Tiki Barber? Check.

Thomas Jones? Double check.

If the Carolina Panthers can shut down NFL MVP Shaun Alexander on Sunday, it could be checkmate — and their second NFC championship in three years.

While Seattle handled Washington last week without Alexander, who was sidelined early with a concussion, doing the same against the Panthers hardly is likely.

Carolina held Barber to 41 yards on 13 carries in blanking the Giants 23-0 in the wild-card round. Barber finished second in the league in rushing behind Alexander. Jones, a 1,335-yard rusher this season, managed 80 yards, but couldn't carry the offense last Sunday in Chicago.

The Panthers (13-5) fully expect Alexander to be at full strength and for the Seahawks (14-3) to send him full force at them. The Panthers ranked fourth against the run this season.

"Oh yeah, he's going to go," Carolina DT Brentson Buckner said. "When he's out there, they've got the NFL MVP, a Pro Bowl quarterback, arguably the best left side of an offensive line in the league, Joe Jurevicius at wide receiver — he has 10 touchdowns. (Darrell) Jackson came back and gave them a spark. We've got our hands full."

But the Panthers were a handful for Barber and Jones, so why not for Alexander?

"It's different teams, different running backs," Buckner said. "There's a reason Shaun Alexander's the MVP of this league, and that's not to take nothing away from Tiki Barber, who I think had a great season and I think is a Hall of Fame-caliber running back.

"But Shaun Alexander right now is in a class of his own. He does it all. He can catch the ball, we know he can run it."

Alexander refuses to take too much credit for Seattle's surge to the top of the conference this season. But he did set an NFL record with 28 touchdowns, and his 1,880 yards rushing rank ninth all-time. He was the NFL's Most Valuable Player, beating out the likes of Barber and Peyton Manning and Carson Palmer.

Still, he prefers to point to how the Seahawks prospered without him after he was hurt early in the divisional-round matchup with the Redskins — and how he believes they could do it again with a Super Bowl spot on the line Sunday.

Yes, Alexander thinks fullback Mack Strong, a fellow All-Pro, and Mo Morris, the backup tailback, would do just fine even if he wasn't available.

"We have a really good team and people are going to have to beat our team the rest of the way," Alexander said. "We have a bunch of guys who are willing to step in and do what it takes for our team to get better and win."

At least the Seahawks will have their ace runner on the field. Carolina will be without its top two backs, Stephen Davis and DeShaun Foster, who are both injured.

That leaves Nick Goings in the spotlight, which he entered last season, too, after a slew of running backs went down. Goings moved from fifth string to starter and performed well.

He hasn't let the Panthers down when he's been called upon since, and he gets another start, his biggest start, on Sunday at Qwest Field.

"I will say this," Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren said, "a guy like DeShaun (Foster) gets hurt or Shaun Alexander gets hurt or anybody who is your runner gets hurt, I think you have to be careful of saying, `Now we can relax and we can look over there.' They have the young man that they put in the game that was running the football, (Goings) is a very good player. You cannot ignore their running game and we won't do that."

And, obviously, Carolina won't ignore Seattle's. Not for a second.

"I see that he runs the ball hard and he has good vision for the cutback run," Panthers DE Julius Peppers said of Alexander. "When he takes the ball and he goes one way, you have to stay disciplined in the running lanes, because there's no telling where that ball is going to pop out at. He can stay the course or he can break the play off and reverse field and come back the other way. He could go inside; he's all over the field. So you've got to be disciplined when you're playing against a back like that because you never know where he's going to take the ball to."

Often, it's the end zone. Of course, Barber and Jones got there plenty during the season, too. But not in the playoffs against the Panthers.