Cat Scratch Reader
After a quiet holiday weekend of trading away quarterback Bryce Young’s favorite target and then losing his arguably next favorite target, second-year wide receiver Jalen Coker, to a quad injury for 4-6 weeks, the Carolina Panthers are faced with the first week of the 2025 season. It has been a long offseason of hope, questions, and no football. That has been quickly followed by a short run of weird injuries raising new questions for the team’s season opener this Sunday against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
We’ve joked all offseason about the confluence of the 2024 Ohio State National Championship, Jennifer Lopez’s divorce, and opening the season against the Jags meaning that we’re going to the Super Bowl this year. This may look like superstitious, even spurious, reasoning, that is all in good fun, but it has had staying power across the internet for two good reasons: they connect our present as a fanbase to better times. It has been ten years since the 15-1 2015 Carolina Panthers were at the peak of football and every year since then has been a step or a head-over-heels tumble down that mountain. Fun has been hard to find in Panthers football and being a fan of a football team should, occasionally, be fun. Connecting to the better years both reinforces the positive feeling of community that has stagnated in recent years and feels fun.
Last season, by the numbers, was a standard, disappointingly noncompetitive year for the Carolina Panthers. Their 5-12 record was their fourth five-win season in just the past six years. We were able to end the season on a high note watching the best quarterback play the Panthers have seen since before Cam Newton’s shoulder injury. But that play did not result in a winning streak to end the season thanks to Carolina’s historically bad defense. Taking one step forward and one step back has left the Panthers in an unpredictable spot.
If the defense steps up and Young maintains or elevates his level of play from last season then they’re in business. If Young takes a step back then we’re probably in the market for a new head coach and quarterback by Week 10. If the defense is no better than last season then we might walk out of the 2025 season in the exact same position we entered it: knowing nothing for certain. If. If. If. Then what do we, as fans, do now?
That’s not a question that we should answer based on things that have actually happened recently.
Superstitions are important in a sport that is increasingly overtaken by analytics. Sure, analyzing data can reflect the history of the game in a way that provides actionable insights into its future, but that has a bigger place in the team’s meeting rooms than in fan forums. We’re not making decisions for the team right now. We’re standing on the eve of a season that looks blessed by history and cursed by the present. We’re trying to sort out...
