It wasn't a great day to be a Carolina Panthers quarterback.
After third-stringer Brett Basanez was placed on IR, starter Jake Delhomme tweaked something in either his back or midsection while throwing the football and sat out the last portion of Sunday's practice. Delhomme was seen trying to stretch out on the sidelines while others ran plays. Delhomme basically laughed off questions about the injury afterward, assuring reporters it was no big deal and that he'll be fine. Delhomme isn't expected to play much Thursday night against Pittsburgh and has two weeks to recover in time for the regular season opener against St. Louis.
"I have a little twitch, but other than that I'm good," Delhomme said. "They just wouldn't let me go back in. I'm good."
We'll see if Delhomme returns to work Monday.
Meanwhile, David Carr said he's nursing a broken toe, an injury that happened last week in practice, but was not reported to the media. Carr still played on the "pinky" toe on his right foot Friday night. He said the injury is not a huge concern, but it did force him to limp around a bit during practice.
By the end of practice fourth-stringer Dalton Bell was getting most of the reps in practice.
By the way, here are some of Delhomme's comments from after Friday night's loss to New England:
On the New England game: We did some better things but we started slow. I thought we did some things the first couple of drives but we didn’t capitalize on them and that hurt us. We did have a nice answer at the end of first half and we had a good drive going at the beginning of the third quarter. A penalty pushed us back and we were kind of hampered a little bit. We were close on a couple of plays, and we thought we almost had a pass interference call on one of them. We did some better things. It was a little more encouraging than (the Philadelphia game). We actually game planned somewhat and did a lot better going into this game. It’s still preseason and certainly we would have liked to play better, but I think it was step in the right direction.
On two-minute drives: We do a lot of similar things that we have in the past. I think we should be ahead in that area, because it’s something that we have done okay here in the last four or five years and it’s something that we have kind of carried over into this system. So guys should feel somewhat comfortable in that system and some guys made plays. That’s always nice.
On wide receiver Keary Colbert’s speed on his touchdown reception: He has shown that burst all training camp long. He’s battled through some injuries and tough times and kind of kept his mouth shut and just never said anything. We had the right call at the right time. I had time to throw back there and Keary did a great job.