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Matt Moore's five-week stint as starting quarterback overflowed with promise. (PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS)

CHARLOTTE -- Some numbers are hard to ignore.

On the negative side for Carolina's quarterbacks was Jake Delhomme's touchdown-to-interception ratio; at minus-10 (eight-to-18), it was the worst in the league.   The Panthers were 3-7 when their starting quarterback had a negative or even TD/INT ratio and 5-1 when it was positive, once again cementing the connection between turnovers and defeat.

Having got that out of the way, let's turn to an equally resonant number on the positive side.

If Matt Moore's 104.9 quarterback rating as a starter had been accomplished in a quarter or even a game or two, it could easily be brushed off as a fluke. If you give a pro passer enough starts, he'll have one bright day; even Ryan Leaf had a 111.8 rating thanks to a three-touchdown, 311-yard performance in 2000 at Denver.

But Moore's number came over five games, not just one. In Weeks 13-17 this past season, it was only exceeded among quarterbacks who threw at least 100 passes by San Diego's Philip Rivers.

It also measures impressively among young quarterbacks since 1978, when the schedule expanded to 16 games. In that span, there have been 203 occasions where a quarterback aged 25 or younger threw at least 100 passes in the final five games of a regular season.

The overwhelming majority of them (139 of 203) yielded ratings below 80.0. Moore was one of just nine with a rating over 100; all are listed below:

While promising, Moore's rating as 2009 concluded is no guarantee of long-term success. Yes, six of the eight other names listed above (Boomer Esiason had two such seasons) were Pro Bowlers at some point in their careers, with Green Bay's Aaron Rodgers the most recent addition to that class. One of them (Dan Marino) is a Hall of Famer; another (Brett Favre) certainly will be.

But if you haven't noted the name atop the list, you should. Eric Zeier failed to build off his surge and saw most of his key statistics drop the following season: his touchdown-to-interception ratio dropped to 4-to-3; his yardage per attempt slumped by more than a full yard to 7.2. By midseason, he was benched in favor of Jim Harbaugh. By 1999 he was in Tampa Bay, with which he started just one game -- a 20-3 loss at Detroit -- and by 2001 he was out of the league entirely.

Moore's performance late in the 2009 season represents a stronger base from which to build than most quarterbacks possess. Having a pair of 1,100-yard runners and a 6-2 career record as a starter won't hurt No. 3 much, either.

But it's just a foundation, and nothing more.

120.0 RATING, THREE TOUCHDOWNS, ZERO INTERCEPTIONS

Of the 512 starts made by all NFL quarterbacks in 2009, just 34 of them (6.64 percent) saw passers finish with a rating above 120 and at least three touchdown passes with no interceptions.

Moore had two such starts, a total matched by seven other quarterbacks but surpassed by only two: New Orleans' Drew Brees and Minnesota's Brett Favre; they had three and five games, respectively, in which they reached those statistical mileposts. However, Brees had 15 starts and Favre 16; Moore made only five starts and hit the trifecta in 40 percent of them.

Games with that combination of statistics are even more rare in Panthers history, with just nine in 240 regular-season games since the franchise's inception; with a frequency of 3.75 percent, they take place once every 26.7 games -- a little less than twice in a three-year span.

Moore hit those numbers in consecutive games, the first time any Panthers quarterback did so since Steve Beuerlein in Weeks 14 and 15 of the 1999 season. Beuerlein is the franchise's leader in 120.0/3/0 games with four; three came during his memorable 1999 season when he went to the Pro Bowl and

GIVE NO QUARTER: Moore's rating rose throughout the games in which he played, going from 88.0 in the first quarter to 95.7 in the second, 106.1 in the third and 107.4 in the fourth. However, his most productive quarter in terms of yardage was the second quarter; he passed for 365 yards in the second quarters of his games.

This was almost certainly due to his pass frequency in the second quarter; he threw 59 times in that quarter -- six attempts more than he did in all the second halves in which he played. Such imbalance is typical for a team playing with a second-half lead, as Moore did in four of his five starts.

POSITION-BY-POSITION:

• RB: Season Review | By the Numbers | Panthers.com TV
• QB: Season Review | Panthers.com TV