| Brian Carlton. 18th August, 2005 - 8:24 pm
 Quick, teach me how to tackle somebody. In ten words or less, make me understand what I’ve got to do in order to knock Bubba and his 275 lb. body to the ground. Normally I’d ask a pro but it seems like here in North Carolina, most of them could use a few tips. How bout this one? “Get to the ball with bad intentions”. Not bad huh? Listen to that and you’ve got an idea why the team and the state are looking forward to putting our first round pick, Thomas Davis on the field. After being introduced as the newest Panther, Davis was asked to describe his tackling philosophy, which for me ranks up there as one of the dumbest questions you can ask a player. It’s second only to “why did you drop that pass”, a question that no one in their right mind will speak on, cause regardless of the answer, the dude’s still going to be the goat. I don’t care why you dropped it, just that we lost. But anyway back to the question.
Davis said his main goal was to get to the ball with bad intentions. Now that’s not a quote, that’s a mission statement and marketing dream all rolled into one. Bad intentions were somewhat lacking in last year’s defense, mainly because our team got hit more than a wack a mole, with players going down left and right. Even for a superstar like Julius Peppers, it’s hard to be the big dog when you’ve got subs, free agents and rookies playing around you, almost too nervous to touch the other team, much less hit ‘em. At that point, you’re just trying to keep everything from falling apart and hoping nobody else gets carted off. Run down the latest Panther’s rap sheet from college and you get an idea of why he can solve problems even when everyone’s healthy.
Basically, the man’s a lethal weapon, strong enough to play linebacker and quick enough to play safety. He comes in at 6-1ft and 227, able to nail down a 4.43 in the 40 yard dash. By comparison, Braylon Edwards, the wide receiver drafted number three by Cleveland, hit a 4.45. He also recorded 179 tackles over his three year stay in college. That’s more than some starters record over four. But the main thing that lights up Davis’ resume is taken from the scouting report on him, put out before the draft. It says he makes “a tremendous impact against the run…finds the ball..and he’s an intimidating hitter who can blitz”. That almost reads like a perfect pick for a team like the Panthers, who was desperate for help against the run.
Officials call players like Davis jokers, because you can play all kinds of tricks on the other team when they’re in the game. Just ask Coach John Gruden, who has a pretty decent joker on his squad. Derrick Brooks has been to the last eight Pro Bowls and is, you could say, a major reason why Tampa made it to the Super Bowl in 2003. Davis and Brooks are almost clones of each other, with the rookie coming in one inch taller and weighing eight pounds less.
Now sure, you hear the rumors, the whispers that maybe he wasn’t first round material. The same scouting report on Davis said that he could get beat in coverage and was a sucker for play action passes. To hear ESPN and several other networks tell it, we should have went the pure linebacker route and got Derrick Johnson, who fell to Kansas City. That makes some sense, seeing as we just lost a linebacker to Hodgkin's disease in Mark Fields. But the knock on Johnson is a problem Carolina has too much experience with. He has problems with tackling. No offense, but give me a man with bad intentions anyday. |
