DeAngelo Williams' 122 yards rushing weren't enough Thursday night. (Photo by John Clark)

   CHARLOTTE – The Carolina Panthers season is over.
   You can hold out a faint hope that they're mathematically alive at 4-6, but the reality is this team has thrown in the towel. How do I know this? I could hear in their voices, detect it in their mannerisms. It wasn't hard. When I walked into the locker room after Thursday night's 24-17 loss to the Miami Dolphins I was expecting a room full of angry men, upset over losing a chance at salvaging their season.
   Instead, there was an aura of acceptance.

   There was a realization among the players that this season simply wasn’t meant to be. There were no traces of anger in any of the players’ voices, just realism that the goal they set out to attain is now unattainable – and there’s nothing they can do about it. It was kind of matter-of-fact mentality, almost a relief in some sense that they can stop worrying about it now. 
   They’ve accepted the fact they're not going anywhere this year. And once you accept it, it's over.
   “I’m not really frustrated with the way we played,” receiver Steve Smith said. “We did the best we could.”
   Maybe he has a point.
   Maybe this was the best the 2009 Panthers could do.
   After all, this team has never shown any indication they are anything but mediocre – not in practice, not during a winless preseason and certainly not in the first 10 weeks of the season. And technically they're not even mediocre. They're below mediocre since they failed to get to .500 for the fourth time this season after losing to Miami 24-17.
   “We almost did enough to win,” Smith said. “We can put it under a magnifying glass all we want, but I think offensively we did a great job. We could always do better. Win, loss, tie, you always want to do better.”
   But really, 17 points… a great job?
   Is that what it’s come to?
   “We did some good things out there today, but it is unfortunate when you lose a game the focus is more on the bad things than the good things,” said running back DeAngelo Williams.
   Unfortunate?
   Seriously folks, it was as if the Panthers took happy pills after this game or the guys have simply become numb to this losing thing.
   It wasn’t necessarily always what was said, but the way it was said.
   Nobody seemed downtrodden. Nobody seemed ticked off. Frustrated, maybe a little, but overwhelmed with grief? Nope.
   Acceptance.
   They’ve accepted being mediocre.
   “We’re just not making our plays,” Williams said. “That is what it basically boils down to. A missed block here, a missed hole there, a mistimed pass or dropped ball here, things like that. We can’t have things like that.”
   Coach John Fox says this team still has a lot of fight left in them and I don’t doubt him. Now that the Panthers know their chances of reaching the postseason are over, they’ll probably play looser and I wouldn’t put it past them to win the next two games and then pull off a victory over a team they’re not supposed to beat, like Minnesota or the New York Giants.
   But even if they do, it won’t be enough.
   At the very least the Panthers have to win five of their next six games and that’s not going to happen.
   The reality is there’s always been something missing from this team. I've had a hard time putting my finger on why, but perhaps that's because it's not just one thing. Maybe it's combination of things. Unlike many of Fox’s teams in the past, the '09 Panthers lacked a certain magic, a chemisty, a cohesiveness, a fire and a will to win.
   This has been the season of bad karma.
   As I walked into the locker room after the game mammoth defensive tackle Maake Kemoeatu stood there resting on crutches.
   If you believe in omens, this was a big one – literally.
   When your biggest player goes down for the season 30 minutes into the first practice of training camp in a non-contact drill that’s enough to shake any head coach. Kemoeatu has been followed to injured reserve by the likes of a few of his potential replacements like Corvey Irvin and Louis Leonard, as well as Pro Bowl caliber players Jordan Gross and Thomas Davis, who, like Kemoeatu, also suffered a season-ending injury on a play in which he wasn't hit. There have been a variety of other injuries along the way to key players like Julius Peppers, Brad Hoover, Jon Beason, Charles Godfrey, Muhsin Muhammad and Dante Rosario.
   But it’s been more than the injuries.
   How about your most talented defensive player telling everyone who’ll listen that he doesn’t want to play for your team? How about the owner basically firing his two sons before the season even begins? How about your star receiver getting in a car accident on a 10-minute ride to the stadium before the game?
   It’s been that type of season.
   Offense was supposed to be the strength of the ’09 Panthers. They returned all 11 starters from a team that finished third in rushing last year and seventh in points scored and won 12 games. And yet, outside of a few brief days during training camp – probably because the defense was still getting its feet wet learning a new scheme – this offense has never looked good.
   Collectively, Carolina’s offense has played four-and-half decent games this year – against Atlanta twice, Tampa Bay, Arizona and half of the New Orleans game.
   The rest has been painful to watch.
   You don’t score nine points against Buffalo and win many games.  
   Carolina scored 30 points seven times last season but has reached that plateau once in 10 games this year, and that came with the help of a defensive touchdown by Julius Peppers in a 31-24 win over Arizona.
   Jake Delhomme insists “guys are fighting their tail off,” and I don’t doubt him.
   I think the Panthers have played hard, especially the past four weeks.
   They’re just not getting it done.
   They’re not winning the close games like they did a year ago or in their Super Bowl year of 2003.
   And that’s because they’re not very good, not very healthy and not very deep. All of that manifests itself in their inability to tackle, score in the red zone and cover a punt or kickoff.
   The big question coming into the season was if the Panthers could return to the playoffs and avenge last year’s devastating loss to the Cardinals. The answer is no.
   There's something missing alright.
   What's missing is a return to the playoffs. It’s time to accept that -- because the Panthers already have.