.// pantherfury.com //

I don’t know what it is. I’m a die-hard Carolina Panthers fan. Love them more than anything else in the world, and yet, I still manage to find sympathy for other teams in our division. Especially when the play other teams. I call it the “ACC Effect,” where you hate the team to death when you play them, but when an NFC South team plays another team, you almost root for them, just because it should be just you that can beat them.

With that in mind, Pete Carrol has been an often topic of discussion concerning the Atlanta Falcons’ head coaching vacancy. I want Carrol gone as soon as possible, simply because I’m tired of USC domination in college sports, but at the same time, do I want to have to play against a Carrol coached team twice a season? John Fox is an unbelievably underrated coach and I firmly believe in his system, despite the critics. And because of that, I think it’d be awesome for the Atlanta Falcons to acquire Pete Carrol as their head coach/general manager (as that’s exactly what he wants). That will only work, of course, if John Fox can become the bane to the Atlanta Falcons over the next few years, just like they were to us for so long.

So Mr. Blank, hire Pete Carrol, and help restore the long-standing tradition (since the 2002 division restructure) of the last place NFC South team proceeding to win the following season’s divisional championship. Although, the other tradition (of an NFC South team making it to the NFC Championship game since it’s foundation in 2002), ended just this year with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers being eliminated by the New York Giants.

Yep. Everything happened that would have put the Carolina Panthers in the playoffs, had they beaten the Dallas Cowboys. In a game clearly stolen by corrupt and inept referees, they lost to the Dallas Cowboys in a game that receive no national media attention whatsoever, despite being on the NFL network. Everybody just assumed that the Carolina Panthers were done. But here’s what happened:

1) Minnesota had to lose both games of their last two games (vs WAS, @ DEN)
2) New Orleans simply had to lose one game, they lost both (vs PHI, @ CHI)

Here’s what partially happened:

1) Carolina had to win out (lost vs DAL, won @ TAM)
2) Washington had to beat Minnesota (they did) but lose to Dallas (they didn’t)

Now, looking at this, you can see two things that should have happened for Carolina to get into the playoffs. And here’s why they should have gotten in:

1) Carolina would have had a decent opportunity to beat the Dallas Cowboys and should have had a fair chance, but after two extremely irrational and poor calls by Mike Carey (referee), they had any chance of pulling the upset taken from them. But let’s go ahead and assume that they won.

2) Dallas would still be tied with Green Bay in the race for the first seed. Therefore, they’d have to try to beat Washington to maintain home field advantage through the rest of the playoffs. Which, there’s a very real chance they would have.

And had all of that happened, the Carolina Panthers would have made it into the playoffs as the sixth seed.

The NFL has yet to apologize for the missed calls. And I want to know why.