Going into this off-season I was quite optimistic we would be able to build on last seasons heartbreaking finish.

We rebounded nicely by having, in my opinion, the best draft in franchise history, in which we found a solid book end pass rusher, a safety/cb hybrid in the mold of bob sanders, a dynamic change of pace back to compliment double trouble and add to our return game, an heir apparent for brad hoover when he finally retires, a future starting OG and a speedy returner with some upside at CB.

As the Peppers situation played out, with him ultimately accepting his tender, I began to lose some confidence.  Not because I didn't appreciate him as a player, but because it truly hurt is long term financially and personnel wise.

We had no room to add quality depth.  Now we have had 4 starters on an average defense go down in training camp.  I spoke with a friend who is a physical therapist and he said the greater concern injury wise on our roster is probably the achilles of stewart but that there is a strong chance beason and davis could end up missing the entire season if the injuries worsen.

It is just pre-season but some facts of our roster have not changed.

Jake is a great leader, he is a warrior and I love that about him.  But he still panics in the pocket, locks onto smitty and doesn't effectively read defensive coverages or go through his progressions.  As long as he is our QB i will pull for him, but the writing has been on the wall for a while and we need to find our future QB soon so that we don't miss the window for success with our most promising young players.

This window is actually very limited in reality because of the financial burden of our star players.  If Peppers re-signs we will not financially be able to keep DeAngelo and Beason.  Remember (Gamble and Gross are already making top $ for their positions compared to NFL and those are long term deals).

It all comes back to us not actually trading Peppers, now we have given up next years draft pick, one that would have most likely landed us a Colt McCoy or Tebow or Snead.

It looks like we are headed to a 7-9 season at best.  Seriously take away the fanaticism people, look at our defense, look at our schedule, look at our depth, look at it all objectively.

We can clearly score 24 points a game if Jake plays well.  But we will need to score over 30 to even compete in most of our games with the way our pre-season has played out.

I love our Carolina Panthers but just think we need to take a tempered approach to this year, recognize this year really is a year to see if our young guys can step up (i'm looking at you Jarrett, Teal, Goodson, Captain, Barnidge).  The season isn't over by any means but we are gonna be in a dog fight to reach .500.