As the rugby league season nears the pointy end and the top eight looks more secure by the week there's only one question that's really worth asking anymore.
Is there anybody, anywhere in the National Rugby League who can rise up and seriously challenge the Panthers? Can anybody beat them when they're fully loaded and the stakes are at their highest?
The defending premiers are looking shaky for the first time all season after a spate of injuries and suspensions and were well below their best on Thursday night, but it'll take more than a couple of losses without Nathan Cleary and Jarome Luai to knock them off their perch.
So as everybody else who walks on with hope in their hearts starts gearing up for the finals in earnest, it's time to sharpen the knives, man the torpedoes and start building an arsenal you can aim right at Penrith's heart.
That's the important thing to take away from a match like South Sydney's 26-0 win over Parramatta on Thursday night.
On paper, this was a meeting of two teams on a similar level, both capable of rising high or falling low depending on how any particular night strikes them. In practice, it looked liked two teams on totally opposite trajectories waving to each other as they flew towards their fates.
Both Parramatta and the Rabbitohs have great football in them, particularly in attack, but on this night only the Rabbitohs showed it. When any combination of Cody Walker, Latrell Mitchell, Cameron Murray and Damien Cook link up, as they seem to be doing a lot lately, the Rabbitohs can score on any team in the competition.
That's how it's been for Souths since Mitchell returned from a hamstring injury in early July. He is playing like a man who can carry his team wherever they want to go. The Rabbitohs have won six of seven with him back in the side, with their sole loss coming to high-flying Cronulla in golden point. After this win, the top four is firmly in their sights.
For them to take that final step and hit the level where they can take on a fully loaded Penrith and feel good about their chances all they need to do is tighten the screws just a little bit, find that ruthless edge and love for the grind that all true premiership contenders possess.
For a team of South Sydney's pedigree, that shouldn't be too difficult. It's been a natural progression of their season for the past five years, where they've made the preliminary final or better in each campaign.
It's already in this team, and they showed flashes of it against the Eels. Coach Jason Demetriou called it their most ruthless display of the season and he was right.
The Rabbitohs will take on Penrith themselves next week, albeit a reduced version compared to the side that conquered them in last year's grand final. A win over this Penrith isn't the same as a win over regular Penrith, but it's not nothing either.
These are the same Panthers who are the only team to put a score on South Sydney this season when Mitchell is playing. They are the only side who he has not been able to bend to his will.
And a win over Penrith in any form will give any team a boost. Cast your mind back just a couple of weeks to when Parramatta gleefully piled the points on against their western Sydney rivals in the game Cleary copped his long suspension.
It didn't matter it was a 12-man side, it was still the Panthers and it was still a lot of points. It could still have been the springboard towards something big for Parramatta.
But instead the Eels are still searching, still wandering through the wasteland in search of their better selves. Losing halfback Mitchell Moses is a blow, certainly, but that does not excuse their defence being prised apart so easily in the opening exchanges against the Rabbitohs.
Nor does it explain how their vaunted forward pack, filled with so many representative stars, was beaten down and run around by South Sydney's middles in a classic case of the bullies getting bullied.
Coach Brad Arthur called it tentative, and there are too many big, powerful men in the middle for the Eels for words like that to be thrown around lightly.
So as the Rabbitohs raise their eyes to the horizon and prepare to charge, without fear or hesitation, into that darkness on the edge of town where Penrith lurks, Parramatta is trying to solve a slightly different equation.
Despite having handed Penrith two losses this year already, the Eels are stuck in the same loop trying to find a way to master themselves and their own prodigious, brilliant, maddening gifts.
Time is running out for the blue and golds to work themselves out and they have a tough run home – they'll face the Bulldogs, Broncos and Storm to finish things off.
Cronulla, Melbourne, North Queensland and the Roosters will all be firing up and flexing their muscles in readiness for the wars to come, and Parramatta just don't look like they're as up for the fight.
At some point it becomes impossible to convince yourself or anybody at all you can be the roadblock that finally stops the Penrith premiership charge that has seemed to inevitable for so many months now. At some point you are what the record says you are.
