Last year at QB, the Pants started Jake Delhomme, David Carr, Matt Moore, Vinny Testaverde, Rodney Peete, Dameyune Craig, Jack Trudeau, Frank Reich, Steve Beuerlein, and Steve Bono. It got so bad, they were pretty close to calling Chris Weinke. Yikes.

But this year? Jake’s back, bitches! With one of those stringy, impossible-to-chew parts from a Bojangles™ Brand drumstick grafted onto his throwing elbow. And Jeff Otah! And Jonathan Stewart! And the Pants are going to RESTORE THE ROAR this fall! Or something. Right?

The answer…. is no. Why? Because for all the hand-wringing about how royally screwed the Pants were last year after Jake contracted Tommy John Disease™ and how brutally awful the parade of backups were, did you know that the Pants scored a whopping three fewer points in 2007 than they did in 2006?

That they had 19 passing TDs and 17 INTs, exactly the same as in 2006?
That they scored 7 TDs on the ground, exactly the same as in 2006?
That they posted only 22.75 fewer offensive yards per game than in 2006?
That they only had 2 more turnovers than in 2006, neither of which were INTs? (They were DeShaun Foster fumbles)
That they only lost one more game than they did in 2006?

The point isn’t that the nine different backups that came after Jake were good. They weren’t.
The point isn’t that the Pants’ offense isn’t a problem. It is.
The point isn’t that the Pants won’t be better off if Jake can get through this fall without his arm falling off. They might.

The point is that the prevailing perception of what happened to the Pants last year is wildly inaccurate. To hear most people tell it, the Pants were a 13-3 team who went 4-12 because Jake went down. That their offense went into the shitter when Jake went down and the team went with it.

The reality is that their offense was already in the shitter in 2006 with Jake. 24th in total yards and 27th in scoring.

The perception of the post-Jake offensive dropoff is exaggerated because for the first three weeks of 2007, Jake was having a "resurgent year" and putting up "career numbers"… against the league’s 21st, 23rd and 25th ranked pass defenses. He looked great for three weeks, a lot better than he actually is over a full season these days.

To go from a guy who was playing over his head against bad pass defenses to David Carr and his ridiculous Ted DiBiase gloves will naturally leave a bad taste in your mouth. But over the course of the season, the difference wasn’t nearly as bad as it looked during those first several weeks of the David Carr Experience. I’m not saying there was no dropoff, because clearly there was.

But even if the most wildly optimistic predictions pan out, and a 33 year old QB recovers from Tommy John Disease in less than one calendar year and is "good as new"… 2006 Jake isn’t going to come back and make it all better. Hell, for that matter, 2005 Jake isn’t going to make it all better.

You remember 2005, don’t ya? The year when Jake and Steve Smith went apeshit on the league and the Pants went 11-5 and to the NFC Championship Game? We’re all familiar with the reasons the Pants were so good that year, right?

1. Jake was great because he was healthy, like he will be again this fall.
2. Steve Smith was awesome because he had a legit #2 wideout across from him to free him up to make plays, which he will again this fall with DJ Hackett and/or Dwayne Jarrett.

Bullshit. Both are myths. Here’s the reality:

1. Jake was better in 2004, when the Pants went 7-9, than in 2005. 465 more yards, 5 more TDs, 1 fewer INT.
2. Mushin Muhammad was already gone by 2005. In Smith’s "breakout" 2005 year, the Pants’ second leading receiver was Ricky Proehl with a whopping 414 yards. The following year, when Smith started suffering from not having any other legit WRs on the roster, Keyshawn Johnson put up almost twice as many yards as Proehl did. Hell, even their #3 wideout in 2006 was only 57 yards off Proehl’s total from 2005.

About this time last year, we here at moosedenied asked whether "the real Steve Smith" was the 100-catch, 1600-yard, 12-TD guy from 2005? Or whether he’s the 80/85-catch, 1100-yard, 7/8-TD guy he was in 2003 and 2006? Looks to me like the jury’s in, and he’s the latter. He’s a 10th or 11th in the league kind of guy who blew up for a year once upon a time.

The Pants went 11-5 in 2005 because Stephen Davis was a scoring machine, Steve Smith had his one really big year, and their defense was 3rd in the league by total yards and 5th by points allowed. These days? Stephen Davis is long gone, Steve Smith hasn’t come close to reproducing his 2005 numbers, and the biggest issue of all is that their defense has been on a 2-year slide from "elite" to "barely average."

Over the last three years, the Pants’ league rankings in total defense have dropped from 3 to 7 to 16. 
They’ve dropped in scoring defense from 5 to 8 to 15. 
Their passing defense allowed 15 TDs and produced 23 INTs in their 11-5 year. The last two years, that’s completely flipped. 22 TDs and 14 INTs in both 2006 and 2007. 
Their run defense has gone from 4th to 11th to 18th over the last three years. 
Fumbles recovered? 30 to 17 to 14. 
Sacks? 44 to 40 to 23.
Total points allowed? 259 to 305 to 347.

Julius Peppers went from sack machine to suck machine, but that’s because Mike Rucker sucked on the other end, right? Maybe, but they’re planning to address that issue with Charles Johnson, Stanley McClover or Tyler Brayton? Hey, good luck with that. As for Peppers himself, and his "one fluke bad year", let’s not forget that Peppers only had 2 sacks in the last half of 2006.  Or, in other words, 4.5 sacks over his last 23 games. One bad year, huh? We’ll see about that. Inside, is Damione Lewis any kind of upgrade over Kris Jenkins? If anything, all they’ve gotten is lighter.

Jon Beason and Thomas Davis are bonafide studs at linebacker. And they’ve got a pretty good secondary, although for the past two years, they haven’t been making plays like they did in 2005. But their back 7 is good, so we’ll conveniently just gloss over that and move on.

It seems like the big problem for the Pants’ defense has been the deterioration of the defensive line, both against the run and in rushing the passer. You could also add in the demise of Dan Morgan and the presence of Na’il Diggs instead.

Maybe Julius Peppers suddenly regains his mojo. Maybe somebody steps up on the other end. Maybe they won’t miss Kris Jenkins. Maybe Landon Johnson isn’t the latest in a long line of Bengals linebackers who suddenly doesn’t look nearly as good once he leaves Cincinnati.

Maybe Jake Delhomme becomes a medical marvel, the very first NFL quarterback to do anything in the league after Tommy John surgery. At 33 years old. Maybe Mushin Muhammad isn’t really washed up. Maybe DJ Hackett is capable of better than 45 catches for 610 yards.

Maybe all those 37 things that have to go right for the Pants this year all pan out. But I’m not counting on it.

To me, this looks like a team that’s going into year 3 of one of those retooling phases where you don’t necessarily have to drop off the map and into 5-11 land. Instead, you can hover around 8-8 while trying to find replacements for guys like Mike Minter, Brentson Buckner, Mike Rucker, Dan Morgan, Kris Jenkins, etc. I think the Pants’ organization clearly knows what it’s doing, and that 7-9 qualifies as "rock bottom" for them, for now, barring some really bad luck. I can’t see them sinking any lower than this, and I think they’re on their way back.

On the other hand, I don’t believe that they were a much better team last year than where they ended up, Jake or no Jake. And I don’t think they’re a much better team than that going into this year either. They’re a work in progress, and while I could definitely see them making a significant leap forward this year, I think it’s far more likely that they’ve got at least one more year in purgatory before really putting it back together. And it might very well be longer than that, pending the QB situation. Have you seen the list of potential free agent QBs for 2009 lately?

Kerry Collins, anyone? Oof.

Prediction: 8-8, 2nd in the NFC South because no way in hell Tampa gets as lucky this year as they got last year