CHICAGO — Steve Smith and the Carolina Panthers road show left Chicago's vaunted defense face down and out of the playoffs.

Now it's off to Seattle for the NFC championship, where the Panthers will have to rely on their playmaker more than ever.

Smith had 12 catches for a career-high 218 yards and two long touchdowns, including a 58-yard scoring reception on the second play from scrimmage, to lead Carolina to a 29-21 victory over the Bears yesterday.

It sends the fifth-seeded Panthers into their second championship game in three years. But they'll go without running back DeShaun Foster, who broke his ankle late against the Bears, leaving Smith as their only true offensive threat.

"All we've got to do is keep plugging," Smith said. "Guys got to step it up and I think they will. We will play it by ear after that."

But with Smith on their side, the Panthers like their chances.

"He is as tough a competitor as you can find at any position," Carolina coach John Fox said. "He does well home or away."

Smith carried the Panthers this entire year, his comeback season after missing 15 games in 2004 with a broken leg. He ended the regular season as the NFL leader with 1,563 yards receiving.

The Bears should have known what to expect out of him — after all, Smith had a career-high 14 catches for 169 yards in their first meeting, a 13-3 Chicago win. The Bears spent all week boasting about that win, which only fired up Smith and his teammates.

"Last time we played them I had 14 (catches) but we didn't score," Smith said. "All I heard all week long was what I didn't do. We were ready for whatever they threw at us."

He proved it by catching the Bears off guard just 55 seconds into the game.

Smith beat Charles Tillman on the Panthers' second snap, leaving him face down on the ground as he reeled in a long pass from Jake Delhomme. With Mike Brown in front of him waiting to make the tackle, Smith stopped in mid-stride, tiptoed around Brown and into the end zone for a 7-0 lead.

"Defensively we talked about not giving up the big play, trying to keep Steve Smith contained, and we weren't able to do that starting early," Chicago coach Lovie Smith said.

Smith later caught a jump ball between Tillman and Chris Harris at the Chicago 2 for a 46-yard gain. Three plays later, John Kasay made a 20-yard field goal to give Carolina a 10-0 lead that was eventually stretched to 16-7.

But after the Bears cut it to 16-14 late in the third quarter, Smith came up big again. Foster had just left the game with a broken ankle and momentum had shifted to Chicago's favor.

Still, Smith embarrassed the Chicago secondary by blazing his way past Chris Thompson, who was left lying on the field as Smith raced into the end zone for a 39-yard TD that stretched Carolina's lead to 23-14. His 218 yards receiving ranks fourth all-time in the playoffs; Eric Moulds had 240 yards for Buffalo in a wild-card game at Miami in 1999.

"I saw (Thompson) was covering him — when I saw that I gave him a signal that I wanted to go there," Delhomme said. "Steve put on the burners and took off."

Smith has done it time and time again this year en route to his first All-Pro season.

"I'm just really utilizing my talents," he said. "They throw me the ball, my job is to catch it. If I don't catch the ball, they will get somebody in here who will. I've got four people at home depending on me to do my job, so I can't come home with excuses.

"If you lined up my mama out there, I got to catch it over her, too."

Carolina becomes the third No. 5 seed since 1990 to advance to the championship game. The Panthers did it by letting their defense challenge Chicago quarterback Rex Grossman, who was starting his second game of the season.

Grossman, who missed most of the season with a broken ankle and had attempted just 39 passes heading into the playoffs, was decent once he settled down. He led the Bears on two second-half scoring drives to rally them out of a 16-7 halftime deficit.

He was driving the Bears again late in the fourth quarter when they trailed 29-21, but he was intercepted by Ken Lucas with 2:27 to play, then was incomplete to former Panthers receiver Muhsin Muhammad on fourth-and-1 to seal the win.

"I am going to come back prepared physically and mentally to be the best quarterback in the league," Grossman said.