Peppers

Refresh my memory, we have to convince him to sign here (long term at a deal that is tradeable) before we could trade him otherwise we'd have to franchise him again, wait for him to sign the tender after all good free agents have signed thus prolonging this agony again.

 

There aren't a lot of long term deals that pay what he wants that would make a trade easy (bonus acceleration), they would have to franchise him again, or they could let him walk but then I'm not sure what people would bitch about.

 

it would be nice if Fox took off the kid gloves with Peppers. Heres Tampa coach Morris on Gaines Adams....classic Fox quote in bold

Morris deserves some time to let his approach take hold and there was a positive sign in Monday’s press conference. Morris is a motivator and a pretty straight-forward guy and that showed through when he criticized third-year defensive end Gaines Adams.

“He hasn’t [put forth the production], and I think Gaines knows that,” Morris said. “Gaines is one of those guys that knows that he is judged on whether he touches the quarterback or not. Right now he is not getting production as far as not just touching the quarterback, the tackles, the sacks. He’s not getting any of that. He is not playing up to par right now. He’s holding himself accountable. We have to hold him accountable, and it is tough right now. He is not getting it done. There are no excuses. There are no explanations. Gaines is not getting it done right now.”

Good for Morris for being honest and not giving the answer so many coaches do that “sacks don’t mean everything’’. For a defensive end, sacks pretty much do mean everything. And good for Morris for trying to light yet another fire under Adams by mentioning that Stylez G. White and Tim Crowder could be candidates to take the spot in the starting lineup if something doesn’t change soon.

“Last year to start off the season his whole thing was to play hard – to play harder than the people he was playing against,” said Morris. “Right now I just don’t see that. I don’t see that same fire. I don’t see him playing the same speed as how hard he played last year. We got to get that back. We got to get that back from him. If we don’t get that back it is going to be a long season for Gaines, and us.”

 

Yaz nailed it

ATLANTA -- For those who came looking for Jake Delhomme's obituary, it's not here.

After a 0-2 start, Delhomme's the best thing the Panthers have going for them right now. If they're going to climb out of this hole, post back-to-back winning seasons for the first time in franchise history and make the playoffs, it will be because of Delhomme.

His 308 passing yards in Sunday's loss to the Falcons showed Delhomme's career is far from over.

"This league is not about moral victories," Delhomme said.

No, it's not, and the Panthers are in a tough spot. Modern history has shown there's about a 13 percent chance of a team making the playoffs after a 0-2 start. I put Carolina's chances a little better than that. I put them a lot higher than last week.

"It couldn't get any worse than last week offensively," Delhomme said in reference to a season-opening loss to Philadelphia in which he threw four interceptions and lost a fumble.

Delhomme's right on every count. It couldn't get any worse than last week and there are no moral victories. But there's at least hope because the Panthers have signs of life from their quarterback. That's reason enough to cling to some hope for this season.

Remember, Delhomme's the guy who took the Panthers to their only Super Bowl and, at times, he has been able to work some magic. There might still be some in him.
Marvin Gentry/US Presswire
Jake Delhomme bounced back from a rough opener to throw for 308 yards, one touchdown and one interception.


The Panthers are going to need it because A.J. Feeley and Matt Moore aren't capable of coming in and rallying this team from their 13 percent shot at the postseason. If Delhomme had come into Atlanta and thrown a bunch more interceptions, it would have meant the end of their quarterback and the end of their season.

Now there's still hope. But it's very clear the Panthers have much bigger problems than Delhomme. But those, in theory, are at least fixable.

The real problems with this team are on defense and that's the good news. Coach John Fox is supposed to be some sort of defensive guru or wizard and you've got names like Jon Beason and Julius Peppers on that side of the ball.

As a matter of fact, I'm sitting in the Georgia Dome press box right now and there's something red out there. Did Peppers, who's collecting more than $1 million for each game, leave his heart on the field again? No, wait, it's just the red in the Falcons' logo. Peppers turned in a two-tackle, no-sack game and I think I saw him almost get near Matt Ryan once.

The Panthers need their franchise player to be their franchise player. Delhomme's not supposed to be a superstar. He's supposed to be a game manager, and he was actually more than that against the Falcons as he completed 25 of 41 passes with one touchdown and one late interception that really wasn't his fault.


If you want culprits for Carolina's slow start, point at Peppers, Fox and the defense. Point straight at the defense.

"We've got to get off the field on third downs," cornerback Richard Marshall said.

We already knew Ryan was pretty darn good. But the Panthers might have made him look prematurely great. Ryan threw three touchdown passes in the first half for the first time in his life, and starting at the 6:09 mark of the second quarter he put together a string of 13 consecutive completions.

The Panthers countered that with a very respectable 440 yards of total offense, thanks mostly to Delhomme and Steve Smith (eight catches for 131 yards) and a decent day from running backs DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart.

But Fox teams aren't supposed to win with offense. They're supposed to win with ball control, but mostly defense, and it's pretty clear the defense isn't doing its part. And this wasn't just Sunday. You could see this defense starting to slide the second half of last season and, let's face it, the Panthers did nothing to fix that.

They let most of their defensive staff (headed by Mike Trgovac, who wasn't half as bad of a coordinator as you think) walk and those guys might have been the smart ones. The Panthers spent their offseason and just about all of their salary-cap money forcing Peppers, who wanted to leave and hasn't ever been a model of consistent excellence, to stay.

Then, for salary-cap reasons, they let cornerback Ken Lucas, who had some moxie, walk. Then they sat back and bragged about how they had 21 of 22 starters back from a 12-4 team, and the sad part is most of us just bought that.

Big mistake by us and a bigger mistake by the Panthers.

They didn't sign a single free agent (because Peppers was eating up so much of the salary cap) and that tore into their depth. When defensive tackle Maake Kemoeatu went down on the first day of training camp, it shouldn't have been a disaster. Kemoeatu is, at best, a very ordinary player, although a very large one. But the Panthers didn't have another run-stuffer on their roster.

They were forced to open the season with second-year pro Nick Hayden in a starting role, and when he was injured last week, they turned to Louis Leonard (or is it Leonard Louis?) as this week's starter. Leonard got hurt near the end of the Atlanta game and it didn't look good.

Next man up? Ra'Shon "Sunny" Harris. I've got a feeling it's not going to be too sunny in Dallas, where the Panthers play next Monday night.

"We played better this week," Fox said. "We just didn't play well enough to win."

Fox is right. The Panthers were much better at quarterback -- and all across the offense -- against the Falcons.

The Panthers should win a lot of games with what Delhomme gave them Sunday. But that's only if their defense shows up at some point this season.

"We're 0-2 right now, but we've still got a long season," Marshall said.

It could get a lot longer if the defense keeps this up.

 

Unfortunately all the moxie in the world wasn't going to make Lucas any faster, or any closer to being worth his pay. I get that Peppers is being payed a ridiculous sum, so he needs to produce to that level, but why does the FO get off the hooking for handing Gamble so much god damn money? We already had to restructure his contract to save 8 million this year, WTF?

 

Q. How do you think Julius Peppers played?

"Like the rest of the team, good but not quite good enough. He draws some attention, some chips and their protection sets to him a lot. (Atlanta defensive end) John Abraham is a pretty good player and I’m not sure how many sacke he had (none). The difference is their team won."

Q. You say Peppers played well. What was it that he did well?

"He executed well enough for us to be in a position to win."

Are you prepared for Peppers to receive criticism, given the big contract he has?

"People have to draw their own conclusions. At 0-2, I understand that criticism. It’s not just on Julius, but on our team. Last week, everybody wanted to blame Jake. This week everybody wants to blame Julius. I don’t that’s the answer if that’s what you’re asking me."

 

I don't know if this has been discussed, but I think that if we had not had a 40 second runoff from Louis Leonard's injury, we'd have had time to punch it in the end zone. Dunno about the 2 point conversion, or the OT, but I think Jake operates very well in that role, and if we'd had those 40 seconds, we'd have gotten a TD.

 

Jake is at his best when he is behind and trying to rally for a comeback. I sometimes wonder what he could do if we ran a hurry up all the time.

 

yeah that injury blew for so many reasons.

 

The clock was running after the run. The falcons would have essentially run that same 40 seconds off the clock.