It isn't easy to be a Carolina Panther fan in the past however many years it has been. Like a lot of NFL fans that are loyal to one team you have a tendency to get a bit pessimistic when your team's management continually lets you down. As someone that has been a Carolina fan since the team formed in 1995. When they first started out they went through a grace period of sorts where they were really good and then they had another couple of runs in the playoffs and had us all excited. In just their 2nd year of existence they made it all the way to the Conference finals where they ultimately lost. They have since been to the Super Bowl twice and once it was after an undefeated year. It seemed a sure thing they were going to win and were heavy favorites for that game but managed to screw it up and lost again.
This screwing up is something that Carolina Panther fans have just kind of gotten used to but in recent years things have gotten really bad and we are regularly the worst team in our division and really push the limits for being the worst team in the league regularly.
During the preseason someone sent me the above image and even though it makes me unhappy that it is so true, I couldn't help but laugh a little bit.
A few years back the Panthers did something that nobody had ever done before when they used all of their draft picks to choose only defensive players. Let me repeat that: this is something that nobody has ever done before in the history of the NFL. None of these players panned out and the defense was just as terrible after wasting their draft picks as they were in years prior. Some might suggest that they were even worse.
In the preseason this year Carolina lost their first 2 games and this surprised absolutely no one. What did surprise them was actually winning their 3rd pre-season game versus the Buffalo Bills and this was a shock to everyone because the Bills have a pretty solid team. As usual this just gave us Carolina fans some hope for the season and this is a nasty little trick that happens to us nearly every year. The preseason is a bit of a joke because it has no effect on your ranking and a lot of the better teams don't really even field their best players in order to rest them up as much as possible for when the games really matter. When the games really matter is around the 2nd week of September and as usual, Panther fans were hopeful that maybe, just maybe we wont suck this year.
Well that was all dashed in week one when we traveled to New Orleans and got absolutely wiped 47-10.
I watched that game and those 10 points that Carolina scored were basically "giveaway" points allowed by a team that was already comfortably ahead by 30 points.
Carolina has spent the last 5 years or so building what was meant to be one of the best defenses that the world has ever seen but the Saints regularly created holes in said defense that you could have driven a truck through, let alone enough space for a running back to get some yardage. The following week Carolina hosted their first regular season home game against the Chargers and were just embarrassed over and over again as the Chargers easily won that game 26-3 as Carolina's defense at least looked passable, but the offense just has nothing going for it at all. The investment in teeny-tiny QB Bryce Young was one that attracted a lot of criticism from fans and pundits alike because he is MUCH smaller than the rest of the guys on the field. He took two heavy sacks in that game and trust me, this is going to continue. As small as he is, I think it is only a matter of time before he gets severely injured.
To be fair to Carolina - well as fair as a disgruntled fan can be - Los Angeles and New Orleans look to be two of the best teams in the entire NFL and the real test is going to be versus the Raiders this weekend. I'm not going to hold my breath than anything different is going to happen in that game because the rest of the league is already starting to view a game against Carolina as a sure win to pad their W/L rating the way that a college student pads their course-load with stupid classes that everyone gets an "A" in.
The Panthers haven't had a winning season since 2017. Last year they only won 2 games and there is a lot of suspicion that the second game they won was only because the team they were playing against didn't need a win in that game and therefore the game was irrelevant. If both teams had been playing as if that game truly mattered, I am quite certain they would have lost that game as well.
I think that we are in for another tough year as Panther fans because I haven't seen anything in the first 2 games of the season that so much as gives me a ray of hope. If they can prove me wrong against Las Vegas this weekend it would make me happy but I am cynical enough to immediately believe that it is a fluke should that happen. I am already resigned to having a sense of humor about this year and am only watching to see how terrible they can possibly be. Will they win 2 games this year? Well, it isn't looking like it so far.