End of an Era in Charlotte
In a surprising about face the Carolina Panthers released long time quarterback Jake Delhomme on Friday meaning Matt Moore heads into the spring as the team’s starting quarterback.
Even though Delhomme is coming off of an extremely poor season following one of the worst performances in playoff history one got the sense the last couple of months that Delhomme was going to be around this year. John Fox had been very non committal about simply handing the team over to the relatively unproven Moore.
It was being largely assumed around Charlotte that Moore was the favorite to be the starting quarterback next season, but, that Fox had every intention of giving Delhomme a shot to win the starting job back this summer.
Moore did close the season on a high note winning four of the five games he started down the stretch throwing 8 touchdowns and turning the ball over only one time. Delhomme, on the other hand, turned the ball over last season as if he had an incentive clause in his contract that paid him $100,000 for every turnover he committed.
With the team letting Julius Peppers go via free agency and the release of Delhomme and veteran defensive tackle Damione Lewis and rumors of more to come it looks as though the Panthers may be cleaning house and starting over to a degree. With the lack of a first round pick it will be interesting to see if the Panthers try to deal one of their big three in DeAngelo Williams, Steve Smith, or Johnathan Stewart for a first round pick.
The release of Lewis is somewhat surprising given the revolving door the Panthers had at defensive tackle last season. Lewis was one of the holdovers at the position from the previous year who did not end up on IR.
As for Delhomme there is no word on where he may end up. A lot may depend on which teams are looking at spending a first or second round pick on a quarterback in April. Teams like the Bills, Browns, Rams, or Jags who are rumored to be looking hard at making a change at quarterback this year may take Delhomme as a stop gap to give a prospect like Jimmy Clausen or Sam Bradford a year to adapt to the pro game.
Whatever the case one would not expect Delhomme to get any kind of a significant deal this year. One could see him getting a two year deal but nothing more than that.
Ultimately, dumping Delhomme is probably the best thing for the franchise to do. It became clear that the team was responding more favorably to Moore than they did to Delhomme during the season. At times it almost looked as though Smith and Muhsin Muhammad were dogging it when Delhomme was in the midst of his early season funk.
The fans had also had enough of Delhomme and were pretty upset when he got the big contract extension after the fiasco of a game he had against Arizona in the playoffs. Unfortunately he will be remembered more for how he left Charlotte than for leading the franchise to its only Super Bowl appearance.
