Blame our 1-4 start on Meadows

You can just blame it all on Meadows


By Darin Gantt The Herald
(Published October 20‚ 2004)


CHARLOTTE -- Rarely does one player, or one decision, change the fate of an entire season.
Typically, the NFL is too complicated for that.

Ricky Williams going on tour with the Grateful Dead didn't cause Miami to be 0-6, nor did the departure of Warren Sapp lead Tampa Bay to stink.

In the context of the Carolina Panthers' current struggles, there are enough dots to connect straight back to right tackle Adam Meadows' decision to retire in August.

If you simply must have a scapegoat for their 1-4 start, he qualifies.

It's not that he simply left them to renovate the whole house when most teams were arranging the furniture in August. He also prevented them from improving in other areas, or at least having some continuity in an area which sorely needed it.

In the tranquil pool of their Super Bowl afterglow, Meadows did a cannonball. The ripples are still being felt, and the Panthers are the one taking the short-term soaking.

They knew his shoulders were going bad when they signed him and admitted as much. But they also thought they'd get a few years out of him, badly underestimating his desire and willingness to play with pain.

He's enjoying a comfortable retirement, and they're hanging on for dear life, hoping to keep a running game, a quarterback and morale intact.

Meadows was at best a serviceable tackle, a few years younger and (they thought) a trade-up from Todd Steussie, who played gamely last year but not as well as in the past.

If nothing else, Meadows would have been a stabilizing force, while they tried to piece together a guard rotation from guys who were completely inexperienced (Tutan Reyes), recently retired (Rich Tylski) and heavily tattooed (Doug Brzezinski).

Instead, they were scrambling at three positions, assuming that Jordan Gross would make a seamless transition from right to left tackle.

It now appears to have been too much to ask.

Gross has been jumpy at times (two false starts Sunday), and the guard play has not been good. Thrust-into-the-fire right tackle Matt Willig got killed for his flag-routine in Denver, but on the whole hasn't played as poorly as some would suggest.

The sum of the odd parts is less than what they expected. The reason the Steussie/Kevin Donnalley/Jeno James line was better had more to do being together three years than supreme talent. None will be fitted for yellow Hall of Fame blazers, although all were above-average players.

On the other hand, if Meadows hadn't signed, things could potentially be worse, as hard as that might be to believe.

The Panthers weren't going to hand out a $14.5 million signing bonus for tackle John Tait like the Bears did, nor were they going to pay Todd Wade $10 million up front as Houston chose to do.

If it weren't for Meadows, the Panthers would have most likely stuck with Steussie, switched him to the right side and hoped for the best.

The organization obviously felt his skills were declining, or else they wouldn't have cut him. Faced with no options, they'd have tried to pump another year out of what appears to be a dry well.

Steussie did what many washed-up players do, finding Jon Gruden and opening his wallet to cash a $4 million bonus/lottery ticket.

Since then, he's held the door for perennial disappointment Kenyatta Walker to start in his place, making him a very expensive stable pony.

He could have done the same thing here.

That would have been no help on the field and a fiscal disaster.

Since Steussie's cap hit for the year would have been roughly double that of Meadows', it's not as if they could have kept Steussie and spent on better guards.

That chance exists next year, when Steussie's off the books and they get a credit for Meadows. They'll have funds available to improve their line, which no matter how much they protest, they need to do.

That doesn't help this season. For that, they can thank Meadows for quitting when they needed him.

It's a complicated system, a mess with many ingredients.

Meadows going soft on them certainly hurt, and it hurt them more than anybody will acknowledge.

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Blame Canada.

 

El Nino.

 

I like to place blame on solar flares and cosmic radiation whenever possible.

 

Blame It On The Rain

Milli Vanilli - 1990

 

Blame it on the Bosa nova

Eadie Gourmet - way back

 

No, we had to have blamed it on the Bossa Nova back when Seafart was here. Remember his Visa commercial a long time ago?

 

that was a pretty low ball move by medows to sign a contract with no intentions of playing.

 

But he gave warning, remember this? :

From indystar.com:

Quote:
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Meadows finished his seventh season on injured reserve after undergoing shoulder surgery in late December. He realizes he might have played his final game for the team that selected him in the second round of the 1997 draft.

"I don't want to play too much longer," said Meadows, who turns 30 next Monday, "but it would be nice to fulfill the length of my contract. Hopefully we can find a way to make it work."

 

I guess that he meant that he wanted to fulfill the length of his contract with INDY. :huh: