Road-loving Panthers prefer prowling in hostile environment

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Don’t feel sorry for the Carolina Panthers because they have to make the cross-country flight to Seattle for today’s NFC Championship game.

They like it that way.

That’s a not-so-small reason why the Panthers have won an NFL record-tying four consecutive postseason games on the road.

“There’s something our team likes about coming out of the tunnel and being booed,” coach John Fox said Friday. “Our team has a kind of sick little grin on its face about being booed.”

It is a familiar axiom in sports – visiting teams love the sound of silencing an arena. On their Super Bowl march two seasons ago, the Panthers won at St. Louis and Philadelphia. This year, they’ve won at New York and Chicago. Including the regular season, Carolina is 8-2 on the road.

Going to Seattle’s Qwest Field, the Panthers will step into one of the NFL’s most notorious noise factories. They approach it with anticipation rather than trepidation.

“There’s something about it,” quarterback Jake Delhomme said. “We get in that tunnel at New York and we could hear the fans getting after it. It’s the whole atmosphere of it.

“You know there’s nobody else but the coaches and the players. That’s it.”

Delhomme said the Panthers can’t worry about going on the road. Had they wanted to play at home, Delhomme said, they should have won more games in the regular season.

Fox said the experience the Panthers went through last season when they overcame a 1-7 start and nearly made the playoffs has had an effect on this team in its travels.

“They’ve seen the darkness,” Fox said. “They were 1-7 last year and didn’t lay down their swords. They kept swinging.”