Professor

Charlotte Observer | 08/19/2007 | Carolina has new offensive wrinkles but same old Fox

If you dismiss Carolina's poor performance Friday against Philadelphia, then you also have to dismiss Carolina's superior work six days earlier against the New York Giants.

All last week fans and media praised the 13-play, 81-yard touchdown drive with which the Panthers opened the exhibition season. The game was played Saturday night and by Sunday the drive had become The Drive, offensive coordinator Jeff Davidson had become The Savior and zone blocking had become almost as big as the new Rea Road Trader Joe's.

We do get carried away. Zone blocking is not a raging new concept that will put running back DeShaun Foster in position to challenge the Chargers' LaDainian Tomlinson or keep defensive coordinators up any later than they usually are.

But Panther fans desperately want the new and so do the Panthers. Although Carolina went 8-8 last season, morale was 1-15. By late December they were as low as they were in 2001 when they lost 15 straight.

Changes had to be made, and one of them was at offensive coordinator. Dan Henning was dispatched, Davidson hired. The shackles were off, showtime on.

We choose to forget the head coach creates a team's philosophy, and John Fox is not a reckless, all-in, 40-points-or-I'm-buying kind of guy. His offensive objective is to minimize mistakes and emphasize the run. Like Henning, Davidson will design a game plan to accommodate that philosophy.

Thus, on third-and-19 on Friday, the Panthers ran a draw play. Somewhere a Carolina fan on his sixth domestic beer looked up at the TV and demanded that Henning be fired.

We used to have a term for games such as Friday's exhibition. But the NFL is too big to play exhibitions. To make the games sound bigger, the league labels them preseason. And because that's what the league says, so does everybody else.

The man from which I bought my car is an NFL fan. He said it was preowned. I thought it was used.

Carolina sure was. Here's how you can tell. The Panthers' best run against Philadelphia was by the second-team quarterback, and their best hit was, after an interception, by the third-team quarterback.

I don't think winning an exhibition is particularly important, but the Panthers do. Under Fox, they are to games that don't count what New England is to games that do.

The Panthers went 1-3 in Fox's first preseason and since then are 15-3. The season they lost in the Super Bowl they went 4-0 in practice games, and the season they lost in the NFC championship they went 2-2.

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