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The opening day loss to Philadelphia was rough. But it was quick. Every time you turned your head the Eagles scored twice. Carolina was overwhelmed. The 28-point loss felt like a one-punch knockout.
The loss to Buffalo Sunday was infinitely more painful. It was delivered not with a single punch but with a series of jabs. The jabs, a mere flick of the hand, kept coming. The Panthers could see them. And they couldn't do a thing about it.
This was like the erratic drip of a leaky faucet, like the neighbor's dog barking into the night, like a gaggle of women, or guys, talking incessantly while you try to work out.
This was like watching the Car of Tomorrow, like driving on I-485 at 5:15 p.m., like finally getting the telephone call you have to have and losing the signal.
You know what the loss was?
It was George Seifert and Chris Weinke and the one-victory season of 2001.
And as bad as Carolina's 20-9 jab-by-jab and drip-by-drip home loss to Buffalo was, the season could get considerably worse.
The Panthers traded their first-round pick in the 2010 draft to San Francisco for the 43rd pick in the '09 draft, the pick Carolina used to take defensive end Everette Brown. What if the pick is so high that the 49ers are able to parlay it into their quarterback of the future?
The Panthers have no quarterback of the future or of the present. They did; he was David Carr. I'm serious. Had Jake Delhomme not been injured and Carr not been forced to play the 2007 season, he would be the heir. The Panthers tried to protect him because they knew he was shell shocked from the beating he took in Houston. But they couldn't.
Also, Carr, now Eli Manning's back-up in New York, would have had to ditch the color coordinated gloves.
Delhomme was terrible again and after the game he looked shaken in a way I have never seen. He threw three interceptions, the first one so high that tight end Gary Barnidge couldn't even get his fingers on it, and he's 6-5.
On the second, Delhomme missed Steve Smith.
"You've got to win," the quarterback says. "You've got to score touchdowns in this game. That's the way it is. As quarterback you're touching the ball every play. Somehow, some way, you've got to will your team into the end zone."
Instead, Carolina's defense outscored Carolina's offense until only 6½ minutes remained.
The Panthers are 2-4 and their schedule is loaded with teams decent to good to very good to, with the exception of Tampa Bay, better than Buffalo.
Even if you're an optimist, there's this.
The Panthers are not going to catch New Orleans in the NFC South. So the only way they make the playoffs is a stunning reversal and Wild Card berth. And they've already lost to Wild Card contenders Philadelphia, Atlanta and Dallas. So if there's a tiebreaker it won't go their way. The outlook is as bleak as the offense.
This one was difficult to watch. The Panthers moved downfield with ease. But when they got close, they failed. John Kasay is reliable. You know when you go to Bank of America Stadium that there are two certainties: Kasay will be true and thousands of fans will wear the other team's jersey.
But Kasay missed field goals of 43 and 38 yards.
A season ago the Panthers were 4-2 and about to embark on a four-game winning streak. But the NFL is the league in which teams reinvent themselves every season. This season's reinvention is an offense that, most of Sunday, produced fewer points than, a few hours later, the New York Yankees were likely to produce runs.
When there's a game-turning play to make, the other team makes it.
The run of head coach John Fox's run almost certainly will end when the season does, although it's absurd to suggest – as many fans have – that he be canned now. When Fox was hired, the Panthers were coming off their one-victory season. He fixed this team, led them to two NFC championship games and one Super Bowl. Daniel Snyder does not own the Panthers.
I've never been a fan of writers and broadcasters who try to be the first to say that hope is gone and the season has ended.
So let me be the last. Hope is gone and the season has ended.
