At last!! Good news from the Panthers pre-season.

Only Buccaneers do that.

Arghhhh.

we are always a contender.

Even if a couple of these injuries slow us down on defense (and you’ve got to think the Kemo injury does, regardless of who we bring in)…opposing teams are going to run the ball right at us. And, if they’re successful doing that, they’ll control the clock. That keeps our (hopefully, still explosive) offense off the field as they put up points and put us behind. That usually forces teams (including us) to go away from the run game and use the passing game to conserve clock and catch up on the scoreboard…which is something our offense does NOT excel at doing. See the Arizona playoff game…

Now, it would be better if we had an easy schedule to begin the season. Then, we could rest our injured players and not worry so much about our defense letting us down and offense struggling to play catch up. But, unfortunately, we come right out of the gate with the Philadelphia Eagles…a good defensive team (especially vs. the run) and a good running team (with Westbrook)…and now a team with a new wildcard who has always vexed us (i.e., Michael Vick), regardless of how they use him. If we look bad in that game, it’s not going to hurt us going into the next one.

Because, after that, we face the Atlanta Falcons. At their place. It’s an early division game. They’ve got a monster RB (i.e., Michael Turner) that ran all over us in our last meeting. They’ve added future HOF’er Tony Gonzales and our LBs have always struggled to cover the TE position. Roddy White is signed and content. And they’ve improved their defense. They’re also going to try to take advantage of our weakened defense as early as possible. If we lose that game, we could be facing an 0-2 start and already a game down in the loss column against division opponents. Bandwagon fans would quickly start calling for Fox and Hurney’s heads…and Julius Peppers and Jake Delhomme while they’re at it.

But, after that, we have to face the resurgent Dallas Cowboys. At their place. On a Monday night. Typically, we look horrible against Dallas in the regular season. And we don’t play well in nationally-televised games, particularly on Monday nights. Don’t know why. It is what it is. Dallas has also jettisoned the one-man distraction known as T.O. They’re a lot more focused. They’re a decent run-defense team. They’ve got offensive weapons, including a good RB and a great TE. Sound familiar? If they study the film of how we defended Atlanta the previous week, they should find plenty of ways to exploit our weakened defense. And if we lose that game, we’ll be 0-3 and the finger-pointing and fan dissent will quickly put our entire season into a tailspin. And, perhaps even worse, we’ll be sitting at home with a bye in Week 4, so everyone will have 2 weeks to engage in that kind of “Woe is us!” mentality.

Now, I don’t mean to come across as all-negative. I’m just pointing out the potential “perfect storm” for things to go bad, bad wrong. In my opinion, our offense is still as potent as it ever was (all 11 starters are back, after all). We’ve lost depth across the O-line. We’re still struggling to find a decent WR3. But we picked up Goodson, who seems poised to make some good things happen for us and he can support the WR3 or WR4 or even RB2 positions. Hopefully, Jonathan Stewart also works out his Achilles problem. And we should all be praying Steve Smith can play through his shoulder injury.

But what really concerns me is the defense. We needed to improve there most of all, just based on our playoff loss to Arizona and how many points we gave up in the last 5 games of last season. That’s why the impact of losing Kemo can’t be understated. He’s our only DT with enough size to clog up holes in the middle. His play was what allowed Jon Beason to freelance and fly to the ball. And the middle of your defense is the shortest distance between an opposing RB and picking up first downs. If we can’t stop runs up the middle, we can’t stop opposing offenses from controlling the line of scrimmage, controlling the clock, and ultimately, controlling the game. If you layer on potential problems with Beason out as our MLB…and now our S position with a broken hand…the entire middle of the defense all the way into the secondary is potentially missing a starter. And that’s not good.

So, we really need to keep an eye on the Baltimore Ravens game coming up this weekend. Let’s see how backups like Dan Connor and Marlon Favorite and Quinton Teal and whoever else they play with the 1’s…all perform against the Ravens offense. If they can’t stop Baltimore through 3 quarters of play (i.e., when the starters are on the field), that should be a very clear indication that we’re in trouble. If they do okay, however, maybe we’ll be alright when the regular season starts. Whatever moves Fox and Hurney make in terms of the roster cutdown and pickups from the waiver wire after that game will also go a long way in determining our season.

But that’s just my two-cents,
—Neil

I too am extremely worried about the loss of Kemo, however I have reserved judgement until we see what the FO does in bringing in another DT. On the same point, I do not think the Eagles are a team we need to worry about in this regard. They are too pass happy and Vick will not be able to play against us (most likely).

As for ATL and Dallas, they are big time power running teams with there OL, BIG RB’s (Turner/Barber), and quality change of pace RB’s (Norwood/Felix Jones).