Consistently Inconsistent: How John Fox is trying to right the ship in Charlotte.

As we have an abnormally long wait until the Panthers take the field (after all, we’re not accustomed to Monday nights) I decided to take a look at one of the key problems the Carolina Panthers have experienced since their inception… inconsistency. We’ve all heard the buzz sentence on ESPN, Sports Illustrated, or any other reputable source:

“The Panthers have never put together back to back winning seasons”

It is this sentence that breeds doubt, this line which spawns pessimism; before the season has even begun a portion of the fan base doubts the team’s ability based solely on those words. Rather than looking at the history of the team as a whole, I’m going to be looking at the John Fox era, focusing on the two major reasons we are so reliably inconsistent and what appears to be happening to right the ship.

Cause no.1: Jake Delhomme and Julius Peppers

When looking at the team you need to start from the top. Delhomme and Peppers have been the two most important players to the Carolina Panthers since Jake took over the offensive helm. There is a reason the Panther nation is split in two, the metaphoric ‘chalk line in the bed’ from an episode of ‘I Love Lucy’. People are either ‘Jake haters’ or ‘Peppers haters’ and there is a reason for this ‘hate’, inconsistency.

Look at any other team in the NFL; are there two most important players as wildly inconsistent from week to week as Jake and Julius? I can’t find a similar situation. Jake shifts from John Elway to Ryan Leaf on a weekly basis. He’s good enough to justify retaining his spot as starter, but not good enough for the fans to trust. Similarly, Peppers looks like Lawrence Taylor one week and Kamerion Wimberley the next. He is a player who can utterly dominate and take over a game, if only he wanted to.

Solution: Lessen their roles in the equation.

On the offensive end this has been achieved through building the best stable of running backs in the NFL. Since the acquisition of DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart the Panthers have been running the ball more times than they had been the previous five seasons and the most since 2003 when the RBs were le by Stephen Davis and Deshaun Foster. There was less of a focus on the run between 2004 and 2007, and overall the results from those seasons were not encouraging, so it comes as no surprise that Fox wants to return to the philosophy from his best season

On the defensive end of the ball the answer was finding a new leader for the defense. Julius Peppers was thrust into a leadership role he never wanted after Mike Rucker, Dan Morgan and Mike Minter retired; now the Panthers have found their man in Jon Beason. Beason could be the most vocal defensive leader the team has ever had. It takes a special kind of player to be willing to step up in his rookie season and want to lead the team, and Beason commanded that respect. This (in theory) should allow Peppers to just go out and play. Freeing him from any concerns other than get to the QB should increase his production and demeanor, meanwhile, Beason is happy to take the defensive spotlight from the fans.

Cause no.2: Coordinators

Under Dan Henning and Mike Trgovac the Panthers were a ‘feast of famine’ team. Both coordinators did the best they could with the players they had, but overall the personnel never seemed to truly match what they wanted to do as co-coordinators.

Henning was able to architect the big play, but often failed at moving the chains effectively. This too often put the ball in Jake’s hands and asked him to make a big throw on third down. Jake is far from automatic at the best of times, but on third down he can be shaky in the pocket. Furthermore, we were a running team that played a rather Draconian rushing game, essentially asking Davis to run straight ahead at the line and get 3-4 yards and if that wasn’t working, use tosses to Foster.

Trgovac’s defense could make the big play. He was able to get production out of the best defensive line in football for a lot of his time with the team, often using raw pressure to force bad throws. This system worked great when the line was there, but like Henning’s offense it had little nuance and missing a player here or there would collapse the system.

Solution: Jeff Davidson and Ron Meeks

As we sit here on the cusp of week three I know these two aren’t the most popular guys in town. They both came from questionable backgrounds and it was hard to see why the Cleveland Browns offensive co-coordinator would be a good fit, knowing how anemic their offense had been, concurrently the Meeks hire was puzzling… wasn’t defense always Indianapolis’ achilles heel?

Davidson was a former offensive lineman and offensive line coach. His zone blocking schemes (coupled with some smart O-line decisions) have increased our YPC average greatly. While he’s not as good a play creator as Henning is, he is able to move the chains consistently when the players live up to their potential. In 2003 Henning’s offense averaged 4.1 ypc by the two feature backs; in 2008 Davidson’s backs averaged 5.1 ypc. This monumental improvement is one of the key reasons our rushing attack is so feared, now we just need consistency from the offensive line to pull everything together.

Meeks plays the ‘bend but don’t break’ Tampa two defense. Right now it’s hard to see that it’s an improvement because we are bending and breaking. However, despite this we are exceeding every average from Trgovac’s defense with the exception of sacks and turnovers. Last season opponents averaged 5.2 yards per play against the Carolina defense, this season it has dropped to 5.0. Strides are being made, but they are subtle.

Summation

It’s tough to hear the ‘you’ve never gone back to back’ line on TV, in the newspaper or around the water cooler, however John Fox, Marty Hurney and the rest of the organization was this as much as we do. Have all the decisions been completely on point? Absolutely not, however, too often as fans we are willing to blame the front office for not being willing to make a change. If you look at our organization from top to bottom it is clear that we have made vast strides to not only change the players, but change the football culture in Carolina. None of us know what the future for this season holds, but when looking at these two areas of traditional inconsistency you can see that we are making strides towards becoming a more complete and rounded football team; even if that maturation process takes another two seasons the framework is starting to take shape to turn the Carolina Panthers into a perennial 10-6 team rather than a 7-9, 12-4 rotating one, and that is a change we as Panther fans should be excited about.