LANDOVER, Md. -- The best team Dan Snyder's billions can buy didn't look invincible. Carolina Panthers coach George Seifert added a few guys out of retirement to a rebuilding team Sunday and gave Snyder's Washington Redskins a fight.
|  | | Brad Johnson completed 25 of 36 passes for 234 yards. |
The Panthers led by three points with about four minutes left in the first half and had a second down at the Redskins' 2. A Panthers touchdown would have shocked the 80,257 rabid Redskins fans and had the 35-year-old owner papering the FedEx Field with pink slips. The Panthers blew it with a dumb William Floyd penalty, Steve Beuerlein taking a sack instead of throwing an incompletion in the back of the end zone and a Richie Cunningham missed field goal.
Cunningham's miss made it happy days to be a Redskin. The 'Skins pulled out a 20-17 season-opening home victory. Snyder will start to check the bank account and peal out a few more "skins" toward quarterback Brad Johnson so that he can keep what he hopes will be a Super Bowl dynasty team.
"Some of you are saying it wasn't an impressive win, but a win is a win," cornerback Deion Sanders said. "This is not like college. We don't care about winning by a certain amount of points. We're not playing to be ranked."
Johnson, the heady quarterback, spelled out how he thinks this season will unfold. "We're going to have maybe nine games where it's going to come down to a last-minute field goal or a last-minute touchdown to win," he said.
What will be interesting to see is if other teams copy the Panthers' strategy in trying to contain the potent Redskins offense. Seifert had cornerbacks Doug Evans and Eric Davis play 10 yards off the ball and often had them in zones. Linebackers didn't run-blitz to stop Stephen Davis.
"They may have had only one blitz in the entire game," Johnson said.
In other words, the Panthers wanted to test the patience of the high-priced team that everybody expects will roll over opponents. A year ago, Seifert matched his corners up man-to-man against Michael Westbrook and Albert Connell, and Johnson burned them for 337 passing yards and four touchdown passes in a 38-36 Redskins victory at FedEx.
"They were not going to give us the big play, so we had to keep everything five to 10 yards," Redskins coach Norv Turner said.
Left to their patience, the Redskins didn't implode. Johnson worked the short stuff and completed 25 of 36 passes for 234 yards. His longest completion of the day was only 16 yards. Stephen Davis, who will hold a press conference Monday to announce his new $90 million contract, had only 55 yards rushing at the end of three quarters, but the score was tied at 10-10.
"We are a very explosive type of team," Johnson said. "They played their corners 15 yards deep and didn't give us any easy shots."
Like any championship team, the star players have to shine in the end. Defensive end Bruce Smith broke through double-team blocking to sack Beuerlein early in the third quarter and force a fumble that set up a field goal. Davis rushed for 78 yards in the fourth quarter. Johnson took all the short stuff, didn't throw an interception and jumped into the end zone for a critical 1-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter.
Make no mistake, though, this wasn't the Redskins' Super Bowl performance. If they don't improve over the next few weeks, those game-winning drives that Johnson talks about might be "Hail Marys."
"I don't want to blow this out of proportion," Smith said. "We played very solid on defense, but we made mistakes. We have to correct these mistakes before we play another opponent."
Mistakes were plentiful. Take special teams, for example. They failed to live up to their name, and Turner had to go into the middle of the kickoff coverage team and start benching young players in the first game. Panthers kickoff returner Michael Bates returned Brett Conway's first kickoff of the season for a 92-yard touchdown in the first quarter.
Bates followed in the fourth quarter with a 90-yarder that was called back by an illegal block to the back by Panthers fullback Chris Heatherington on Redskins linebacker Eddie Mason. "Our kickoff coverage is horrible," Turner confessed.
So was their defense of outside sweeps. Tim Biakabutuka broke one in the first quarter for 41 yards and another in the second quarter for 15. In the first half, Biakabutuka averaged 11 yards a carry.
"One was my fault because I chucked my blocker and was in position to make the tackle, but I missed him," Smith said. "There were missed tackles on other plays. We have to do a better job of filling the lanes. Mental errors didn't have us in the proper position."
Money can't fix that, so the Redskins will have to go back to the practice field and work on some things. The good news for Snyder and fans is that this is a good working team. Leaders like Smith and Darrell Green will use this to gain more focus. Maybe it's time to start rookie LaVar Arrington because some of the veterans from last year's porous defensive were making the mental blunders.
"But a win is a win," Sanders said. "Where do we rank anyways?"
No. 1 in payroll and in a first-place tie with the Giants and Eagles in the NFC East.
John Clayton is the senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.
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