Why 2010 Means Nothing to the Carolina Panthers (no smack)

[Neylus]

Lol @ the smack talking Bucs fans, where have you been the last few years. Oh yeah you guys beat the Browns last weekend so now your back, LMAO.

[bigskypanthersguy]

Summation: both teams suck, and Sunday is gonna be a quadriplegic versus paraplegic UFC pillow-fight. That cover it?

[cbarrier90]

Then please by all means help me understand how the Bucs are a team on the rise? If you can do that for me, then I will gladly back down and not engage in anymore discussion.

But, but, but...they absolutely dominated the AFC powerhouse Cleveland Browns last week!...

[CharlotteBeer.com]

Lol @ the smack talking Bucs fans, where have you been the last few years. Oh yeah you guys beat the Browns last weekend so now your back, LMAO.

It would be like Panthers fans assuming the Panthers are contenders after beating the Bucs this Sunday.

Wait, I think I just broke the fourth wall.

[CharlotteBeer.com]

The only decent point you can glean from this thread is that both Tampa and Carolina are in "rebuilding mode." It's far too simplistic to assume Tampa is way ahead in this process just because they purged 90 percent of their aging roster two years ago, and the Panthers have only just begun to take similar actions.

Also note that when they did so, the Panthers had a far more impressive core of players -- both offensively and defensively -- than the Bucs did or do. I would also say that in most cases, the Panthers had better options behind the players they cut or didn't resign. I still don't know if that's the case in Tampa Bay. I like Freeman, but has he really even proven himself to be a better quarterback than Garcia? I think it's debatable.

[Peppers90 NC]

the main difference b/t TB and Carolina, is TB finds themselves in the basement of our division every other year. With the exception of this year and last, will be consecutive basement dwellers.

[Mr. Scot]

When you're recovering from the retirement home that used to be One Buc Place, you're going to take some lumps. Tampa flushed out all the bullcrap remaining from the Gruden/Allen era and left only the parts that worked. The only thing remaining that is questionable is Sabby Piscatelli, and he's not even a starter and is back on special teams.

The deal is with your franchise, is you NEED to rebuild around that running game. You need a front office sweep. Name one thing Carolina has ever done dominately enough to win a Super Bowl? Nothing. John Fox has been blowing the whistle on the mediocrity train there for far too long. Tampa did the exact same thing as Carolina since winning the Super Bowl. But the difference is, we discovered it and took care of it and are starting brand new but in a similar mold.

This Sunday shouldn't matter whatsoever to you. Because the sad fact that is burning in the back of your mind is you won't do anything this year. Or next year. Or the year after that. Because you'll still be sitting at a traffic light with Fox driving the car while other teams are driving right past you.

The prime years of DeAngelo and Stewart (the only two players you have to look forward to) are going to be wasted while you're sitting there doing nothing.

With a new regime comes new change. Carolina's regime doesn't work at all. But they're still there, while precious minutes on a short shelf life position drip away like wax on a candle.

The way you should see it, is that Tampa is AT LEAST two years ahead of you. You'll be scratching your head at who is coming in next to lead your little pity party in Carolina next year. Then they'll purge the roster AGAIN after you lost a lot of veteran experience this very year.

All the while you're doing that we'll be adding the handful of pieces we need to make this team a complete foundation, while your guys are dropping magnets off the white board the 2010 Panthers depth chart was on.

Matt Moore is the future huh? What about Clausen? No? Maybe? Well while you're finding that out in 2011, our guy will be in his third year. With our bright shiny receivers you wish you had and a brand new runningback acquired from the April Event, extra O-Line reinforcement, and pass rush.

Whatever era you had is done. Enjoy the scrap heap for a while. Have fun sitting in pit row, while everyone else is on the track.

That's pretty much all smack actually (and weak, at that).

[The Graduate]

Not smacking here but to imply to OP made a post and cut out because more posters came on board is wrong. He is at work and will be back when he can.

[tbf]

Bucs 1-0 Kitties 0-1. Dang Carolina just got their butts handed to them by the Giants. They just let the likes of Eli Manning and Nicks score on them with ease. Bucs offense is more balanced and has a better wr in Mike Williams than any of the Giants wrs. You guys know darn well that every year out matchups are pretty close and hard fought. You guys better do better stopping the pass or this week could be worse than last week.

What I find funny is people talk about getting rid of Jake made your team better. So you put in his backup to save your team. If the guy was so good why didnt he beat out Jake last year for the starting role. Why did they wait until the season was a wash before letting him play? Sounds like they have a lot of faith in Moore, so much they drafted Clausen.

[Peppers90 NC]

Bucs 1-0 Kitties 0-1. Dang Carolina just got their butts handed to them by the Giants. They just let the likes of Eli Manning and Nicks score on them with ease. Bucs offense is more balanced and has a better wr in Mike Williams than any of the Giants wrs. You guys know darn well that every year out matchups are pretty close and hard fought. You guys better do better stopping the pass or this week could be worse than last week.

What I find funny is people talk about getting rid of Jake made your team better. So you put in his backup to save your team. If the guy was so good why didnt he beat out Jake last year for the starting role. Why did they wait until the season was a wash before letting him play? Sounds like they have a lot of faith in Moore, so much they drafted Clausen.

ok guy, you sure do know your football don't you? we arent good, but the buccs put the uck in suck.

[AcousticSoup]

See here's the thing f**kstick. The Panthers are already younger than the Tampa Bay Paddle Boat rowers.

Avg Age

31 Tampa Bay Bucs 25.10

32 Carolina Panthers 25.00

So your point on rebuilding is moot.

One tenth of a year. That's five weeks. Your team is five weeks younger. Congratulations. You proved what exactly?

Secondly you have no room to talk about player name notoriety. Your team is the epitome of irrelevancy at almost every position. The only reason people know Freeman is because he is one of a hand full of black quarterbacks (to bad he's horrible) and Cadillac because of his college career.

We're just as irrelevant as Carolina is, the two names you guys have is Deangelo and Steve Smith. Kellen Winslow maybe? That ring a bell?

And Freeman's skin color has nothing to do with his fame. I live in Oklahoma, and no one knows who Freeman or Matt Moore is. Once again, congratuations on being nameless half a country away.

Your defense is even less noteworthy, the only household name is Barber and he's incredibly overrated. Enjoy watching him get pounded into the turf by stiff arms all day. So your comments on our seconday having no names is completely ridiculous and reeks of your own insecurities of your own team (you'll know every player on our defense after this Sunday I promise)

Some people talk about how Tampa lives in the past with their Super Bowl, but what you guys replying back to me don't realize is that Carolina has done nothing to improve themselves for this year which is what the original topic is about.

Barber is overrated? He's going into the Hall of Fame for being the only corner ever to have over 20 picks and 20 sacks in his career. And he's approaching the 30/30 club in that respect. Overrated? No. Versatile. Yes.

I have no insecurities on my team to be honest. I have a complete objective view of them. My wishlist for next year is a Pass Rushing DE, a new RB, and a Right Tackle that doesn't cause penalties.

I also would like to know where you get the assumption that Fox will be here after this year anyhow? The general consensus is that the odds of this happening are slim to none. So sorry to ruin your little circle jerk homer fest hoping that Fox will be around for years to validate your pathetic post but it's wrong.

That's the point I'm trying to make. Carolina is currently staring down the barrel of a very big gun. A mediocre season in 2010 because of your inexperience and lack of direction, and a coaching change in 2011.

When you guys bring in a new coach, your entire team with change. Your O-Line blocking philosopy will change, your defense will change, your offense will change, everything will change. And it won't be what Fox had before which is conservative football (hardly any coach does that anymore).

You guys lost a ton of veteran players in the offseason. And that was without a coaching change. With a coaching change in 2011, it's only going to get worse. Have fun.

See the problem with being a homer is that you only really know your own team, you really have no clue as to how this team is run or it's roster depth so run along back to your sinking state and wallow in self loathing with the rest of your sweaty northern transplant buddies.

I'm not a homer, i know football. I know the direction my team is heading and I like what i see.

Anyone with football sense (and not homer tendencies) will be able to tell you that a one dimensional football team will not work. Especially a one dimensional football team that has a head coach staring into the barrel of the unemployment shotgun.

And can anyone seriously not make a statement without calling people names or degrading a state's inhabitants?

The topic clearly says "No Smack". A rule that is followed by everyone that is NOT a Panthers fan.

[Swashbuckler]

Then please by all means help me understand how the Bucs are a team on the rise? If you can do that for me, then I will gladly back down and not engage in anymore discussion.

I'll start on defense.

We just started recently. The Lions thought it would be cool to say "HEY LOOK AT US!! WATCH US COMPLETELY IGNORE OUR NEED AT LT WHILE WE TAKE SUH!" Poor Stafford.

Alright, alright onto the real story!!!

So we went off and took Gerald McCoy who's 3 technique ability is a perfect fit for our Tampa 2 defense. That by itself lives and dies by how much pressure the front 4 can create. Rush 4, drop 7, combine a little bit of zone coverage and utilizing man coverage for short periods of time, well timed blitzes and you will have a defense with ZERO weaknesses (See 2002 Buccaneers defense which became the first since the '85 Bears to rank 1st in every major defensive statistical category) The pressure is on McCoy to learn to utilize his strength and technique, and with time he will get better. There is a very hard learning curve for DT's in the NFL. Even the great Warren Sapp went through it.

Our problems last year can be attributed to the fact that we decided to steadily move away this scheme while not having any players suited for doing it on our front 4. We go back to the simple Tampa 2 and our defense ranked an average of #12th best once Raheem took over it and dumped Jim Bates. Add Gerald McCoy and Brain Price (whose specialty is wreaking havoc in the backfield) and you're gonna get some disruption from the middle. When you get that kind of pressure, our boy Aqib Talib is at his best. Watch him some time! He is like gorilla glue in coverage. But of course when your QB has all day to throw, your DBs are going to be FAR less effective. Barrett Ruud is like Jon Beason in the fact that he is a tackling machine, he is the defensive QB if you will, and a big leader on the team. Check their stats, they're awful similar.

Then comes Tanard Jackson who is an expert and diagnosing the deep play and knocking suckas out. Unfortunately for him, he played alongside Sabby "Misscatelli" and any and all plays that got past the LB crew usually went yard because Talib and Barber couldn't always catch up to haul them down.

These are the cornerstones of our defense. It's not pretty or conventional by any measure at this point, but they played so much better once Morris took over. And that was BEFORE we acquired Price and McCoy.

As for the offense, I'll break it down player by player.

Josh Freeman.............. Josh Freeman....... Oh boy where do I start here? Rocket arm, excellent mobility and the kid has poise and leadership like no rookie I've ever seen. But the kid is still green, accuracy is iffy and he still makes mistakes. Despite this, the Buccaneers faithful know how potentially great this young man could be. Had the defense not succumbed to Miami and Atlanta and Josh Freeman's record would stand at a lofty 6-4, not a bad record for a guy who hadn't played a full 16 games yet and this is with a relatively poor team around him.

Kellen Winslow. What can I say? He's a soldier. He put up one of the finest seasons by a Buccaneers tight end in team history and STILL could've done better. Not since Jimmy Giles have we had TE that played at such a high caliber. He lost marks with me shying away from the physical play. I'm willing to forgive and forget. Browns fans act like "Oh yeah, no big deal he's gone." Trust me... the bulk of them would give up their seasons tickets for him to come back.

Mike Williams and Rejus Benn, It's too early to tell with them so I'll let the film do the talking. Look up Williams' TD catch last week and Benn's catches against Houston in the final game of the preseason. It led to the announcer crying out "THIS KID'S GONNA BE A PRO BOWLER!" They have limitless potential as a tandem. To sum up Mike Williams, he's like having spider man on your team and Rejus Benn is a yard after catch monster who fights for every square inch of turf. He will probably be best used for shorter yardage plays of 10 yards or so while Mike can go deep.

Carnell Williams, my favorite player, the come back kid.. the freaking Cadillac!!! His knees are as good as they have ever been. Jon Gruden had a fetish for abandoning the run game and forgetting that our boy Cadillac gets stronger as the game goes on. He has the heart of a lion and runs like one too. He MIGHT be on his last legs (literally) but he is still effective. If you ever want to see him at his finest, look up his performance against New Orleans in our upset. He can still do it... and he will do it. In the wings lies Kareem Huggins who can run like the wind and LeGarrett Blount who runs like a bull in a china shop. This season will answer if they can provide a solution at RB. Based on what we've seen so far.. the answer is "Oh Lord yes!"

Odds and ends: Davin Joseph is a stud guard. How he has made the pro bowl only ONCE is beyond me. Anyone whose got love for the big dogs up front should watch him play. He is dominating in every since of the word. Jeff Faine is invaluable in terms of leadership, not the best center in the world, but he leaves it all out on the field, doesn't make excuses and he gets the job done week in and week out. Man's a ball player and one of my favorites on the offense.

This is what I smack for. This is why I dare to dream. This is why I love my Buccaneers. Anyone can have an opinion, I choose mine to be that we are a team destined for great things. We can only go "up" from here. At least so far in our season, our record is indicative of this.

[CharlotteBeer.com]

Really, the only part of this Panthers team I'm truly concerned about is the passing game. Yes, that's a pretty big deal, and I'm not happy with the play of our offensive line, quarterback or wide receivers, but we've already at the very least addressed these positions.

Isn't that what this thread is about?

Our pass defense had a bad game last week, but that same squad (minus Chris Harris) was good enough to field one of the league's best pass defenses last year. Going into the season, we worried about stopping the run and rushing the passer, but it seems we have the personnel to do that.

I think the defense is improved. As for the offense, you can count on our running game to be effective, and hopefully some of these young receivers will improve as the season goes on.

If Tampa Bay fans want to resort to bragging about just the latest game, I'm a little surprised that they would choose such an unimpressive performance over one of the league's least impressive teams to do it.

[Hairless Cat]

soup is the tampon equivalent of the mumbling redneck panther fan we were treateed to last week