Giant Puddle of Gumbo-Smelling Vomit
Jake Delhomme may be done as the quarterback of the Carolina Panthers after turning the ball over six times in the team’s humiliating 33-13 playoff loss to the Arizona Cardinals. Actually, if Panthers fans had their way, Delhomme would not only be done as quarterback, he’d be done as a human being, as in dead, possibly via hanging unless that’s too good for him. If that sounds a little extreme to you…well, then you obviously didn’t see the game. The formerly reliable if unspectacular Delhomme’s performance has to go down in history as one of the most staggering choke-jobs in the history of playoff football (even Tony Romo was embarrassed for him), and if that doesn’t justify summary execution, nothing does.
What makes the whole thing even sadder is that, most of the time this season, the Panthers didn’t even really rely on Delhomme much. Carolina has two great runners in DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart, and a great receiver in Steve Smith who normally catches anything that’s even remotely in the vicinity, so Delhomme only had to be adequate. Unfortunately, yesterday, Carolina was not running the ball well and Steve Smith was getting blanketed by Arizona’s defenders, meaning Delhomme had to play a few notches above mediocre for once. But instead of stepping up Delhomme fell flat on his cajun face. He was sacked and fumbled with the score still 7-7, leading to an Arizona touchdown that made it 14-7 (I’m a math-wiz). The quarterback attempted to atone for his mistake by getting the ball to Steve Smith next time down – only to be picked off by Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie. A couple field goals made it 20-7 Arizona with halftime still more than five minutes away. That was plenty of time for Delhomme to get picked off again, by Gerald Hayes this time, a turnover the Cardinals were thrilled to parlay into 7 more points.
Of course, when you have Steve Smith on your team and you’re at home, a 27-7 halftime lead is hardly insurmountable. That’s if you have a quarterback who hasn’t completely forgotten how to run your offense. If your quarterback is Jake Delhomme? How about three more interceptions and, for fans, an entire off-season to practice tying nooses in case you ever catch up to that so-and-so. But let’s not get so wrapped up in dancing on Delhomme’s grave that we neglect to give credit to the Arizona Cardinals, who have staged perhaps the most astonishing defensive turnaround of our lifetimes since being outscored 82-21 in weeks 15 and 16 combined. Anyone who watched the Cardinals in those two games would’ve thought tackling and coverage were concepts that had become obsolete in Arizona, but by some kind of miracle, these same apparently inept players have been transformed into ball-hawking, run-stuffing mad men for the playoffs. I don’t know what the stock of Arizona defensive coordinator Clancy Pendergast was like before, but right now, it’s soaring higher than the plume of the world’s most geektastic Mentos-and-Diet Coke geyser. He’s the greatest Clancy since Wiggum. And Delhomme is the worst Jake since the guy who hung out with the Fat Man.
