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CHARLOTTE -- After the Monday night game last week, the Carolina Panthers gave ailing owner Jerry Richardson a game ball. Sunday, they gave him the game itself.

A week after missing only his second home game in franchise history, Richardson watched from the owner's box as Carolina blew away Denver 30-10 to end the regular season unbeaten at home and take a giant step toward the playoffs. Dressed in a black overcoat and covered in a thick Panthers blanket, Richardson sat overlooking the south end zone only days after being added to the waiting list for a heart transplant.

Players said they were inspired by his presence. DeAngelo Williams said he was honored to give Richardson the gift of victory.

"Hopefully, it's a gift that keeps on giving," he said.

Williams ran for a 56-yard touchdown early in the second half to end Denver's hopes of an upset, then he later left the game with an injury the team said made his return questionable. With the owner looking down from above, stone-faced and stern, Williams went back in.

Sunday was not a day for resting. With the postseason coming into focus with each score being reported from around the league, the Panthers completed a remarkable turnaround at home one year after going 2-6 in their own stadium. Carolina finished the regular season 8-0 at home for only the second time ever, the first since the magical 1996 season.

John Fox said it was one of the goals the team set for itself during the summer.

"I think it's great," the Panthers coach said. "It's something we discussed in the offseason. We have a unique bunch. It was something they put on their list of goals, and we were able to accomplish it."

That it came six days after the Monday Night Football win over Tampa Bay and in front of the ailing owner made it all the more special, the players said. Richardson missed a game in 2002, and until last Monday he'd not missed another. That was the year he had bypass surgery. Richardson, planning his very life around his football team, had a pacemaker-defibrilator inserted during the bye week a month ago.

Only a few players had talked to him since. Normally a regular presence in the locker room before and after games, Richardson had kept a low profile in recent weeks. After the Monday win, the team honored him with a game ball. When his image was shown in the giant DiamondVision scoreboard during Sunday's game, several players were moved.

"I didn't even know he was at the game," defensive end Charles Johnson said. "So when I saw him I stood up and started applauding."

Richardson had been sent a message from the team recently, asking if there was anything it could do for him.

"He said we're doing it," Julius Peppers said. "He meant keep winning games."

Richardson, 72, commands more respect than most owners. The former Baltimore Colts receiver is only the second former NFL player to own a franchise. Chicago owner George Halas was the other.

Throughout most of the week, networks have been re-airing clips and documentaries of the 1958 NFL Championship game between the Colts and the Giants, a game played months before Baltimore drafted Richardson out of tiny Wofford College. The famous story is that he had no way to get himself to training camp that first summer, so quarterback John Unitas offered to pick him up his way each morning.

The two got along famously. "He didn't talk," Richardson said in 1995. "And I didn't either."

He didn't talk to his team Sunday afternoon or evening. Instead, he sat in the end zone box he designed himself, wrapped in a Panthers blanket and flanked by his family and friends. Doctors and team officials said last week he would undergo heart transplant surgery at Carolinas Medical Center "providing a donor heart becomes available." Patients awaiting transplants have the option of staying in the hospital during the waiting period.

Richardson decided during the middle of the week to just go home, and on Sunday he decided to just go to a football game. Almost no one knew he would be there. Jake Delhomme, the team's quarterback, said he talked to Richardson this week and the owner seemed like himself.

"I spent some time with him on Friday," Delhomme said. "He was Big Cat to me. I was glad to see him make it to the game. I think the best medicine for him right now is us winning."

Not many players knew Richardson was coming, and not all of them saw him in his box or on the big screen. And almost none of them call him "Big Cat."

"Not me," fullback Brad Hoover said. "I call him Mr. Richardson."

Mr. Richardson came to the stadium Sunday, and the Panthers won accordingly.

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