't been the same since.

“Nobody should be thinking about anything that happened last year in that playoff game,” defensive end Julius Peppers said sharply.

So was there a carryover?

“No,” Peppers said emphatically.

There does exist, however, some evidence to the contrary.

Prior to the Cardinals' 33-13 demolition of the Panthers at Bank of America Stadium, the Panthers were 12-4. Since then, not so good.

“I can't say it wasn't a factor this year, but I don't think that was the case,” fullback Brad Hoover said. “I wish I knew what the case was. That's what makes it so frustrating at times. Most of the time it's like that. You can't put your finger on it. You think you might know but you don't.

“It's just one of those things you can't explain.”

There's nothing in particular the Cardinals did that night to disrupt the Panthers' mojo.

You could say that by pressing quarterback Jake Delhomme into five interceptions, they laid out the blueprint for his disastrous 13-pick start to this season. But making him hurry was the book on Delhomme long before that playoff loss. You could say they attacked a defense that was leaking oil down the stretch, but the unit wasn't that much worse against the Cardinals than it had been the previous month.

The Panthers actually started well, with a textbook first drive heavy on the run. But then Arizona scored 33 unanswered points, and it was over in a hurry.

“I felt like we had a pretty good team last year and a shot to contend,” Hoover said. “To end the way it did, in our own house, and to get beat the way we did made for a long offseason.

“Being in this league long enough, anything can happen, and you have to know that. If you don't come to play, no matter if you think you're ready or not, you're going to get your tail whooped in this league. That's what happened to us.”

It keeps happening.

Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner said he recalled a similar situation when he was in St. Louis, that the expectations created by the record-setting 2001 season (which ended with a Super Bowl loss to New England) was difficult to maintain.

“We were the team that was supposed to win, we were the favorites; It was almost a failure when we didn't win the Super Bowl,” Warner said. “We put a lot of pressure on ourselves and the next year we came back and we were 0-5.”

Unfortunately for the Panthers, that thing hadn't come yet, and the way they lost that game left them reeling.

“Sick. Sick. Extremely sick,” Panthers linebacker Thomas Davis said. “I definitely felt like going into that game we were the better team. And everybody pretty much knew we were the better team going into that game, but they went out and performed better than we did that night. They went on and kept going, and we went home — we stayed home.

“Whenever a team comes into your house and embarrasses you like that, you're always going to go back out and play them better than the last time you played them. We're definitely looking to do that, and definitely looking to win this game.”