Closer Look

Panthers expose Cowboys' top-ranked defense as a fraud

By John Donovan, SI.com

Stephen Davis had a 23-yard TD run in the second quarter. AP Branded for success Jake Delhomme threw for 273 yards and a TD, Stephen Davis ran for 104 yards and a score and the Carolina Panthers ended the Bill Parcells-led turnaround in Dallas with a 29-10 victory against the Cowboys in the first round of the playoffs. Click here for full story.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Bill Parcells, remember, told everybody that it was way too early to stick his Dallas Cowboys among the championship caliber teams in the NFL. Yeah, the Cowboys had the league's top-ranked defense and all that. Yeah, they won 10 games. Yeah, they made the playoffs.

But, the Dallas head coach reasoned, the Cowboys just weren't ready for prime time. Not yet.

Well, you see? This is why they call Parcells a genius.

The Carolina Panthers jumped on the Cowboys' No. 1 defense on Saturday night -- made them look a whole lot more like No. 32 is what they did -- in a convincing NFC Wild Card game win at balmy Ericsson Stadium.

Carolina ran on the Cowboys. The Panthers hit big pass plays. They dinked. They bombed. They ran up the middle and around end.

They were stuffed at times, for sure. Twice, they had first and goal at the Cowboys' 1-yard line, and both times the Panthers had to settle for field goals.

Still, all in all, the Cowboys' heralded defense simply was no match for the Panthers' offense in the 29-10 trouncing.

"They knew what we were going to be doing, and we pretty much didn't know what they were going to be doing," Cowboys cornerback Terence Newman said after the game. "You get whupped by a team that you beat earlier in the season ... I don't think it can get any worse than this.

"For me, it just seemed like I was pretty much getting abused [Saturday night]."

It took the Panthers all of three plays to expose the Cowboys' blitzing defense, especially their secondary. Quarterback Jake Delhomme, working out of a spread formation, found wide receiver Steve Smith with a 6-yard pass on the right side on third-and-3. But Dallas safety Roy Williams, coming over to help Newman, overplayed the pass and found himself too close to the sideline.

Smith turned to the middle of the field and took off. Seventy yards later, streaking down the right sideline, he was brought down on the 1-yard line. The Cowboys buckled down and held the Panthers to a field goal, but the message from the Panthers was clear.

After a 24-20 loss in Dallas earlier this season, Carolina was after some payback.

"I think that kind of set the tone," Smith said of the first-quarter play. "It just showed them that it was going to be a long game."

The Cowboys' defense looked confused and ineffective for much of the evening. The Boys held the Panthers' main threat, 1,400-yard runner Stephen Davis, to 12 yards on his first seven carries (a 1.7 yard average). But on his eighth, he cut back on a run to the right side and went 23 yards. And on Carolina's next possession, he bounced a run up the middle to the left sideline and bolted into the end zone for a 23-yard touchdown.

That was the Cowboys' defense all night: Do some good, then follow it with a lot of bad.

There was the play in the first quarter, for instance, when the Cowboys had the Panthers at third-and-10 on their own 44. The Cowboys not only jumped offside, they gave up a 14-yard pass from Delhomme to Muhammad that set up Carolina's second field goal.

There was the huge gaffe and the end of the first half, when Cowboys linebacker Al Singleton found himself all alone with Muhammad -- no safety in sight. Muhammad blew by Singleton for a 57-yard gain, and John Kasay kicked a 19-yard field goal with a second left in the half.

And then there were the plays that the Panthers actually made, like a beautiful 32-yard touchdown pass from Delhomme to Smith in front of -- one more time now -- the abused Newman.

"Our corners didn't play well tonight," said Parcells, "and if we don't play too well outside ... well, you know. It's a team deal. It wasn't just our corners. We can do better than that."

Dallas' defense had allowed 295.3 yards a game before Saturday night. Against the Panthers, the Cowboys allowed 267 yards -- in the first half. The Cowboys were third in the league in run defense, allowing just 89.1 rushing yards a game. Against Carolina, they gave up 75 rushing yards -- in the first half.

By the time all the pyrotechnic smoke had cleared and the Panthers finished with a victory lap around their stadium, Dallas had allowed a whopping 380 yards of offense to the Panthers. Smith and Muhammad both had 100-plus yards in receptions. Davis ran for 104 yards.

Balanced offense, someone asked?

"We balanced their ass," Smith said. "You can pump them up all you want. They lost."

Yeah, it was an undeniable fact of NFL life. If there was an NFL championship-caliber team in Charlotte on Saturday night, it sure didn't have a star on its helmet.

Just like Parcells said.