Panthers will go with all black look on Sunday

The Carolina Panthers will go with their all-black look for only the third time in team history this Sunday afternoon in their home game vs. the New York Jets, according to my sources.

UPDATE: The team has now confirmed the look. The Panthers will wear black jerseys, black pants and blue socks -- the combination that won NFL.com's "Greatest Uniform in NFL history" contest in a major upset over the summer.

The Panthers have not worn black on black except for the 2012 regular season against Denver -- a game which they lost 36-14 and which Greg Olsen's TD (above) was one of the few good moments -- and a preseason game against Philadelphia this season, which they also lost. So the "back-in-black" look will be looking for its first win.

While jersey colors are decided months in advance -- the home team gets to pick first -- and cannot be changed, pants color is optional and can be changed at the last minute. The Panthers generally wear silver pants with their black jerseys.

No matter whether Panthers win or lose Sunday, they will wear black jerseys and silver pants vs. New Orleans at home Dec.22 (the Saints wore all black while eviscerating the Panthers Sunday night). Panther fans have long clamored to see the all-black look more often, although some of them would rather the team also had a black helmet it could wear with them (the Panthers do not and have no plans to do so).

The bolt of color in the all-black look -- the electric blue socks -- comes courtesy of Steve Smith, who in 2012 got a sneak peek at the black uniforms before they debuted and was allowed to choose the sock color. So blame No.89 if you don't like that part of it.

The Panthers defeated the San Francisco 49ers' current uniform in the finals of the NFL.com contest, getting about 90 percent of the vote in a contest where fans could vote an unlimited number of times (despite the fact the uniform had only been worn once in team history at that time).

Updated NFC playoff picture with 3 games to go

Let's take a look at the crowded NFC playoff picture with 3 weeks left in the regular season. If it ended today, this is how it would stand.

Current seeds:

1. Seattle (first-round bye) 11-2

2. New Orleans (first-round bye) 10-3

3. Philadelphia 8-5

4. Detroit 7-6 (wins tiebreaker with Chicago due to series sweep)

5. Carolina 9-4 (higher than 49ers due to head-to-head win)

6. San Francisco 9-4

Outside looking in: Arizona (8-5); Dallas (7-6); Chicago (7-6); Green Bay (6-6-1)

First-round playoff games the weekend of Jan.4-5:

Carolina at Detroit

San Francisco at Philadelphia

Here are the remaining schedules for the 10 NFC teams in playoff contention:

CAROLINA: New York Jets (6-7); New Orleans (10-3); at Atlanta (3-10)

NEW ORLEANS: at St. Louis (5-8); at Carolina (9-4); Tampa Bay (4-9)

SEATTLE: at New York Giants (5-8); Arizona (8-5); St. Louis (5-8)

ARIZONA: at Tennessee (5-8) at Seattle (11-2); San Francisco (9-4)

SAN FRANCISCO: at Tampa Bay (4-9); Atlanta (3-10); at Arizona (8-5)

PHILADELPHIA: at Minnesota (3-9-1); Chicago (7-6); at Dallas (7-6)

DALLAS: Green Bay (6-6-1); at Washington (3-10); Philadelphia (8-5)

DETROIT: Baltimore (7-6); New York Giants (5-8); at Minnesota (3-9-1)

CHICAGO: at Cleveland (4-9); at Philadelphia (8-5); Green Bay (6-6-1)

GREEN BAY: at Dallas (7-6); Pittsburgh (5-8); at Chicago (7-6)

Panther analysis: Winning two out of the final three should virtually assure a Panther wild-card spot, and it really helps that the Panthers beat San Francisco by harassing Colin Kaepernick so well (see above picture).

In case of a three-way tie for the wild card -- with San Francisco, Arizona and Carolina all finishing 11-5 -- the Panthers would win the three-way tiebreaker and get the No.5 seed, San Francisco would be No.6 and Arizona would be out (In that case, 49ers and Arizona would use the two-team tiebreaker, eliminating Cards due to 49ers' better NFC West record, and then Carolina would be seeded higher than 49ers due to head-to-head victory).

Note: Carolina could actually clinch a playoff spot this week, but it would require ALL of these things to happen: Carolina wins, and Arizona, San Francisco and Dallas all lose; OR Carolina wins and Arizona, San Francisco and Philadelphia all lose (in the Eagles' case only, a tie would also work).

Winning the NFC South division for Carolina would require New Orleans to go 1-2 over its final three games and the Panthers to go 3-0 (New Orleans wins the tiebreaker if the teams both finish 12-4). So the Saints need only to win two of three games for a first-round bye and at least one home playoff game. (Or New Orleans could go 0-3 and Carolina 2-1, although the Saints ain't going to be going 0-3).

Most likely, the Panthers will not host a home playoff game now. If they are the No.5 seed, they could host the NFC championship, but only if the No.6 seed also advances to that game.

If Carolina goes 1-2 over its final three games, the Panthers would finish 10-6 and stand a chance at being caught by a variety of teams -- that's when it gets dicey, as I point out in my Tuesday column. A 10-6 Chicago team did not make the playoffs in 2012. And an 0-3 ending would likely doom the Panthers, although I don't see that happening.

General NFC analysis: Arizona has the most difficult schedule remaining of the playoff contenders, and Panther fans should cheer for Cardinals to lose every week. Seattle needs to win two of three to assure homefield advantage throughout the NFC playoffs by virtue of its win over New Orleans.

Detroit and Chicago are tied atop the NFC North, but Detroit's sweep of the Bears means that the Lions would win the tiebreaker. Philadelphia has a fairly favorable schedule and a strong chance at winning the NFC East, although it will likely come down to the Eagles' season-ender at Dallas. Remember, all four division champions get one home playoff game, regardless of record.

5 things that went wrong in a bad Panther loss to Saints

The Panthers had a downcast locker room after the game for the first time in a couple of months. Offensive tackle Jordan Gross probably provided the best perspective on the loss, saying: "It was just tough. But I feel good that we can learn from this and get a little bit revitalized. You win eight in a row and everything is peaches and cream every Monday... When you lose, you get reminded of all your little faults. It might not be bad for us."

Gross reminded everyone that the Panthers' 9-4 record is "great. We're right in the mix of the playoff picture. The worst thing we could do is hang our heads and mope around and let one loss turn into two.... We might have a better sense of urgency now than had we won. I'd rather get my butt kicked this week than three weeks from now or four weeks from now."

Now, onto the list of the five things that went most wrong (as well as some analysis of the Panthers' playoff chances):

1) The coverage. This was the night that the secondary -- and the linebackers in coverage -- really got exposed. Drew Brees had a classic Drew Brees day -- 30 of 42, 313 yards, four TDs and no interceptions. He was accurate as usual, but often his receivers were open by 3-4 yards. Coach Ron Rivera said afterward that the Panthers weren't physical enough with the Saints' receivers, which linebacker Luke Kuechly agreed with. Kuechly gave up one TD pass to Jimmy Graham where he said "I needed to get my hands on him."

2) The offensive line. Cam Newton had a bad day, but that was partly because he was harried so often. Newton was sacked five times and took big losses on most of them -- a total of 49 yards. He scrambled out of trouble many more times. The offensive line simply looked overmatched against the Saints' pass rush, and DeAngelo Williams never went longer than nine yards on his 13 carries. And, to make matters worse, the oft-injured Jonathan Stewart may have a serious knee injury.

3) Newton himself. He threw 34 passes, and not a single completion went for more than 17 yards. "I was trying to take what the defense gave me," said Newton, who targeted Greg Olsen 12 times. Olsen caught eight of them, but for only 40 yards.

New Orleans coach Sean Payton praised his team for "minimizing the chunk plays," and the Saints certainly did that. It wasn't all Newton's fault. His receivers didn't get enough separation, Rivera said. Brandon LaFell in particular had a bad day, with only two receptions for 22 yards and one drop.

4) The pass rush. Brees was only sacked twice even with all those attempts. Now he gets the ball out really quick, but c'mon. The Panther simply didn't get there enough with their base four-man rush, and Brees picked them apart in the 21-point second quarter that decided the game. The Saints were great in the red zone behind Brees, while Carolina was bad, kicking field goals instead of scoring TDs.

5) Coaching. The players didn't blame the game plan, but it certainly didn't work. The Panthers only netted 111 yards passing. Mike Tolbert disappeared. The Saints found every hole in the Panther defense. The offensive line couldn't hold up. The Panthers tried to start blitzing more after halftime, which disrupted Brees a little, but he looked like a much different quarterback than the one who was so messed up by Seattle on Monday night. They get another chance Dec.22, at home.
"It's a great measuring stick for who we are and where we have to go," a somber Newton said. "The best thing about this tonight is we have opportunity to face this same team in two weeks."

OK, as for the playoffs: Carolina would be the No.5 NFC team, going on the road to play Detroit, if the playoffs began today (here are the NFL standings). The Panthers must be careful, though. They now share the same record as San Francisco -- 9-4 -- but the Panthers hold that tiebreaker. However, if Carolina loses once more -- say, to the Jets at home on Sunday -- then there's a possibility Arizona (8-5) could catch Carolina. And Arizona holds the tiebreaker against Carolina. So the Panthers are no sure thing to make the playoffs as of now -- 11 wins would almost certainly get them there, which would require a 2-1 finish. Anything less than that would be very iffy. So the Panthers can't afford a holiday hangover.

Panthers over New Orleans? I just have a hunch

Do you know how rare this is?

All of it, I mean.

The Panthers on an eight-game regular season winning streak (never has happened). The Panthers getting "flexed" into a Sunday night game out of what used to be a Sunday 1 p.m. game (happened five years ago, against the New York Giants, but that seems like a long time).

New Orleans and Carolina both 9-3, meeting for the first bout in a two-game, 15-day, home-and-home series (never has happened).

Me going to Cafe du Monde to load up on coffee and beignets, getting powdered sugar all over myself and never being able to entirely brush it off just before a game at the Superdome (all right, that has happened a few times).

-- Look, the Panthers are going to give up yardage Sunday night. No way around it. Drew Brees has thrown for 325 or more yards seven times in his New Orleans career against Carolina. Seven times! You know how many times Cam Newton has thrown for 325 yards or more in his entire career against everybody? Three.

-- On the other hand, do you remember that DeAngelo Williams (shown above on his touchdown run against San Francisco) rushed for a franchise-record 210 yards in the season finale at New Orleans a year ago? The Panthers certainly do. I've always thought Williams is one of the Panther players who excels on artificial turf, which accentuates his speed and cutting ability. I'd be surprised if he doesn't get at least 15 carries Sunday.

-- Look, this has nothing to do with the game, but it's a good cause. If you're feeling lucky about the Panthers' chances of making the Super Bowl, you ought to consider entering a raffle for two Super Bowl tickets, plane fare and luxury accommodations for the big game on Feb.2, 2014. The raffle tickets are expensive -- $100 each -- but they benefit a very good cause (Children's Home Society of North Carolina) and only 1,200 will be sold. And the prize is big-time. Click here if interested in learning more.

-- One more thing unrelated to this game: I am thinking about writing a column about some of the kids and families who have gotten a "touchdown football" from Cam Newton at a Panthers game over the past three years. You know what I mean -- one of the balls that Newton physically hands to a kid in the end zone after a Panther score. As you can imagine, however, no one keeps a list of such families. If you are one of these families or know of one I could contact to talk about what the ball means to them and so on, please email me at sfowler@charlotteobserver.com. This is called crowd-sourcing, people -- help me out!

-- OK, onto the prediction.

The Saints should win this game, really. They are undefeated at home in 2013. By my totally unscientific measure, I believe they are 10 points better at home than they are on the road. They are coming off an awful loss to Seattle that was a nationally televised embarrassment, and anxious to make up for it. Brees is ridiculously good.

All week I have planned to pick the Saints. And yet that Monday night game keeps giving me pause. I know it was in Seattle, but it was a blueprint. And the Panthers should have Charles Johnson back. And they have a ton of confidence. And I just have a hunch. Could be a bad one. Could be too many beignets. But I'm picking: Carolina 33, New Orleans 29.

What if Panthers had begun play in 1955? An imagined history of the logo

Matt Stevens is a dreamer, which comes in handy in his work as a graphic designer in Charlotte. So when his friend Ryan Kalil, the Panther Pro Bowl center, asked him recently to imagine what the Panthers' history would look like if the team had been founded a long time ago instead of in 1995, Stevens couldn't stop thinking about it.

As a personal project, with no endorsement from or affiliation with the Panthers, Stevens decided to imagine a logo and brand history for the Panthers if they had been founded in 1955 instead of 1995.

The results are pretty stunning if you're into that kind of stuff. Stevens said he put "about 30 hours" of work into the project, which he then posted on his own blog. I'm reprinting some of his work here, but if you want to know more about how he did all this, I'd recommend checking out this post. The level of detail is amazing, as Stevens not only designed a fake logo, but also a fake game program and fake football cards (Kalil's name is hidden in one of them -- notice the guy on the left is a made-up player named Bryan Lilak (which is "Kalil" backwards.)

.)

Stevens, 42, grew up in Asheville, graduated from UNC Charlotte in 1994 and has lived in Charlotte ever since. After working in small to mid-sized graphic design and branding shops for most of his career, he opened his own company two years ago. His is a small, one-person office in the Cotswold area. He has a wife and three children and did one of the sketches for the program cover while waiting for a pizza at Hungry Howie's on a Friday night to bring home to them.

This sort of "on spec" project thing has worked for him before. He has obsessed with Nike shoes in the 1980s and so he did some creative illustrations about one particular brand of Nikes not long ago. Nike saw them and eventually hired him for a project. He has also done work for Facebook and Pinterest.

"I like to do things I'm passionate about," Stevens said. "And I'm a huge football fan and a huge Panther fan, so this made sense."

Stevens got to know Kalil when he designed a logo for a charitable foundation that Kalil does some work with called "LittleKings.org," and the designer began to realize quickly that Kalil was no dumb jock.

"Ryan has all sorts of creative interests," Stevens said. "Movies, comics, design -- he's into lots of stuff."

After Stevens finished the project, he put the work on his website Monday. Kalil gave it an online boost by sending out the link on Twitter, and the link has since been picked up by one of Sports Illustrated's website and several other national sites. Stevens said his personal website usually draws around 500 hits a day, but that increased to about 12,500 per day this week.



Based on feedback Stevens has gotten, the most popular part of his design seems to be the black Panther on top of the silhouette of North and South Carolina. So he's making a modified version of that one into a T-shirt, figuring he will sell at least a few of them at $30 each. It won't outsell the "Ice Up, Son" T-shirts, but I think it's cool, as is the rest of this stuff. Stevens didn't imagine any results for the team in these 40 "lost" seasons -- I guess he's going to leave that to you. (All the pictures reproduced here are used with Stevens' permission).

What New Orleans loss to Seattle means to Panthers

Well, no one expected that.

Seattle absolutely torched New Orleans on Monday night, blasting the Saints 34-7 in Seattle and sending New Orleans skidding into its key game with Carolina Sunday. The Saints and Panthers now have identical 9-3 records entering the Sunday night game at New Orleans. Here are the full NFL standings. New Orleans would still win the division if the playoffs started today because it holds the tiebreaker edge.

How can Carolina get by the Saints and win the NFC South and the automatic home playoff game that goes with the title (as well as a likely first-round bye)? Two ways:

1) Beat the Saints twice. That head-to-head advantage would guarantee the Panthers a home playoff game no matter what the results of the two teams' other games were. With the Saints on a "short" week and somewhat beaten up by the physical Seahawks, this is at least possible, although playing in New Orleans is a rigorous test. Here's my column about the New Orleans "sandwich."

2) Split with the Saints and.... win against Atlanta and the N.Y. Jets, and hope New Orleans loses once more in its other December games at St. Louis (5-7) and home vs. Tampa Bay (3-9). In that case Carolina would finish 12-4 and New Orleans 11-5.

So what happens if both teams finish 12-4 and tied in the NFC South by splitting against each other and each winning their other two games? That is a pretty likely scenario, and in that case New Orleans would be the NFC's No.2 playoff seed (with a first-round playoff bye) and Carolina would be the No.5 seed and have to travel for a first-round playoff game (likely to Dallas, Detroit, Chicago or Philadelphia).

The reason: New Orleans would win the fourth tiebreaker after the first three failed to break the tie. That relevant tiebreaker -- best NFC record -- would go to New Orleans (10-2 vs. 9-3 in this hypothetical) because the Saints' two other losses this season were to AFC teams and Carolina lost to Arizona, an NFC team, along with Buffalo. Both, of course, lost to Seattle. (The head-to-head, division and common opponent records would all be tied in this scenario). So the Panthers' best bet, by far, is a sweep of the Saints.

-- One interesting side note to Monday night's game: it gave me a strong sense of deja vu from the biggest game I ever saw in person in Seattle. That was the Panthers' 34-14 loss to Seattle in the 2005 NFC title game.

Like New Orleans, Carolina seemed totally discombobulated early in that one. Both teams fell behind the Seahawks by scores of 17-0, 27-7 and 34-7. It was really over by halftime in both cases. Ed Hochuli even was the head official in both games, for gosh sakes. In both cases, the Seahawks crowd was a huge factor. The only real difference was that Carolina scored a late meaningless TD to make it sound more respectable, and New Orleans didn't. The Saints, incidentally, gave up more points to Seattle in 13 minutes than Carolina did in 60 in the 2013 season opener.

And the Saints' defense really looked vulnerable to the pass, if Cam Newton can be anywhere near as accurate as Russell Wilson was Monday. The New Orleans offensive line also looked vulnerable as Seattle got more pressure on Drew Brees than I have seen in a long time. It makes Carolina's 12-7 loss to Seattle look a little better, although of course Seattle is a totally different team on the road.

5 things I liked in big Panther win over Bucs

The Panthers moved to 9-3 Sunday with their eighth straight win, a 27-6 manhandling of Tampa Bay that was close early until the Panthers began to dominate. Here are five of the things I liked the most about the victory, which included Brandon LaFell (above, celebrating) scoring the Panthers' first TD:

1) Riverboat Ron. I thought the key play of the game was when "Riverboat" Ron Rivera went for it on fourth-and-goal from the 1 with 30 seconds to go with Carolina holding a 10-6 lead. No doubt Rivera would have kicked the field goal there earlier in his career and gone into halftime up 13-6. Instead, he goes for the jugular, Newton gets over the top a half-yard before fumbling and Carolina had a 17-6 lead and all the momentum.

2) Team defense. Even when the Panthers play badly on defense, they seem to have just enough to make up for it. Case in point: Drayton Florence gets torched for a 60-yard Vincent Jackson pass. But Florence manages a shoestring tackle at the Carolina 4, and from there the Panthers hold for two plays and Mike Glennon has an awful fumble on the third one. No points, and once again -- after yet another second-half shutout -- the Panthers will retain their overall No.1 rank in the NFL in scoring defense. The run defense was particularly effective.

3) Mike Tolbert. What a banger. With DeAngelo Williams out, he took a larger role and took the old Sam Mills motto ("Keep Pounding") to an extreme.

4) Ted Ginn Jr. He's seemingly good for about one big play a game, but what a big play it can be. Ginn's visit to Darrelle Revis's "Island" resulted in Ginn burning Revis for a 36-yard touchdown and putting the game out of reach.

5) A.J. Klein. Several times in this game the rookie linebacker looked so much like Luke Kuechly that it was tough to tell the difference. Some fans had to catch themselves as they started the old cheer of "L-U-U-U-K-E" after Klein's big sack of Mike Glennon.