We had a chance to chat with Panthers tight end Ed Dickson after the Panthers costly 31-21 loss to the New Orleans Saints in which the veteran in his seventh NFL season caught his only two targets for 18 yards. After exploding for 175 yards against the Lions in Week 5, Dickson has failed to match that number in the seven games that have followed; still, the tight end is invaluable as both a blocker and a veteran presence in the huddle and the locker room.
Disappointing loss today, do you just move on to the next game?
You’ve got to. It’s the NFL. You might want to think at the beginning of the season that you’re going 17-0, but, you know, once you realize that these other players, you know, they’re just as talented, so the margin of error is very little.
Pretty big stretch coming up with the Vikings and then the Packers, do you pay attention to where you guys are in the standings?
No, you go one game at a time. If we do that, you can overwhelm yourself. I would say, as a veteran player, you get the 24-hour rule. You get 24 hours to be happy for a win or to grieve for a loss. 24-hour rule, then move on to the next game. Vikings don’t care if we won today or if we lost. They’re coming in to try to beat us; we didn’t handle our business today, that’s all I can say about that, personally. But we’ll go back and watch the film tomorrow and see exactly what we need to get corrected and get it corrected for next week. Then go play a very talented Vikings team.
Seemed like that first drive was very successful, was that a scripted drive?
I’m not the offensive coordinator, so I can’t tell you about a script; I just run whatever’s called, you know. All I know is that it seemed like we weren’t in sync those last couple of drives, the next couple of drives after that first one. With quarterbacks like Drew Brees, you can’t give him back the ball as many times as we did.
