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[ Watch The Birdie II, Revenge Of The Feathery Thing (Page 11) ] Week 11 – Carolina Panthers (1-8) @ Arizona Cardinals (7-2)
Strengths
Weaknesses
Game Plan Defensively, we match up reasonably well against a decent, but not outstanding set of receivers, so my main concern is making sure that Steven Davis doesn't trample us underfoot. It's likely to be tough to score on this Panthers team, so we can't afford to give away quick and easy touchdowns. No problem. - With a strong crosswind whipping across Sun Devil, we win the toss and elect to kick away. Initially it's the defensive lines that have the upper hand, with Carolina's first possession being curtailed by passes swatted down by Paul Grasmanis and Larry Dickerson then sacks on consecutive plays forcing Scotty Player into his first action of the day. It's not exactly one of Player's better efforts, either, sliced off the side of his foot and out of bounds at our 39. A strong Steven Davis run and a pass to rookie WR Anthony Huard put the Panthers in good position, but the danger's ended with a sack by Raynoch Thompson and John Kasay comes in to open the scoring with a short field-goal. CAR 3-0 ARI The three-point lead doesn't stand for long, though, as Jeff Blake goes to work. On 3rd and short we line up three-wide with Shaun McDonald in the slot. He and Johnno cross, getting Macca open down the sideline, and Jeff wastes no time in putting the pass up... to Reggie Howard lurking in the underneath zone. 50 yard interception return, CAR 10-0 ARI. Arse. Carolina's next possession sees us have to pull out another goal-line stand, but once again the D stands firm and holds them to a field-goal. To this point, we've managed a whole 8 yards of total offence, which turns into 68 as we finally put together a stumbling 13-play drive that sees Marcel Shipp at last starting to get involved and ends, inevitably, with a sack and Whatshisface getting us on the board from 32 yards out with just two-and-a-bit minutes left in the half. CAR 13-3 ARI The defence step up one more time and hold the Panthers to just a single first down, giving us the ball back with a minute and a half left on the clock. We finally seem to have woken up on offence and go 70 yards in a hurry, Jeff Blake 4 for 4 and Shipp mixing in some effective inside rushing to allow Thingamigummy Gramatica to beat the buzzer with a mid-range trey and cut our deficit at the half to just one score. CAR 13-6 ARI - Bloody typical. We turn over three teams with six losses between them, then come out at home against some mob who've won one game all season and without any warning we turn into the South Central Louisiana State University Mud Dawgs. Frankly, it's only a sterling performance by the defence that's kept the score this close, which makes me wonder if we haven't fallen through some sort of wormhole and are playing this game in a parallel universe. In any case, we absolutely have to come out and establish ourselves on the offensive side of the ball at the start of the second half. We don't help ourselves by giving away a clipping penalty that cancels out a Marcel Shipp first-down, but manage to trump that minor setback when Jeff Blake underthrows a target who's open down the sideline for the second time today, this time finding Ricky Manning Jr. who, naturally, takes it all the way back to make the hole we're standing in a little deeper. CAR 20-6 ARI Our next couple of possessions are more successful, in that we manage not to actually give the opposition any more points in the course of them, but Julius Peppers is absolutely killing us any time we go four-wide or send our tight end out in a pattern. Still, our defence is playing out of their collective skin, and the third quarter runs out without any more scoring. Time's running out and we have to press to try and move the scoreboard, which we manage just a minute into the fourth quarter as Jeff Blake ignores the pressure of the pocket collapsing around him to fire a pinpoint 26-yard TD strike to Reggie Howard. Eh? We haven't got a receiver called Howard, have we? No. No, it turns out we haven't. Bobbins. Three scores down and that's pretty much game over. Blake gets so very, very benched after throwing his fourth INT on the very next possession that leads to another Carolina field-goal, and Josh McCown comes in to lead a touchdown drive capped off by Marcel Shipp in garbage-time. A fourth John Kasay figgie after a failed onside kick completes the scoring, and somehow, we've managed to lose by 21 points despite arguably our best defensive performance of the year. It takes a special team to give up three touchdowns despite allowing the opposition just 166 yards of total offence, but we genuinely are that special. It's just like the good old days at Sun Devil, and a final score of CAR 33-12 ARI drops us to 7-3. [
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