Cameron Jones

DCPanthersfans.com

A lot of people I talked to after Monday night’s heartbreaking loss to Philly said that Jake Delhomme needs to be benched. This would be fine and all if our backup wasn’t named Chris Weinke. I know he used to start and he played well in the comeback win over Detroit last year but Weinke is a backup. He isn’t starting quarterback material. And do we really want a raw passer in the lineup at 6-6 with our playoff hopes in the balance? I don’t think so and neither should anyone else.

Plus, give Delhomme some credit yesterday. He had over 250 yards passing and 3 touchdowns. Only one of his two interceptions was his fault (Goings didn’t run the right route on the first one), and he led us down the field continually rallying the team despite a sub par effort by our defense.

The focus needs to also be on the fact that we really don’t have a killer instinct this year. The glaring stat that was constantly posted on the screen was the fact that we have now lost five games this year where we had led going into the 4^th quarter. This shouldn’t be anything to new to Panthers fans. As you may recall during our season from hell in 2001 where we went 1-15, we actually led in seven of those games during the 4^th quarter and lost on the final drive. We play not to lose and that’s not the way to play in the NFL. Playing not to lose only increases your chances of making a critical error at the most inopportune time. Teams in this league are too good to try and play timid against. It was clear to me that we were trying to sit on the 24-17 lead that we had and hope nothing went wrong and you can’t do that. It’s evident to me that if we don’t change our strategy and don’t start play with a knockout mentality rather than just body punches as Delhomme put it, there will not be playoffs in our future.

Our final two home games of the year are coming up and we have an equally struggling team in the Giants coming to town. More to come on that game this week.