For Once John Fox is Shooting Us Straight

If you listen to John Fox interviews long enough you get the feeling he just reading from some kind of self-help team building manual. He never gets too high or low and is devoid of details beyond your typical sports cliché. Yet when describing his reasons for not being concerned about close victories over lesser teams we should listen.

"You see it every week. It's not a shock. Turn on the scores every Monday, and you see it. The difference between the teams with winning records and losing records is they've lost some close games. ... Always has been, always will be."

I'm a firm believer in their being only a few degrees of separation between the bottom teams and the playoff teams. When our linemen line up for their plays, even against an 0-9 team, they are still lining up against an NFL-quality athlete whom they must pound on for 40-50 plays. If QB Dante Culpepper had instead thrown a TD pass instead of an INT at the end of the game it's a different outcome. To me, that fact doesn't portend the Panthers to be playoff pretenders. Instead it shows the Panthers have the tenacity to defeat a team playing over its head. The saying "Any given Sunday" does have a ring of truth in it even when it comes to an 0-10.

If you still think the Panthers should have beat the Raiders and Lions by a bigger margin lets try an experiment. The Titans play the Lions next week in a potential epic battle of winless vs. undefeated (provided the Titans beat the Jets and Lions lose to the Bucs). If your logic stands to reason then the Titans should win by a score of 40+ to nothing. If the Lions should score then we have to question the Titans defense just as we have the Panthers. If the Titans should somehow only score say 27 points or less then we should question whether their offense is really good enough. Okay, maybe the Titans are a bad example since Kerry Collins is the QB; there's already reason to question their offense.

Darin Gantt with the Rock Hill Herald seems to be one of those people who think the Panthers aren't good enough. The ones who expect more than a win, they want a win margin that matches the opponent.

That means the Panthers are going to have to be far better than they've been.

They did win the games when they could have instead folded.

If the Panthers continue sleepwalking the way they have the last two, they're going to be 8-3 in a few days.

I don't think the guys felt like they were sleepwalking.

The reality is good teams have to play well to go along with their talent, and the Panthers haven't been lately. They were fortunate to find an offense more inept than their own in Oakland, and a defense here against Detroit that was already bad, then hurt. If the slop is out of their system now, they should be fine.

Duh, but Gantt does come back to reason at the end of his post. I still think that you can find things the Panthers need to improve in every win they have had. It doesn't mean they are ‘sleeping walking' when you have room for improvement.

John Fox may not give interesting interviews but he can throw out some gems of wisdom from time to time if you listen. When he says we should just be happy with a win, even an ugly win then why does every pundit from Hilton Head to Wilmington have this attitude of pending doom? The Panthers do have some quality wins in that 8-2 record, like the Chargers, Bears, Saints and Cardinals. They even have a win against their next opponent the Falcons who have now earned everyone's respect with a 6-4 record. I have to admit I've let the Falcons wins over the Bears and Packers impress me. But lets not forget who won the first game and for good reason. There's no amount of ugly wins that can change that, or at least that's what John Fox is telling you.