NFL Oh-Nine Previews: NFC South

Back when Mickey and I were doing our own thang at the Sports Brethren, we would double-team a weekly post about every Carolina Panthers game. We might not see eye-to-eye on everything, but we always brung the heat and the passion in our weekly chronicles of the NFL’s greatest team. Here at the Cube, we’re hoping to bring that same noise and funk on the NFL as a whole, in our true double-team style.

With that in mind, holyfuckingshit football’s a’comin! We are but a scant 3ish days from the first NFL Sunday, which means it’s high time we stop prattling on about baseball and fanciful things and get down to business.

Thus we present the Cube’s NFL Oh-Nine Previews: NFC South

Smokey: This is the one we’ve been avoiding for a while, because it’s the one that hurts the most to admit. Alas, the time has come and there’s no skirting the issue: The NFC South will decidedly not be won by the Carolina Panthers this season. The Cats had a magical, mythical journey last year. I was present for their week 1 heart-stopper in San Diego. I spent four months cautiously optimistic, leading to a Saturday in January that I’ll never soon forget. The day was crisp for Southern California as I tailgated solo in the parking lot of my sports bar. Hours and gallons of booze later my face was painted and the war drums thumped ceaselessly. We stopped a drive, we scored on a drive, and then the wheels came off the wagon. Being a loyal Panther fan, I’d seen this game many a time. The team plays its hearts and guts out, but a weak link repeated holds them back. That weak link changes from game to game, and this time around it was Jake’s turn.

I spent most of the second half in the front seat of my car with my best friend Ricky, just staring bleary-eyed into the ether, wondering about the inevitability of things. The Cardinals went on to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl and I went home and expunged my stomach of a day’s worth of bar food and light beer, coating my tub in a thick layer of deep fried failure. I knew the voluminous contents would be too much for my toilet so I just heaved and heaved in the bath and when I awoke, months later, it was training camp time and we were losing our starting DT and Steve Smith “crumpled” on the practice field in Spartanburg. Despite returning the majority of our starters from last year’s campaign, our 2nd-statistically-toughest schedule is harrowing enough to bludgeon reality into me: the Panthers, at best, will go 8-8 this year and will miss the post-season. Last year was our best chance for a championship since Super Bowl XXXVIII, and we missed it, so now we wade through a few years of mediocrity and rebuilding before making another serious threat.

To counteract my melancholy we’ve got the New Orleans Saints this year. Reggie Bush is Kardashian-free and Drew Brees is the go-to pick for MVP. Their receiving corps is strong and their defense is sturdy. They’ve taken a page from the Cats and platooned their backfield and if Jeremy Shockey can keep his ego under wraps, they should have a potent offensive attack. Look for the Saints to lay waste to the NFC South and most of their schedule, and look for them to go deep in the playoffs, if not the Super Bowl.

The Falcons should continue to grow on last year’s success. Matty Ice is a true big leaguer and will continue to improve. Roddy White will catch a lot of balls and the D will frustrate the hell out of a lot of good offensive coordinators. Their season pretty much consists of one game, and that’s on December 6th, when Michael Vick returns to Hotlanta for a homecoming that’s not to be missed.

Bottoming out in the NFC South this year will be the rudder-less Tampa Bay Buccaneers who have a rookie coach, fired their offensive coordinator because he “couldn’t implement a professional offensive scheme” and released any team member that was liked by the fans. Their motley crew of running backs and receivers should confuse the hell out of whomever is under center by repeatedly not running the correct routes and their defense will miss assignments left and right. Expect the best part of the Bucs to, again, be the fact that they have a pirate ship in their stadium.

And with that, let the games begin.

Mickey: Last year, when we foretold of a breakout season for the mightiest team of them all on Deadspin I wrote that the Carolina Panthers were going to unleash holy terror on the NFL with the utmost confidence. Smokey may have needed the heart-thumping season-opening win in the Whale’s Vagina to get on to the wild ride, but I was strapped in when I started reading all the reports about our monster-big new offensive linemen, the emergence of DeAngelo, the uncontainable desire that still raged within Smitty, and the defensive leadership of Jon BeasTon that were coming out Spartansburg in August, and I licked my chops like a hungry lion. History tells us the Cats are quite formidable coming off a 7-9 campaign, and they continued that trend last year, improving to 12-4 and wrapping up the #2 seed in the NFC; however, history also tells us the Panthers have never have had back-to-back winning seasons, which does not bode well for our Oh-Nine campaign.

Well, there’s one piece of history-repeating-itself we haven’t encountered before that gives me hope we can buck the trend this year and put together a playoff run: until the fateful night of 1.10.09, the Carolina Panthers had never lost a home playoff game.

So you can either look at it like we’ve never followed up a playoff campaign by going back. Or you can look at it like we’ve never felt the pain and humiliation — nor had the motivation — that comes with being bounced from the playoffs on your home turf.

Where am I leaning? It took me a solid three weeks to emotionally and physically get to the point where I could even write about the shellacking at the hands of the Cards, and until this past week, I was firmly with Smokey in envisioning an 8-8/7-9 season. Add in the utterly nasty preseason with nothing new and exciting and encouraging coming out of it, and my gut felt nervous and ominous. But as Sunday has approached, I’m starting to drink the Kool-Aid again: Beaston’s back, the second half of Double Trouble is back, and I would like to believe the events of 1.10.09 have taught John Fox that making adjustments to defend a hot receiver/qb combo is okay, and that we don’t need Jake out there gun-slinging, we need him game-managing.

Ultimately, I too like the Saints to win the NFC South — the fact that they’re playing the ’08 division-dwellers like the Lions and Rams while we have to take on the Cardinals and Vikings ultimately gives them a close nod over the Panthers. But I like the Cats fighting for a wild card berth.

I too think Matty Ice and the Falcons are the real deal, but I see them coming back down to Earth a bit this year. I’m not sold on their defense, but believeyoume, I hate the weekends we have to go into the Georgia Dome. The Bucs, on the other hand, do not strike their normal fear in my heart this year, for all the reasons Smokey outlined.

Gratuitous Cap’n Pappy quote (Growing up, our pappy, “Cap’n Pappy,” had many a’sayings that we didn’t exactly reckon we knew what they meant, but had a vague idea. In his honor, we’ll assign a quote for how we think he’d describe each division): The NFC South gets a “fine as frog’s hair” quote, reserved for only the most delectable of things life has to offer — things like the Carolina Panthers, Mammy’s spaghetti, and Bulleit bourbon.

THE NFL IS BAAAAAAAAAAAACK! And not a moment too soon.

Share/Save