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CHARLOTTE -- Jake Delhomme walked into the locker room Wednesday afternoon as the reigning hero of his team, his league and his sport. He stood in front of the same locker he stood at a season ago when he was injured, hurt and demoralized.

He stood above a sea of cameras and notepads, looking out across a room filled for the midweek media gathering. Delhomme was smiling. He was the ruler of all he surveyed. He was standing in the same spot where Kerry Collins stood more than a decade earlier.

We build up our quarterbacks and marvel at how they maintain or ascend or crumble. Of all the great mythological figures in modern sports, nothing is as powerful as that of the NFL quarterback. Delhomme is the talk of the league right now, the figure who ascended to the top of the game on the same weekend that saw injury, ineffectiveness and ignominy fall on the shoulders of other great figures.

His touchdown pass to tight end Dante Rosario on the game's final play gave Carolina a win over San Diego and was the kind of play that elevates a player in the eyes of the mythmakers.

"Those wins, they don't happen often," Delhomme said Wednesday. "You need to enjoy them somewhat &ellipses;"

He didn't really finish the sentence. He didn't have to.

Delhomme sat in his hotel room Sunday morning and watched Tom Brady go down. The quarterback for the Patriots, the accepted league hero, will miss the rest of the season with a severe knee injury.

He saw the numbers and read the accounts of Peyton Manning's first game back from injury. And he listened to the tales of Brett Favre and the stories out of Nashville, where 2006 rookie of the year Vince Young was in a bizarre emotional tailspin that was playing out on a national stage. Delhomme said he's pulling for Young and for the man who stood where Delhomme was standing Wednesday.

The great irony of the Tennessee episode is that Collins will replace Young.

"It's a tough business," Delhomme said. "You get patted on the back all you want, and that's great, but if things don't go well you're going to get ripped apart. You've got to separate it. I really and truly believe that. You can't tell somebody that. You just have to learn it."

Delhomme is friends with Collins, a player he looks up to, something that might come as a shock to Panthers fans who watched Collins spiral out of control and get fired from his job as Carolina's first football hero.

"Kerry's a Super Bowl quarterback," Delhomme said. "He's been through it, and I promise you he doesn't let that stuff bother him. I know Kerry before and after. There's two different types of Kerry, and I think he'd be the first to say it, the one who was young and the one who was older. I promise you he's extremely secure with his life right now, and he's enjoying it."

Collins was named the starter for the Titans on a strange Wednesday halfway across Tennessee and light years away from the Panthers' locker room. He was asked what was going through his mind.

"Part of playing quarterback in this league is the ups and downs," Collins told reporters after the Titans' practice. "For a young guy, it's the hardest thing to learn sometimes. It's not easy. It really isn't easy.

"There are times when you are going to get booed. There are times when things are not going the way you want them to. You've got to fight through them, and I believe (Young) will. It's just part of the whole process. No quarterback has ever been immune to it."

They booed Young on Sunday, and the Tennessee quarterback went into an emotional trance before leaving the game with an injury. They watched Manning struggle and Favre make spectacular plays. They saw Brady go down and saw Delhomme rise to the heights of NFL hero once again.

He stood back and let it all sink in Wednesday, measuring his words as he answered questions about the pass to Rosario that capped a brilliant win for Delhomme and the Panthers. He offered an explanation that sounded more like a refrain.

"You get brought back down to earth extremely quick in this game," he said.

He stood in the same spot last year and described an elbow injury that would cost him part of his career, an injury he never anticipated, never imagined happening to him.

He stood there Wednesday with a scar on his elbow inches from a stack of memos behind him reminding the quarterback of media engagements and appointments for later in the day and the rest of the week.

Delhomme is a star this week, maybe the biggest star in the league after the remarkable play against San Diego. From his vantage point he could see all his teammates at their lockers and the entire Panthers press corps surrounding him, locked on his every word.

He was standing in the same spot where Collins stood a decade before, an emotional wreck who wasn't quite ready for the bright lights of the NFL. Or so it seemed at the time.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com