Published: Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2009 / Updated: Thursday, Nov. 26, 2009 10:25 PM

Fox is just an easy target

CHARLOTTE -- This is when they've always been their best.

But you wonder at the moment if the last six weeks are going to matter for the Carolina Panthers.

The time for talking about playoff berths and late runs has come and gone.

What's left at this point is what will remain when it's over and what direction this team will take when the last six results are logged.

But there are six to be played, and they'll be instructive at some level.

In his career with the Panthers, December's clearly been coach John Fox's best month, with a .636 winning percentage in the season's final month (including January regular-season games).

“People remember what you do in December,” he's told his players about a million times.

Compared to his .538 mark in September, .531 in October and .484 in November, he better hope so.

But the easy thing to say is that the final six could be a referendum on the future of Fox, that the effort he gets out of this roster in a generally hopeless stretch of games could dictate whether he's allowed to remain.

At the same time, you almost have to wonder if it's fair to judge him with the present roster. This Panthers team might not have enough players left at the right spots to be competitive, so not being competitive might not necessarily indicate coaching acumen.

If you think he should go, that's fine, but it's only intellectually honest if you've thought it for more than two months.

Otherwise, this ship has sailed, and tying future decisions to the next six weeks seems silly unless the team obviously and completely checks out on Fox.

General manager Marty Hurney has a few guiding principles, most of which he picked up from his old boss, Bobby Beathard.

The one that endures for him, and the one with the practical application at the moment, is that it's hard to evaluate individual parts when a whole has gone wrong.

Would Fox be a bad coach if he can't get James Anderson and Dan Connor to play like linebackers Thomas Davis and Na'il Diggs?

Would Fox be a bad coach if Mackenzy Bernadeau (the seventh-round pick from Division II Bentley) doesn't play left guard the way Travelle Wharton does?

Would Fox be a bad coach if rookie fullbacks don't play the way Brad Hoover does?

Injuries alone can't be the reason you bring him back.

To do that, you'd have to look at the entire record.

You have to decide what you trust more, seven years or one.

You have to decide how committed you are to building a consistent program, because you don't get to be consistent by changing plans every half-decade.

That's the decision the Panthers have to make, and make soon.

Players come and players go, but systems are what provide consistent winners, teams that are pertinent even when they're not at the top of the heap.

So the question for owner Jerry Richardson has to be whether he thinks the system as currently constructed is the one he wants to continue with.

Changing coaches, changing front office personnel seems cathartic to fans, the kind of sweeping change that soothes feelings in the short term.

But then comes the pesky problem of deciding what kind of team you want to be again.

And that's why my guess is that whatever decision's going to be made already has been made by the one guy that counts.

Because making decisions you hope to last a decade based on six weeks simply doesn't make sense.