Originally posted on HitmanHarris.com

CAROLINAAAAAA!  MAN, I’m excited to get back home!  

I feel like I can call Carolina "home," because I made it my home once I moved over there in ‘07.  Actually, it’s where I plan on living when I’m done playing football, so to get to come back and visit while we’re playing the Panthers is something I’ve really been looking forward to.

I still have a bunch of friends on the Panthers who I keep in touch with on a frequent basis: Thomas Davis, Jon Beason, and a ton of others.  I’m also still good friends with "Double Trouble" who’s sure to be up to no good. DeAngelo Williams, Jonathan Stewart and myself always used to talk a lot of smack and trash during practices, but we’ve never been able to do so while playing for opposing teams.  Those guys are both excellent Pro Bowl caliber running backs, so you know we’re going to have our hands full this week.

Speaking of "Double Trouble": we’re pretty sure Carolina will leaning a lot on their running game during their offensive attack.  So, what we’re going to have to do is control that strength of theirs and make them a one-dimensional team.  If we can do that, we’ll feel pretty confident about our chances to win the game.

The Panthers will be starting their rookie quarterback, Jimmy Clausen, who’s pretty good.  But, because he’s a rookie, he still hasn’t seen everything the NFL has to offer, so we’ll try to throw some looks his way to try and confuse him.  That same strategy goes for their two rookie receivers: we’ll be throwing different looks at them to make them have to adjust on the run and things of that nature.

Defensively, our goal this week is to score -- We’ve GOTTA score on defense!  Every game we’ve scored on defense, we’ve come away with a win, so getting that done has been emphasized a lot during this week’s practices.

Our special teams is going to have to play well this week, too.  Actually, that’s an aspect of Carolina’s game that I gotta give some serious praise to: they have a GREAT special teams.  Even though a lot of them are young rookies, I think they rank somewhere in the top five.  So, you know, we’re definitely going to have our hands full with them, because those special teamers are really getting after it out there.

All in all, this game’s gonna be a good one.  I’m excited to get back out there to Carolina to play a little football. Sure, it’s going to be weird walking out on that field in a different colored uniform, but that’s alright, because all of us are still going to have a lot of fun.  I can’t wait.