SPARTANBURG, S.C. -- Hard to imagine, watching the Carolina Panthers morning practice here on Friday, that George Seifert once presided over a talent-rich San Francisco roster that included a pair of future Hall of Fame quarterbacks.

Just a decade after experiencing that unique luxury, Seifert can still watch a quarterback wearing uniform No. 8 and another with No. 16 flinging footballs through the morning haze. But venture beyond the numerals on their jerseys and any comparisons between Panthers signal-callers Jeff Lewis and Chris Weinke and former 49ers stars Joe Montana and Steve Young are indeed scarce.

All of which could transform the Panthers head coach into a head case as he proceeds into 2001 without a single quarterback who has ever started in a regular-season NFL game.

	Jeff Lewis has never started a game in his four-year NFL career.

Barring a trade or free agent acquisition, it will be the first time in modern league history that a team will enter a season minus a quarterback with at least one starting notch on his belt. Besides Lewis and Weinke, the quarterback depth chart also has Dameyune Craig and Matt Lytle.

"I guess it's sort of my own brand of masochism, maybe something I didn't need at this point of my career, but something we felt we had to do," said Seifert of his springtime decision to jettison starter Steve Beuerlein and cast his lot with an untested kiddy corps. "Will we have some difficult times? I'm sure we will. We probably could have stayed with Steve another year or two, but that wouldn't have been in the best long-term interests of the franchise. I just felt like it was time to find out what we had, time to put our feet to the flames a little."

Sometimes when you do that, of course, the tenderfeet to whom you turn the job over get burned, and there will almost certainly be times in the coming months when Lewis and Weinke feel they are walking across hot coals.

Still, there is an almost morbid sense of anticipation here, even among some of the club's elder statesman and the coaching staff as well.

It is not unlike the first manned spacecraft missions you watched on black-and-white television 40-some years ago, enraptured by the white-knuckler possibility the booster rocket would either rise majestically into the clouds or tragically crash and burn. Certainly this franchise which advanced to the NFC title game in only its second year of existence, but has yet to return to the playoffs since that magical '96 season and has won but 26 of its last 64 games, needs one of the young quarterbacks to nudge it back into orbit.

Once anointed as the heir apparent to John Elway, but with only 12 appearances and 54 pass attempts on his resume, Lewis is confident he can be the man and currently sits atop a depth chart hardly written in indelible ink. Weinke, the Heisman Trophy winner last year at Florida State and owner of a national championship ring, is breathing down Lewis' neck.

Rarely has a fourth-round draft choice, as was Weinke, had such a legitimate chance to start as a rookie. Apparently the Panthers agreed that Weinke could topple or push Lewis because the contract he signed last week includes $20 million in bonus and escalators that he can earn by overtaking the five-year veteran. For now, the No. 1 job belongs to Lewis, but this is a battle that commands scrutiny throughout the preseason.

Unless, that is, you broach the subject to Lewis, who reacted with understandable disbelief when Beuerlein strolled into the locker room this spring and announced that Seifert had apprised him of the Panthers' decision to either trade or release the 14-year veteran.

"It took me a few days to understand what this all meant to me, because I really felt for Steve, a guy who sort of exemplified class," Lewis said. "Then after a while it hit me: 'Hey, this really is the opportunity I always wanted. I've got to make this work for me.' I'd like to say I probably didn't prepare any differently this year than I did when I didn't have a realistic chance to be the starter. But I think a situation like this, it makes you different.

"Teammates look at you differently and you look at yourself differently, too. When they open the door, you don't give them a chance to slam it in your face, you know? Me, I'm going through the door. When the coaches call out 'first offense' at practice, I'm the one who runs into the huddle, so I guess this is my team."

	“	But this is kind of fun, in a warped sort of way. With Montana and Young, you knew what you had. Right now, we don't know what we've got. What we do knows is that we have to find out what we've got, and that's sort of a compelling thing. ”
		— George Seifert on the Panthers' current quarterback situation

Back in 1996, when Denver selected the former Northern Arizona standout in the fourth round, it was the Broncos who were supposed to eventually become his team, once he served a requisite apprenticeship and John Elway retired. Then Lewis suffered a devastating knee injury in a pickup basketball game before the '98 season and missed the entire year, the Broncos chose Brian Griese that spring, and the fast track to stardom took an abrupt detour.

Lewis acknowledged Friday that, until the knee injury, his career had followed a well-planned script. He was, in his words, "totally on schedule." The silver lining in a setback that precipitated a mental and physical regression was that Lewis learned some lessons about himself and life, too. Primary among them: Even quarterbacks have to be tough guys in the NFL.

"You'd better have guts of steel," Lewis said. "If something knocks you back a step, just like the injury did with me, you have to come back and find a way to take two steps forward. Not only do you have to work to get back to where you were, but you have to accelerate the (learning) curve to get to where you're supposed to be. Adversity makes you stronger, makes you a leader, but only if you use it to your advantage."

For Seifert, the question of the moment isn't whether Lewis has sufficient intangibles to lead the Panthers out of their lingering funk. Lewis is "wasting his time," Seifert said, in worrying about leadership skills and character. "The more important thing for him," Seifert insisted, "is to do all the physical things he needs to do. He has to produce first, then that other stuff is a by-product that evolves from making plays on the field."

So far in practices, Lewis and Weinke have each had moments of brilliance and brickheadedness. Lewis clearly is the better athlete, and that could be an edge since one of the reasons Beuerlein was released was because he possessed all the mobility of the Lincoln Monument. Weinke has superior arm strength, particularly on the deep ball. Craig looked tragically lost at times Friday and the conventional wisdom is that the intriguing Lytle will earn the No. 3 job.

The release of Beuerlein, who subsequently signed a four-year, $4 million contract with Denver, was one of the most stunning moves of the offseason. Seifert allowed it was undoubtedly the toughest personnel decision of his career, one that required much soul-searching. Beuerlein had, after all, passed for more than 8,000 yards and 55 touchdowns the previous two years, but also had been sacked 112 times. Privately a Carolina offensive staff that admired his grittiness came to the consensus that Beuerlein was the best fit for the offense they want to run.

Said one Panthers coach: "You know that, with Steve, you've got a shot to be a decent team, an eight- or nine-win team maybe. But that was the limit. We had to break outside the mindset that mediocrity is OK. What we're doing is a hell of a gamble, I won't pull any punches about that. But we weren't going to move forward without doing it. We still might now, for all I know. But until we did it, until we changed the dynamic, we were just going to be stagnant."

Reminded of those halcyon days of the Montana-Young tandem, Seifert agreed it seemed like a long time ago he could call on two of history's most efficient passers. He even conceded that the situation in which he and the Panthers now find themselves is "a little goofy," and that the roll of the dice he initiated could turn up snake-eyes.

"But this is kind of fun, in a warped sort of way," Seifert said. "With Montana and Young, you knew what you had. Right now, we don't know what we've got. What we do knows is that we have to find out what we've got, and that's sort of a compelling thing."

Len Pasquarelli is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.