Mike Celizic

Any delusions that may have lingered about the quality of the NFC were laid to rest Monday night when two teams that had been threatening to go in opposite directions instead conspired to meet at the mediocrity mark — .500 football.

If you found yourself watching the Panthers perform their fifth fourth-quarter flame-out of the season and thinking that you had tuned into a Giants game by mistake, don’t worry. It turns out the Giants aren’t the only team that refuses to grasp the opportunities in front of it. In the NFC, disappointing losses and unlikely wins are reaching epidemic proportions.

It’s impossible to figure anymore. The Panthers had come into the season as the choice of many analysts to represent the NFL’s stepchild conference in the Super Bowl. Yet they came into the game against the Eagles with a record of just 6-5, with four of those losses coming after Carolina blew fourth-quarter leads.

But the Eagles figured to be the perfect team to get well against. Donovan McNabb is lost for the season to a shredded ACL, and in his place was the well-traveled Jeff Garcia, who had bombed in Cleveland after his brief run of glory with the San Francisco 49ers and was no longer thought of as a top NFL quarterback.

Oh, the Eagles are a tough defensive team, but so are the Panthers. You figured it would be low-scoring, but the Panthers, with Jake Delhomme at quarterback and Steve Smith and Keyshawn Johnson at wide receiver, would certainly score more than the crippled Birds.

The game was going to lift Carolina a game clear of the 6-6 Giants and Falcons in the wild-card race and two games clear of everyone else. It was also going to drop Philly to 5-7 and drive a stake through the heart of the Eagles’ hopes of somehow making the playoffs.

But, like the Giants a day earlier, who had a golden opportunity to tie the Cowboys atop the NFC East at 7-5 only to lose in a flurry of mistakes and yellow flags, when the Panthers needed to win, they found a way to lose. Monday night, it was an interception in the end zone thrown by Delhomme with time nearly expired and the Panthers just a few yards from victory. The pick denied Carolina a chance to kick a game-tying field goal.

The loyal fans at the Linc had been booing the Eagles and Garcia just moments before he forged a 27-24 lead, but when Delhomme threw his latest poorly-conceived pass to lose the game, they were celebrating as if they’d known all along their guys would do it.

So now, instead of being out of it, Philadelphia is 6-6, and, instead of having a wild card all but wrapped up, the Panthers are in exactly the same place, a position also shared by New York and Atlanta.

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As the luck of the schedule would have it, the Panthers, who also have games remaining against the Saints and Falcons, play the Giants come Sunday. It should be quite a show, a battle between two teams that have yet to see a late lead they can’t choke away.

Hard though it is to believe, just four teams — the Bears, Cowboys, Saints and Seahawks — of the 16 in the NFC have winning records; in the AFC, nine teams are above .500. For years — ever since parity sank its fangs into the game — the prophets of doom have been predicting that some year a sub-.500 team would make the playoffs. Thanks to the NFC, this could be the year.

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