Today I am a happy man. My teams in Fantasy Football have finished shooting themselves in the rear and have decided to live up to the reason I drafted them. Today,  The Dukes of Hazard have pulled off amazing win after being the worst scoring team in the ESPN league that we here at Cat Scratch Reader play in. My other team, The Rioting Rabbits, should also pull off a win as well, providing that Kurt Warner and Steve Smith don't completely blow up and have amazing statistics for the other team. The play of my teams have been so amazing, so terrific, that it makes the rest of the guys in our league look like mere mortals compared to the gods that I drafted to my team. I would go into more depth if you want, but I'm not going to bore you guys too much, so I'm going to let you know my thoughts on the game tomorrow and give you a good look at the present and the future of our football team for not only this season, but the seasons yet to come.

Tomorrow night the Carolina Panthers go up against the Dallas Cowboys for all the marbles. It may not seem like that way to the rest of the NFL, but in Carolina this may be the defining point of our entire season. If we lose this game, the Panthers go 0-3, and their chances of making the playoffs go from moderate to slim. If we lose this game, it sends us into the Bye week with plenty of time to consider how much we truly suck.

However, if we win this next game we may just have all the ingredients of a big winning streak on the table. The schedule gets a whole lot easier with games against the Redskins, the Tampa Bay Bucs, and the Buffalo Bills in consecutive weeks, all after a Week 4 bye that gives us a chance to get all of our little nicks in our team out of our system. As far as our team is concerned, we could very well go 4-2 after a very uplifting win against the Dallas Cowboys.

 

As much as teams hate the early bye, it will do wonders to help the Panthers discern between themselves the players they have, and how they can best operate a defense around them. We don't have a defensive line, and Julius Peppers seems intent to show up on the field but not play, whether intentional on his part or not.

That puts the pressure back on our linebackers and our secondary. And while we have a talented LB core led by Jon Beason, our secondary play like the wideouts are covered with poisonous spikes. They simply won't go near them. You can blame it on a lack of pressure on the QB if you want, but Chris Gamble didn't live up to the 'shutdown corner' label put on him during the preseason, and our coverage units constantly play several yards off their guys. Even if we were able to bring pressure, it wouldn't matter anyway because our corners constantly give up these short little 9-10 yard receptions. How hard is it to just fling the ball to the sidelines and have your WR do his work while the corner is busy trying to get to him from 15 yards away? You can have an entire team blitzing you and still complete a sideline pass.

Things like this can be looked at during the Bye Week, and hopefully with a win we can fix these problems and make a serious drive for the playoffs.

Then again, what if we lose?

Let me bring up another little chin scratcher for you guys. Julius Peppers. Is it time to trade him and enter rebuilding mode in Week 3? I know it sounds crazy at first glance, the typical fan angry that his team is losing. Thing about this though: There is no guarantee that Peppers is not going to pull his holdout stuff and screw us again during the 09 off-season, when plenty of key players on our offense go up for FA and the Panthers will have to shell out several large contracts to keep our team together. At the cost of not completely failing this season, we may be forced to either let Peppers walk or have our team knocked out of the elite group for a few years to come.

In addition, there will be plenty of rookie QB's like McCoy from Texas, Tebow from Florida, Bradford from Oklahoma and Rusty Smith from Florida Atlantic. The elite tier of QB's will not be available after the 1st round, and the Panthers need their QB of the future, if not now than very soon. Peppers is more than worth a 1st/3rd rounder, and with those extra picks we can trade into the slot we want to get the QB that we need for the future of our franchise.

Does it not then make sense for the Panthers to trade Peppers in Week 3, after hopes of a playoff run have been dashed and we still control the fate of arguably the best player on the Panthers defense, one who does not want to be here and could care less whether we win or lose? I hate to return to this issue again and again, but we need that 1st round pick. Otherwise Jake Delhomme will implode sometime in the future for good when he's old and his arm is weak, and the Panthers will have no one else to turn to because we never selected his successor.

It's a legitimate worry.

I enter this game tomorrow with a feeling of uneasiness. My greatest hope is that the Panthers will pull off the most amazing win that we have ever seen, that they will blow the Cowboys out of the water and show me that I have just been worrying to myself for nothing. However, at the same time I will be holding my breath every time Jake has the ball, and give a groan of displeasure whenever Barber runs the ball up the middle.

I'll see you tomorrow guys, hopefully to cheer rather than to boo.