Panthers/Bengals In-Depth

[panther4life]

No, we didn't suck on paper heading into the season. Great OL, best ground game in the NFL, stud WR, good D, promising young QB in Moore who tore it up to finish the prior year.

You say we sucked now.....but on paper we didn't suck at the time.

First of all I respect your opinion but I disagree. Normally I would not even carry on this argument but i'm bored to death at work and can't wait for the game so here we go just for the sake of killing time.

I thought you were referring to a game by game basis of how we looked on paper. I am not making any crazy predictions here about the regular season.

I just simply stated that from what I know or think I know about our team and what I have read about Cincy that we should beat them without their ever being much threat of us losing.

We have an unfair advantage in having more time time to game plan, getting a W seems more important to our Coaching staff this week than it does theirs, as evidenced by the fact our starters are going 3 quarters vs theirs only going 1 half.

You seem pretty confident that I am wrong but I have not heard your predcitions. Do you think we will win, lose or it will be to close of a game to call or what?

[kungfoodude]

Yeah, lets forget that we are starting a Qb who has been in the league 3 weeks and was reportedly going to need 2 or 3 years to learn an NFL offense. Let forget that while Smith and Newton worked out some in the offseason, they have not worked much at all in preseason. Lets forget that the Cincy will actually be gameplanning against Cam for the first time. Lets forget we don't have our right side of the line intact and are still installing plays.

Yeah the offense should be firing on all cyclinders and putting up the points just like the Jets who went to the AFC championship game last year, has the same offense and defense and increased their offensive weapons with a quarterback who has been in the league for several years.

Newsflash!!! We will look pretty rough in the regular season for the first half at least.

Calm down, ese. I expect us to stink this year anyway for pretty much most of the reasons you have in your first paragraph. I'm just saying Cincy is a good measuring stick for how bad we are going to stink for the first half of the season.

[rayzor]

No, we didn't suck on paper heading into the season. Great OL, best ground game in the NFL, stud WR, good D, promising young QB in Moore who tore it up to finish the prior year.

You say we sucked now.....but on paper we didn't suck at the time.

agreed. there was really very little reason to believe that this team would have done so poorly. even being the massive critic of fox that i have been the past few years i didn't think he would pussy out like that as a coach.

i didn't think that matt moore was going to lead us to the promised land on his shoulders, but i thought when he had played he had done a very respectable job. nothing flashy, but still a very solid QB.

going into last year we still had a stud Oline. only issue was RG, but we had done well in the past filling in holes like that. we had a great Oline coach that had always done a good job of getting guys coached up and prepared. no one knew that otah was going to be out as long as he was, but even when he was out the year before, we did well.

we still had steve smith and the best RB corps in the league. all the young WRs needed to do was take pressure off smith. should have been an easy enough job if we just were able to spread the ball around. 34&28 had done well at showing you can't stack the box on them. they set records only a year earlier with pretty close to the same cast and coaching staff. very little reason to believe they couldn't be respectable still.

we had lost a couple vets on offense, but moose was slowing down (though he probably could have played at a respectable level last year) and losing him didn't seem like it would have been a big deal. brad hoover was just getting hurt a lot. the tough thing about being a FB is that it takes years to get to a point where you can do a great job of blocking, but by the time you get there your body has taken such a huge beating you have a very short shelf life. it was time to move on.

on defense...losing diggs wasn't that big of a deal. he didn't play all that much even when he wasn't hurt. chris harris was a field general and would have helped. we lost a couple key cogs at DT and DE seemed a bit weaker not having pep around, but still, the rest of the defense should have been able to do a respectable job.

i said respectable for much of that...not dominant...respectable. i wasn't looking at playoffs, but i was looking at 7-9 or 8-8. losing all but 2 games wasn't something i would have seriously considered and i doubt any but the most chicken little pessimistic people would have thought that possible.

on paper it looked like a mediocre, but still fairly respectable team....not a joke.

[Ricky Spanish]

Nobody likes a negative Nancy! Oh yeah, do the words Cam to Smitty mean anything to you? How about Cam to Olsen/Shockey/Nanne/Edwards/Pilares?

DeAngelo/Stewart?

No way in hell we lose this game tonight bro

No way in hell our Defense looks that pooty twice in a row.

The new Era begins tonight. I'm excited to see how they will roll offensively. It will be important for them to know that they can do it going into the Season opener. This is what u call a confidence building game.

Go get em Cam and company! We (the fans) are anticipating your coming out party tonight!

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ugh...

[panthers55]

Calm down, ese. I expect us to stink this year anyway for pretty much most of the reasons you have in your first paragraph. I'm just saying Cincy is a good measuring stick for how bad we are going to stink for the first half of the season.

Thanks for bumping my post. I was right on every point. I am not mad or upset just letting you know what was going to happen.