Just the D being the D

As we all know, Jake Delhomme was Ishtar bad Saturday night. Nobody should thank him more than the Arizona Cardinals, though his own defense might want to drop a card in the mail at some point for taking the bullet.

The Panthers have built a reputation as a defensive team. To hear Sunday afternoon pundits tell it week after week, Carolina is just this side of the Steelers and Ravens of the world. John Fox is always described as a "defensive guru." My only question is: Why?

I mean, to be a good defensive team one of the requirements is that you be good at stopping the other team from scoring and/or moving the ball. Carolina wasn't. The Panthers ended the regular season 18th in the league in yards per game. And down the stretch, with the chance to first lock clinch the NFC's top seed and then advance to the conference championship game, the they were brutal.

Against the Giants in Week 16, Carolina made Derrick Ward look like Bo Jackson. And I don't mean the Bo Jackson who posterized Brian Bosworth; I mean the Bo Jackson on Techmo Super Bowl who ran like he was riding motorcycle. In the second half and overtime, Ward looked like he was running against the scout team. A girls lacrosse scout team. A high school girls lacrosse scout team. In a state that doesn't recognize it as an official sport.

Ward cracked 80 yards twice all season - rushing for 101 against the Browns and, ahem, 215 against Carolina in their most important game of the season. How is that possible? And it's not like the Panthers were only bad against the run. Larry Fitzgerald had 150 yards receiving IN THE FIRST HALF Saturday. Maybe the Panthers were focusing too much on Anquan Boldin, and if that were the case it might make be a explanation had Boldin actually, you know, played.

More disturbing, in both cases it's not like the offensive players were performing at a superhuman level. Ward was seldom touched. A Panthers linebacker appearing on the TV screen was akin to a bigfoot sighting. And television didn't do justice to just how open Fitzgerald was. There wasn't a Carolina jersey within 10 yards of him half the time.

Missing tackles or having a team run down your throat means you have bad players. But having a defense so obviously out of position and unprepared for what the offense throws at it tells me you have bad coaching. My guess is coordinator Mike Trgovac will have some serious 'splainin' to do to Fox this week.