Guaranteeing a Super Bowl Title: Not Just Rex Ryan Does It

So, here we are. The Carolina Panthers are Super Bowl champions.

So says Ryan Kalil, the Pro Bowl center who recently took an ad out in the Charlotte Observer guaranteeing that Carolina would raise the Lombardi trophy in New Orleans in February.

Of course, Kalil's prediction doesn't exactly come out of nowhere. Carolina is in possession of possibly the most electrifying QB in the league, Cam Newton, who exploded onto the scene last year by setting a rookie record for passing yards and broke the league record for rushing scores by a signal-caller. Carolina will also return David Gettis, who was on track to be the #2 receiver last year before tearing his ACL in camp. And Carolina's defense gets back its two best players this year, both of whom tore their ACLs in the early going of 2011 (what's with my teams and ACL tears this last year??): Thomas Davis and Jon Beason. On top of that, they drafted another one, Luke Kuechly, who promises to be on their level. Even if none of those three things works out as planned, Carolina's defense can scarcely be as bad as last year's - there's a reason Cam had to throw so often that he set the rookie passing record.

It is, however, receiving quite an amount of pub. Kalil's ad was the lead story on an admittedly-slow-news-day edition of PTI yesterday, and discussion of the ad is flying around message boards, with the general tone seeming to be: You've got to make the playoffs to win the Super Bowl, bud.

Carolina did win just 6 games last year but came on strong at the end of the season. They won 4 of their last 6 games of 2011 and let at least 5 winnable games slip away. The Panthers were 6-9 going into their last game of 2011 and they could very easily have been 8-7 or 9-6 and been right in the thick of the playoff race. It doesn't hurt their chances that New Orleans, which would have been the prohibitive divisional favorite, has been decimated by the suspensions handed out by Roger Goodell in the wake of the bounty scandal.

It remains to be seen whether Carolina has the horses to make this guarantee not look dumb. (Please, for the love of God, let all our players' ACLs remain intact this preseason.) But it's nice to see some swagger in Charlotte.