The Carolina Panthers are not awful.
They are not hopeless, pitiful nor a disgrace to their fans.
They also are not reliving their successful year of 2015.
With five weeks to go in this season, Carolina are sitting in last place in the NFC South with a 4-7 record, a stunning reversal of their best-in-the-NFL 15-1 mark of a year ago.
Super Bowl participants in February, the Panthers are all but shut out of reaching the post-season this time around.
Twelve months ago, quarterback Cam Newton was on his way to a Most Valuable Player trophy. The only debate surrounding him was whether he was having too much fun, celebrating touchdowns and victories with an unbridled enthusiasm that occasionally rubbed opposing players and fans the wrong way.
The Newton debate this year concerns the on-field punishment he has taken, and whether or not referees have protected him with the same safety concerns afforded less physically imposing quarterbacks.
The short answer is “no.” On multiple occasions this season, the NFL’s review process has criticised a lack of calls for late and illegal hits on Newton.
He missed a game in the season’s first month after suffering a concussion. His news conferences have featured questions about his health, delinquent officiating and dirty play.
“It’s taking the fun out of the game for me,” he told USA Today last month.
His unhappiness and diminished productivity suggests another debate about Newton’s mindset: is he too fragile mentally to overcome adversity when things are not going his way?
Clearly he displayed less and less energy as the Super Bowl turned sour on him and the Denver Broncos smothered him last February.
The bruising and the losing have not brought out the best in him. His quarterback rating last season was 99.4, which placed him eighth in the NFL, unquestionably among the elite. This year he is down to 81.4, which ranks him 27th.
Newton’s regression is not the Panthers’ only issue. The air-tight defence of 2015 has ruptured. They have dropped from sixth to 25th in points allowed.
Losing their best cornerback, Josh Norman, to free agency was a bigger deal than the Panthers management conceded. All-Pro linebacker Luke Kuechly has missed the last two games with a concussion, and has not practised since.
Still, most of the Super Bowl players remain. They simply are not performing to the same level, particularly when the game is on the line.
Carolina’s last four losses have been by a field goal, a switch from last year when the team habitually prevailed in close matches. The Panthers of last season won seven of their games by a one-possession margin.
The thin line between winning and losing in the NFL can be blurry, and the Panthers have stepped over it, backwards. Newton acknowledged that the defeats have changed Carolina’s personality.
“This is such a different team,” he told ESPN.com. “We have to focus in on clutch situations, and knowing when it’s time to win.”
Or, perhaps, the Panthers were never as good as the 15-1 record indicated. After all, they were 7-8-1 in 2014.
It will not get easier from here. Four of their remaining five games are scheduled against teams with winning records, beginning on Sunday in Seattle versus the NFC West-leading Seahawks.
Seattle also have not forgotten being eliminated by the Panthers in the post-season last January.
After that game, Newton celebrated by ripping a banner from a Seahawks fan, throwing it on the ground and laughing.
That was last year, of course, when everything was fun.
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