Carolina Panthers: September 24 (home) and November 13 (away)
Head Coach: John Fox
Projected QB: Jake Delhomme
Team Motto: “Come for the game, but stay for our alcoholic, lesbian cheerleaders!”
Historical Record: 5-6 (from Bucstats.com)

There’s a guy at my work named Joey.  I bumped into him a few weeks ago and it took him no time at all to start bragging to me about his new 50 inch LCD HDTV that he got for a steal.  “It’s got EVERYTING!” (his speech impediment makes him pronounce “th” as “t” or “d”.) He insisted that I come over to his house to witness what television should be like.  “Dis weekend,” he said.  “It’ll blow your freakin’ mind.”

So, that weekend I went by his house to see this monstrosity.  Oh, it was big.  The colors were brighter and the picture sharper than anything I’d seen in real life.  And the thing was LOUD!!  He had the volume on eight and I had to ask him to repeat himself several times (through no fault of his impediment.) For your reference, the volume has a maximum setting of fifty.  So, we grabbed some snacks and plopped down on his couch to spend the next three hours flipping through channel after channel of bright, crisp, loud… crap.  Just when I thought we had hit the nadir of terrible TV by watching Jerry Rice in a dance competition, we flipped the channel on his ten-pound remote to see contestants snorting earthworms for the chance to win a date with the fake prince of a ficticious island.  From Judge Judy to anything on Fox News, it was hour after hour, channel after channel of pointless, uninspired tripe.

The Carolina Panthers are that television.  Ever since Keyshawn Johnson signed with the Panthers this spring, they’re all anyone in the NFL is talking about.  “How can anyone stop Steve Smith AND Keyshawn Johnson?” they ask.  “Smith deep and Keyshawn across the middle… how can you cover them both?” You’d think that by signing Keyshawn, the Panthers enacted some obscure NFL rule that allows them to have 13 offensive men on the field at once.  Like Joey’s TV, the Panthers are now bigger, more colorful and definitely LOUDER than they were before.  But better?  No.  They look great on paper, and even in the showroom.  But once you’ve actually seen them in action, they are thoroughly disappointing.  Turns out, all that glitz does not make for a better product.

Jake Delhomme (the poor man’s Bubby Brister) has the same stable of receivers he had last year with the exception of Johnson.  Steve Smith counted for 103 catches and 1,563 yards, doing wonders for the egos of the other receivers Richard Williamson now has to coax out of buckets of Ben & Jerry’s (left behind by Todd Sauerbrun.) Delhomme trusted those other guys so much that he made running back DeShaun Foster his #2 receiver.  Ronde Barber and Brian Kelly have plenty of experience handling Smith and Johnson, so while they’ll get their catches, don’t look for any big plays against the Tampa secondary.

Defensively, the Panthers are crippled with the losses of linebackers Will Witherspoon and Brandon Short.  Kris Jenkins, who has now earned the title “injury prone” after missing 27 games in the last two years, will be too rusty to be effective at the DT position in the first game, and will miss the second game after breaking a hip or something.  Those two factors will make for big running days for Cadillac Williams against Carolina, especially up the middle.  I would also look for Michael Pittman to be especially effective in the passing game through play-actions and screens.

The Panthers had a nice run against the Bucs from 2003-2004, winning all four games.  Coincidently, this is the same period of time when Dr. James Shortt was injecting many Panthers players with horse DNA.  For the games after Shortt got busted, the Panthers are 1-1 against the Bucs.  And the Bucs won the most recent one… in Carolina.  I’m sure there’s absolutely no correlation (does this thing have a sarcasm filter?), but it’s not a bad sign of things to come in 2006.

So, you can keep extra color and deafening noise.  I want substance.  And when it comes to that, the Bucs have it all over the Panthers this season.