I don't see why we can't make the playoffs this year.

[panthers55]

The issue for me isn't that this couldn't be a playoff team. If everything goes well and everyone and their replacements play up to their potential we could surprise everyone. I just know that being a Panthers fan since the beginning, we rarely have those seasons. Last one like that for me was 2003. There is just little room for error and it clearly isn't a given like some folks seem to think.

[Cyberjag]

2008 was another. In both those years the injuries we had came at areas we could cover. I've been thinking of doing a blog post on injuries during the Fox era that goes over that. It's not about staying healthy--no NFL team does that. It's about sustaining when the injuries do happen, and Fox/Hurney have historically not done well there.

[panthers55]

2008 was another. In both those years the injuries we had came at areas we could cover. I've been thinking of doing a blog post on injuries during the Fox era that goes over that. It's not about staying healthy--no NFL team does that. It's about sustaining when the injuries do happen, and Fox/Hurney have historically not done well there.

I was going to include 2008 and 2005 but didn't because what I was talking about things falling right for us and remaining injury free at key positions. In 2008 and again in 2005 we didn't have a slew of injuries but we didn't reallly stay injury free either. And we also had some glaring holes on both those teams. When Jenkins went down Carstens stepped up admirably but we never replaced him. In neither year did we have a great passing game. In 2005 Smitty was unreal but he was a 1 man show. When he got shut down we were pretty one dimensional. Our running game wasn't that great. The defense really carried us.

In 2008 we had a phenomenal running game but again outside of Smitty has little else but Moose. When teams stopped the run, we really had nothing else. We scored alot of points particularly at the end of the season but our defense was not that great and we struggles to stop folks when we needed to. And our defense was bad partucularly when Kemo and Lewis went down.

I wouldn't say we had great depth in 2008 either. Our defensive line outside of the starters was suspect, our line play was not great on either side of the ball when key players like Gross or Kemo got hurt and I didn't think that we got very many lucky breaks. Otherwise for example Kasay's kick in New York doesn't hook and we win in regulation. Going 12-4 means things couldn't have gone terribly wrong wither but I don't think we had depth or many breaks in 2008.

I just think that the last time the stars aligned for us was in 2003. before that it was 1996.