Press mostly Panthers so far?

Most of the press that I have visited (on the web) for the past week has been focused mainly on the Panthers (KFFL, CBS, ESPN, etc). Does anyone here have any opinion as to why our guys would be getting the lions share of early attention? I know that the underdog thing is big with the media and that’s probably part of it. Maybe they are trying to get our “castoffs & misfits” that they feel no one knows a damn thing about introduced to the world. I don’t think I like it. IMO Belichick and Co are doing a better job so far of staying under the radar and keeping a low profile (and all those other tired cliches). I wish our guys were not being quoted about how confident and relaxed they are.(

 

Bill Belicek is Coach of the year and an anointed genius. Everybody knows Tom Brady. The Patriots were there two years ago. They come in on a fifteen game winning streak. They're much more of a known quantity.
We were 7-9 last year, picked to finish last in our division this year, supposed to loose at St. Louis and supposed to loose at Philadelphia. We're not supposed to be here so nobody knows much about us beyond Stephen Davis. Now they're stuck with us. So, naturally, the media has a lot of catching up to do.

 

Sporting News is not our friend...

Dave Kindred /
Posted: 6 hours ago

My perfect football game would involve 120 passes.



Nothing is much more beautiful than a ball describing an arc through the sky on its rise and descent to a man in full flight himself. Montana to Rice, Bradshaw to Swann, Manning to Harrison. It all seems so impossible until it's done, and then it's so breathtaking you want to see it done again. Maybe we'd run the ball two or three times a day, mix in a draw just to keep the defense honest. Otherwise, we'd put air under it and keep it flying.

So I have a sense that Super Bowl XXXVIII might not be my cup of tea. More likely, it will be my cup of tea smashed into my teeth.

SUPER BOWL AT A GLANCE


Date: Sunday,
Feb. 1
Time: 6:25 p.m. ET
Site: Reliant Stadium, Houston, Texas (capacity: 71,054)
TV: CBS

GameTrax: Panthers vs. Patriots

Panthers team report

Patriots team report

Head to head: Patriots vs. Panthers



What the Patriots did to Peyton Manning and Marvin Harrison in the AFC championship game was remind us again that whatever else football is, it is first a contest of man-to-man physical strength. He who hits hardest, fastest and most often wins.

Fourteen games in a row now, the Patriots have won operating from the basic philosophy that football is a hurtin' game, and he who brings the heaviest hurt wins. Be nice if the Patriots were to play their philosophic opposites in a Super Bowl, but in fact they dispensed with that airy debate by pounding the Colts into disoriented submission. Now they go at a lesser version of themselves, the Panthers.

Nice team, the Panthers. A thrilling example of the NFL's razor's edge separating travail from triumph: Across their last 50 games, they went 3-23 and then 18-6. Good for Charlotte, too, where for too long the sports pages ran lurid with tales of alcoholism, racism, murder for hire, murder by passion, sexual harassment and death by street racing.


Can Jake Delhomme succeed against the defense that humbled Peyton Manning? Not likely.
Associated Press

Still. It's a football game, not a feelgoodfest.

Give me the Patriots, 31-7.

Send flowers to poor Jake Delhomme, the Panthers' quarterback, an unassuming player who has, of course, much to be unassuming about. For a long while he'd been one of the hundreds of quarterbacks good enough to hang around pro football but not good enough to start, let alone star. Second-string in Europe, second-string in the NFL until this season. Suddenly, he's a starter, a star, and now a central figure in a Super Bowl.

As a measure of Delhomme's unassuming nature, it has been pointed out that the Panthers have won five times when his passing accounted for fewer than 150 yards. Even in the NFC championship, he threw only 14 passes, his fewest all year. Clearly, he is no quarterback demanding ego massage weekly. The more basic message, however, is that the Panthers win by limiting Delhomme's contributions rather than depending on them.

"Statistics," Delhomme has said repeatedly, as if reciting a mantra imposed upon his psyche by the Panthers' coach, John Fox, "are for losers."

Delhomme's acceptance of that plain distortion of truth is all the evidence we need to know he's a quarterback in over his head in this Super Bowl. Look. The Patriots led the NFL in interceptions (29) while giving up the fewest touchdown passes (11) and leaving opponents' quarterbacks with the lowest rating in the league (56.2). Those statistics are for winners.

Even now, near on to two weeks since the meltdown, the research and development people at The Manning Quarterback Factory are working to understand what went wrong against the Patriots.

Peyton Manning had been operating at peak efficiency. The league's co-MVP, he seemed, at last, the perfect evolutionary product of the Manning gene pool. In two playoff games: 681 yards, eight touchdown passes, no interceptions, 79 points. Wonderfully, one's eyes fell on Manning and saw Joe Montana, only taller.

The beauty of Montana, of course, is that he did it time after time, in sun and snow, on the road, at home, against good teams and great teams, every game one more chance to demonstrate the discipline, versatility and virtuosity that make him still the best big-game quarterback of all time.

It was high praise, then, when Manning's work in these playoffs caused typists to drop his name into sentences alongside Montana's. But soon enough, as always, we learned that no one's name belongs in a sentence with Montana's, unless it's a sentence saying, "Manning's relapse into his juvenile habit of spasmodic, groping 'happy feet' reminded everyone that Montana's feet were always elegant in movement, certain in purpose."

Manning's relapse was the result of physical pressure brought to bear in borderline illegal assaults on Colts receivers, defenseless victims of helmet-to-helmet attacks. The less sure-footed his receivers became, the more Manning had to buy time by improvisation, never his long suit. By the brute force of the Patriots' defense, the rhythm of his Montanaesque spell was broken; Manning was again the kid from Tennessee, happy feet skittering under him like mad.

He was 23-for-47. He threw four interceptions, one of which, a desperate kind of running-push-lob-prayer, may have been the ugliest pass ever thrown by a great quarterback. Manning took all the blame, but the truth that he couldn't acknowledge was that the Patriots' defense was simply better in all the important football ways than the Colts' offense.

And now, against that defense, comes one Jake Delhomme.

What Manning couldn't do, Delhomme will?

Please.

 

Sounds like the Panthers have it under control. Staying 20 minutes outside downtown. Getting the Veterans to monitor the rookies, etc. (Damn Pat, did you have to out Eugene Robinson though?)


HOUSTON - Fox warns Panthers of distractions Coach worried about off-field problems at recent Super Bowls Pat Yasinskas

HOUSTON -- Soon after the Carolina Panthers arrived at their team hotel Sunday night, John Fox talked to his team about avoiding some of the unpleasant ghosts of Super Bowl pasts.

"We had a meeting about staying out of trouble and watching what you do," safety and team captain Mike Minter said Monday.

Fox emphatically told his players to stay out of trouble. That's been a Super Bowl problem that, periodically, has surfaced for many years and Fox doesn't want a repeat as the Panthers prepare to face the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVIII on Sunday at Reliant Stadium.

"Every coach takes precautions," Fox said. "I don't know if you can ever guarantee anything (will not) happen off the field. I've visited with my team about this. I think we have good team leadership and they can monitor most of that. So I don't think we'll have any problems. The night before our Giants' Super Bowl, we stayed at our team hotel. We're still talking about what we might do this Saturday."

Carolina's team hotel, the Wyndham Greenspoint, is about a 20-minute drive from downtown Houston.

"We're staying out in the middle of nowhere for the simple fact that we're here for a business trip," Minter said. "Yes, we've got to do all this other stuff, but we're here for a business trip and we're here to win this football game."

That hasn't stopped players from other teams from straying in the past. Last year, the Oakland Raiders stayed about 30 minutes from downtown San Diego. But center Barrett Robbins reportedly went drinking in Tijuana, Mexico, and missed Saturday's practice. He later was hospitalized and missed Super Bowl XXXVII.

The night before Super Bowl XXXIV, Atlanta safety Eugene Robinson, now a radio broadcaster for the Panthers, was arrested for soliciting an undercover female police officer in Miami. Although Robinson played, Falcons players and coaches admitted the incident was a major distraction.

In 1989, Cincinnati fullback Stanley Wilson was found in a stupor in the bathtub of his Miami hotel room. Wilson later admitted he'd been using cocaine and did not play.

Each of those teams lost those Super Bowls. Minter said the Panthers already have taken measures to prevent off-field incidents.

"The veteran guys have talked to the younger guys," Minter said. "Coach Fox has done a great job of keeping us focused, keeping us in a position where we can just worry about football and not worry about all this other stuff. Can it happen? Yes, it can happen. But, hopefully, guys can focus on what we need to do. ... There's enough as it is. If guys pay attention to past history, then we'll be OK."

 

sounds like Mr. Kindred has discounted the Panthers defense entirely

 

Nobody knows Carolina.
But certainly, a lot of times lately we've seen the Panthers be the lead segment.
A lot of players are picking Carolina.

 

As far as staying under the radar there isn't much you can do to prevent the press from running stories about you if that is their intention.