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CHARLOTTE — On the biggest play of the season, Kenny Moore didn't score two touchdowns. John Fox didn't throw his hat into the air, and a capacity crowd didn't celebrate the first Panthers win in 287 days.

All that would come later.

But in the giddy moments after Carolina's 20-17 win over Washington, every single member of the Panthers from the hatless head coach down said Moore's third-quarter kickoff return changed the game and possibly the entire season.

That will be determined later, too.

Carolina had all but lost its fourth straight game Sunday, and everybody knew it. The fans were irate, booing the team after almost every series, after every mistake, after every botched play. When the woeful Panthers went into the lockers at halftime trailing 10-2, all the emotions of the winless season came out.

"It wasn't chaos," fullback Brad Hoover said.

But it was close. There was apparently a lot of yelling, a lot of threatening and a lot of veterans making a lot of demands. Washington is half a football team built on a good defense that drags its offense along. Carolina had just lost half a game, and things were about to get worse.

The score was 17-2 when the ball was kicked to Moore, a Charlotte native out of Wake Forest who hadn't returned a kickoff all season before Sunday.

"I knew we needed to make a play," he said. "Somebody did."

He caught the kickoff at the 5, let his blockers set up in front of him and then headed out.

In the days leading up to the game, things were threatening to come apart for the Panthers. Reports were coming out that Fox was going to be fired at the end of the year. Stories ran in the local paper this week that Julius Peppers was tanking it. Already, fans had called for Jake Delhomme to be replaced at quarterback by NFL neophyte Matt Moore.

In the minutes leading up to Moore's return, things had started to unravel. Delhomme said it felt like "a colony of gorillas" had climbed on his back. Carolina was down 17-2 to a team with no offense, a team whose own coach was reportedly about to be replaced by Mike Shanahan, a team that was somehow about to go to 3-2 with a win over a winless Panthers team that looked like its season was about to end.

"It's not set in stone who has to make a play," Moore said. "It could be anybody. It happened to land on my shoulders today."

He cut to his right after running through the initial Washington pursuit and headed up the sideline in front of the visitors bench until stepping out of bounds at the 40. Suddenly the crowd was in the game. Suddenly, the offense came to life. Delhomme completed two passes, and Jonathan Stewart ran inside the Washington 5, where Delhomme found tight end Jeff King for a touchdown.

"Everything changed," Moore said. "The offense got going, and the defense held and everything came together."

Carolina would score again with 9:25 to play after a disputed muffed catch by Washington's Byron Westbrook brought officials and coaches together for an argument that included two challenges, a confused ruling, then a correct ruling from the review booth. The result was Carolina had the ball at the Washington 12, where it would need two plays to seal the game and make Moore a hero.

Funny how things work out sometimes. Moore had been added to the team a year ago after being sentenced to the Detroit Lions's practice squad out of college. He was active for the final 11 games with Carolina because the Panthers needed bodies.

This summer, he made the team because the Panthers needed receivers. And on the fourth Sunday of their season, he saved everybody by making the biggest play of the year. The sideline erupted when he came off the field, and the celebration built until the very end when Fox took off his hat and threw it high into the air then fell into the arms of the first person he could hug.

Then they all went back into the locker room where a party broke out, and Moore was the guest of honor. He stood in the glow of the first win of the season and described the play over and over again while the Washington press corps converged on a besieged coach in the other locker room and referees issued statements about controversial calls and a huge crowd dressed in both blue and burgundy went home somewhat confused.

The bottom line is Carolina is no longer winless, and Kenny Moore is no longer an unknown but a hometown hero for a 1-3 team feeling better today than it did at halftime Sunday and the 286 days before.

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