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Published: Sunday, Nov. 18, 2012 / Updated: Sunday, Nov. 18, 2012 08:30 PM

Carolina’s season has feel of inevitability

  In the Tampa Bay locker room players talked as if they knew they would win. Winning begets winning. Losing? You know what it does.

     In the Tampa Bay locker room players talked as if they knew they would win. Winning begets winning. Losing? You know what it does.

•    I don’t blame Carolina for trying a fake punt. But Haruki Nakamura was the wrong guy to snap the ball to. Nakamura, a safety, is accustomed to lining up 30 yards beyond the line of scrimmage. On the fake punt, he lined up about five yards behind the line of scrimmage. Nakamura lost four yards and Tampa Bay took possession. On the next play, Nakamura dropped into his customary position and picked off quarterback Josh Freeman.

•     Was there any doubt, after the Buccaneers scored a touchdown to pull within two points, that they’d convert the ensuing two-point possession?

•     I talked to a scalper on College Street before the game. He said what you’d expect: there was less interest in this one than in any home game the Panthers have played all season. Tampa Bay fans don’t travel well – not even to Tampa, Fla. Empty seats were plentiful at Bank of America Stadium Sunday and by overtime you could squeeze the remaining fans into Time Warner Cable Arena. And, no, I’m not criticizing ticket-holders.  What they do with their tickets is nobody’s business but theirs. The issue – they have to show up, they have to stay, they can’t sell them to fans of the opposition – is contrived. The Panthers have only two more home games: Atlanta on Dec. 9 and Oakland on Dec. 23. The Oakland game will be interesting. Sometimes a thing is so bad that it’s good.

•     I’ve covered sports for a long time. And I have never been around a team that loses games the way the Panthers do. It’s not a lack of talent. What they have – talent and philosophy – simply doesn’t work.