Panthers Rising: How the Carolina Panthers Roared to the Super Bowl—and Why They'll Be Back!

Pounding!

Contents

Foreword by Eugene Robinson

Introduction: The Golden Era of the Carolina Panthers

Part I — The Foundation: 2010–2012

1. 2–14, Jimmy Clausen, and Rock Bottom

2. Ron Rivera Gets His Shot

3. The Noise around Cam Newton

4 . Cam Arrives— Everything Changes

5. L-u-u-u-u-u-u-uke

6. The Sunday Giveaway

Part II — The Early Years: 1995–2009

7. Sam Mills and Keep Pounding

8. Jerry Richardson

9. The Home Playoff Wins over Dallas

10. Chancellor Lee Adams: Surviving and Thriving

11. The First Panthers Super Bowl

12 . Steve Smith & Deangelo Williams—Incredible & Unpredictable

13. Kevin Greene & Julius Peppers

Part III — The Breakthrough: 2013

14. Dave Gettleman’s One Last Chance

15. The Birth of Riverboat Ron

16. Comeback Against New England

17. Greg Olsen, Security Blanket

18. The New Orleans Storm

Part IV — The Stumble: January to Early December 2014

19. The San Francisco Letdown

20. Greg Hardy: Releasing the Kraken

21. The Exodus and 3–8–1

22. Somebody’s Supposed to Be Dead

PART V — The Recovery: Mid-December 2014 to January 2015

23. A December to Remember

24. Jonathan Stewart— Finally First

25. Thomas Davis— Good Guy, Bad Intentions

26. Fiery Defense, Smoky Ending

Part VI — The Rise: The 2015 Season

27. The World According to Josh Norman

28. Cam and Luke, Together

29. The Ted Ginn Experience

30. Slaying Seattle

31. Banners, Tennessee Mom, and Thanksgiving Day

32. The Adventures of Odell and Josh

33. 14–0 Fades Away at Atlanta

34. Seattle—Once More, with Feeling

35. Razing Arizona

Part VII — The Super Bowl…And Beyond: 2016 and a Bright Future

36. Star and KK

37. Super-Sized Letdown

38. Onward and Upward

Photo Gallery

Foreword by Eugene Robinson

The Carolina Panthers are the real deal. They aren’t pretenders. They will be back in the Super Bowl before long. I’m telling you that there is something special going on in the Carolinas with this team.

But how did it happen? Yes, the Panthers are rising, and they are deserving of this book by my friend and Charlotte Observer sports columnist Scott Fowler that chronicles that rise. But why are they rising? This book will tell you, and I will give you my opinion right here.

Before we get into all the players who make a difference, though, you have to start with coach Ron Rivera. I played in the NFL for 16 years, and there is just something about a coach who was an NFL player. It resonates in the locker room. That coach realizes the rigors that a player goes through. He is the head coach, but he has also walked the same path as a player. Coach Rivera did that. The same thing goes for Mr. Richardson—the team’s owner and founder walked in those same shoes. You know that those guys know football. So a player can’t use that old comeback: Well, you’ve never played the game. They did! As a player, you have an automatic affinity with them.

Coach Rivera can be stern but he is also relatable, and that’s a hard balance to achieve. He has assembled a great coaching staff and kept it together, which also isn’t easy. He’s authoritative. He’s an imposing presence. All those kinds of optics, they go into it, too. And it turns out he’s very honest. He’s transparent. Sometimes I’m thinking, Dude, do you have to be that transparent? Do you have to tell everybody what we’re doing? He is like an open book with X’s and O’s. But it’s not really like he’s telling you a secret. Some people think you have to keep everything a secret. What you put out there, though, is displayed, and everyone gets a chance to see it. He understands that. And everyone appreciates honesty.

Again, before we get to the players, you have to think about Dave Gettleman—Coach Gettleman. He’s not a coach, but I call him that out of respect. He has given Coach Rivera and his staff the tools they need to do their jobs. He has had his hands full with free agents and the draft, and he’s found all sorts of guys. Think of someone like Mike Remmers. On a practice squad in St. Louis, now Remmers is a mainstay here at right tackle. Or Michael Oher. Tennessee thought he was done. Now he comes in here and solidifies left tackle. And Coach Gettleman has drafted so well, even in the middle and lower rounds—guys like Tre Boston and Bene Benwikere, who will be great players in this league.

Now you can have all the good coaches you want, but you also have to have players who are going to ball out on offense and defense to win a Super Bowl. In my Super Bowl year, it was Brett Favre, Reggie White, LeRoy Butler, Keith Jackson, Mark Chmura, Edgar Bennett, Dorsey Levens—we had all the ingredients. But all of that doesn’t mean anything unless you have Brett Favre pulling the trigger.

The Panthers have their own Brett Favre in Cam Newton, and a lot of what is happening now is due to him. People don’t realize how good that young man is. He got labeled a running quarterback when he came in, and rightfully so. He had 14 rushing TDs as a rookie in 2011. That was unheard of. But we all know as football players that you don’t win at the quarterback position by running. You win throwing that rock. And Cam can throw!

Spreading the Wealth

One of the best things that ever happened to Cam Newton was Kelvin Benjamin going down in the 2015 training camp. He was throwing to Kelvin or Greg Olsen all the time. Now it was, Cam, you do what you do. Just throw it to whoever is open. I was an NFL free safety and I still think like one. I can tell you that Cam doesn’t get enough credit for how he can move the free safety to one side of the field with his eyes or shoulders and then throw it to the other side like it was nothing. To get an interception off this cat now, you about need a tipped ball. Cam has become a combination of Randall Cunningham, Steve Young, and John Elway.

I remember a few games during this rise for the Panthers in particular. One was during the 7–8–1 season in 2014, when we went into New Orleans and beat them 41–10. There was a scuffle during that game. Guys were shoving each other. It was like, Yeah, we’re in your house. Yeah, we ain’t going nowhere. And yeah, we are beating the stink out of you. What are you going to do about it?

Not many people can do something about it, though, because this Carolina offense really is that good, and its defense is exceptional. It’s hard to believe now that, when the Panthers were 1–3 in 2013, people were calling for Coach Rivera’s job. Remember that? And then it got rolling. That win in 2013 at Miami was huge, converting on a fourth-and-10 play on the game-winning drive. And the win at home versus New England. Suddenly, winning was contagious.

I know a little something about defense, and I can tell you that you can’t win in the NFL without a good one. Ours is better than good. Our defensive team speed is insane. And Kawann Short? He told me once he wanted to be a defensive end to get sacks. He stayed at defensive tackle and got them anyway. He really can’t be blocked. Luke Kuechly and Thomas Davis at linebacker? Wow. They are just so fast and so good.

So if you put any quarterback in this system with these players, yeah, we’re competitive. But Cam? That makes such a huge difference. He is, hands down, just that good. And he knows it. And that’s what you want. I want him to know he’s that good. That’s what makes him dangerous.

I’m fortunate to be part of this whole deal, and I don’t take my job lightly. I give thanks to Mr. Richardson and everyone else who’s been involved for allowing me to do it. I never knew that people liked my voice. I hate my voice! I don’t like the way I sound. But I absolutely love this team. I only played here one year, but I’ve been broadcasting the Panthers for 14 more.

When I went back to Seattle to be an honorary captain for a game in 2015, a lot of people asked me if I still felt like a Seahawk since I played there 11 years. I told them I feel much more like a Panther. I rub shoulders with these guys every single day. And I try to break down film like I’m still playing.

Super Bowl Miscues

Now in the Super Bowl, let’s be real. When you have chances to make plays, you have to make them. When you misjudge it, mistime it, or whatever, it invariably comes back to get you, because the other team is just too good. I know that firsthand.

Once while I was with Atlanta playing Denver, I was guarding Rod Smith on a post route in the Super Bowl. I cut in front of him, thinking, I’m going to intercept this ball. But John Elway had thrown a ball with a higher trajectory than I thought he would. All I could do was try to tip it away. I missed it by a few inches, and Smith scored on an 80-yard touchdown.

In the Carolina-Denver Super Bowl, there were some plays to be had by the Panthers. If Jerricho Cotchery had caught the ball cleanly the first time on that juggling catch the officials later said wasn’t a catch, the free safety was out of position, so Cotchery might have gone a long way. We were about to blow that game open. Instead, no catch, and then the sack-fumble by Von Miller for a Denver TD right after that. Dude, that could have been a 14-point swing! And then on a swing pattern, Cotchery was being covered by Von Miller. Cam made one of his best throws all day, and it got dropped inside the Denver 5. You can’t recover from that. And I’m not saying any of that to impugn Cotchery. Denver’s defense was a beast! I get it.

But in the Super Bowl, you can’t get away with that. In the regular season, yes. In the first round of the playoffs, yes. But not in the Super Bowl.

Here Comes the Magic

The good news is we’re going back to the Super Bowl. Absolutely, we’ll be back. And going back soon—maybe next year, maybe the year after, but soon! I still consider myself a football player. I realize what the Panthers have in that locker room. Do you?

The Panthers went to the promised land, got a taste, and were denied. You know how hungry these cats are going to be now? They are about to call roll and take some names. I know people say I’m a homer, and yes, I know I work for the Panthers. But I’m speaking as a football player who had 62 interceptions, not as a fan or even a member of the media here. Football is what I do. These guys are that good!

There’s a dude in Charlotte named Cameron Jerrell Newton, and that dude is the real deal, and there are a lot of other great players too. There is in the Carolinas one of the most sensational players in the NFL—Luke Kuechly—lurking on the defense. He is a player that the league has never seen before. He is the best middle linebacker in the game, his football IQ is unmatched. His infectious passion and his ability to make plays—I’ve got no words for it.

This team is stacked head to toe with talent and experience. To omit any of these names—Thomas Davis, Kawann Short, Jonathan Stewart, Greg Olsen, Ryan Kalil, Michael Oher, Ted Ginn Jr.—would border on criminal. And they are hungry!

Then you have Coach Rivera doing what he does and Coach Gettleman giving him the tools to do it. So get ready. Houdini, David Copperfield—whatever magician you want to name—it’s going to be on par with that. You can just sit back and watch the magic, Panthers fans. Because it’s coming.

* * * *

Eugene Robinson played 16 years in the NFL as a safety. He participated in three Super Bowls and made the Pro Bowl three times. Robinson played for Seattle, Green Bay, Atlanta, and Carolina during his stellar career. Including the playoffs, Robinson posted 62 career interceptions. He also won a Super Bowl ring in 1996 as a starter on a Green Bay team that included Brett Favre and Reggie White.

Robinson finished his playing career with Carolina in 2000, settled in Charlotte with his family, and soon began working for the Panthers’ official radio team. Robinson has served as the Panthers’ primary radio color analyst since 2002, broadcasting more than 250 Panthers games and both of the team’s Super Bowls.

Introduction: The Golden Era of the Carolina Panthers

As the Carolina Panthers have risen to unprecedented heights in their franchise history, they have followed two commandments above all others:

1. Keep Pounding

2. Keep Your Personality

What has resulted? A roar heard across the NFL.

After never making the playoffs in back-to-back years for their first 18 seasons, the Panthers have finally married consistency to charisma. They made the playoffs by winning the NFC South every season from 2013 to 2015, and at the end of the 2015 season found themselves with an astonishing 17–1 record and a place in the Super Bowl for the second time ever.

Carolina lost that Super Bowl, of course, as Denver’s defense simply outplayed the Panthers. But that 24–10 loss in Santa Clara, California, wasn’t the end for Carolina. That was the beginning. The NFL’s golden game—it was Super Bowl 50, the golden anniversary of the championship—served as a reminder that we are all living smack in the middle of the Panthers’ golden era.

Ever since the Panthers played their first-ever season as an expansion team in 1995, I have covered the team for their hometown newspaper, the Charlotte Observer. Back then Bank of America Stadium wasn’t even built yet, the Panthers’ home games were 140 miles away at Clemson, South Carolina, and Sam Mills was known only for being the team’s undersized star inside linebacker.

Much water has flowed under the bridge and into Lake Norman since then. I have written for the newspaper about a regular season when the Panthers went 1–15. I have written about a regular season when they went 15–1. I have covered four Panthers head coaches, two Carolina Super Bowls, and one murder trial.

After more than two decades of experience watching the Panthers, I can tell you with certainty that the version of the team being fielded each Sunday these days is different. More so than any previous incarnation, these Panthers have sustainability.

Never before have the Panthers boasted both an NFL Most Valuable Player (quarterback Cam Newton) and an NFL Defensive Player of the Year (linebacker Luke Kuechly) on the same team, each in their prime and each anchoring one side of the ball.

Never before have the Panthers had a head coach who has known firsthand what it feels like to win the Super Bowl as a player and has grown into his first head-coaching job so seamlessly as Ron Rivera. Never before have the Panthers had a tight end who makes as many big catches as Greg Olsen or a defensive tackle with the sacking prowess of Kawann Short.

Those are just a few of the building blocks of a joyful Panthers team that has dazzled its fan base over three straight playoff seasons and the prospect of many more. The Panthers have shown the world it was possible to enjoy life thoroughly in the No Fun League that the NFL too often turns into. Rivera constantly counsels the players to keep your personality—he played on the 1985 Super Bowl–champion Chicago Bears, after all, who filmed their famous Super Bowl Shuffle video before their own regular season had even ended.

So, within reason, Rivera allows his players to enjoy themselves as long as they also put in the work. Turn the end zone into their own dabbin’ dance club? Sure. Pose for team photos while the game was still going on? Absolutely. Act like they hadn’t been here before? No doubt about it.

And what’s wrong with that? Absolutely nothing. Led by Newton, whose athletic exuberance became this team’s calling card, Carolina led the NFL in scoring in 2015 for the first time ever (31.25 points per game) and also led the league in takeaways and interceptions.

Newton spoke for the team on the eve of his first Super Bowl when he talked about how he wasn’t going to tamp down his on-field celebrations for anybody. When I look in the mirror, it’s me, you know what I’m saying? Newton said. Nobody changed me. Nobody made me act this certain type of way. And I’m true to my roots. And it feels great.

The Mindset of Our Team

But the Panthers are not all about dabbing and dancing. The Panthers’ historic run over the past several seasons was constructed on the cornerstone of the phrase Keep Pounding, the sweaty motto that Mills injected into the team when he was battling cancer during the 2003 season. Mills—a beloved linebacker and then an assistant coach with the Panthers who died of cancer in 2005—told the team before a playoff game against Dallas that to Keep Pounding was the key when life got tough. Those two words are now sewn into the collar of every Panthers jersey.

Sam Mills was the originator of that quote, and now it’s the mindset of our team, Kuechly said. No matter the situation, no matter what’s going on, you’ve got to keep playing. Keep pounding. It’s worked for us. Whether we’re up or whether we’re down, we play until the game’s over.

Part of the reason the Panthers are now a perennial contender in the NFL is talent. They have more of it now than they have ever had before, and a lot of that is due to the evaluating acumen of general manager Dave Gettleman. He had given up on ever getting a GM job, but got this one a month shy of his 62nd birthday and has put together a playoff team every year since. But part of it is also the camaraderie that makes the work feel not so much like work—the way Carolina’s players play for each other and try so hard not to let each other down.

Newton and Kuechly have an unofficial contest many weeknights during the season to see which of them can leave Bank of America Stadium the latest and study the most film before they go. Dozens of players routinely come in on Tuesdays, traditionally the day off for NFL players during the regular season, to put in extra time in preparation for the next week’s opponent. And veterans teach the younger players that doing the minimum is not enough if you are shooting for greatness.

So when the lights are off at the stadium late at night during the week, that doesn’t mean no one is home. Generally, if you peek inside the darkened rooms, you will find a number of men watching game film, searching for an edge.

The Fight—and the Aftermath

When Sunday comes, though, and the stadium lights are on? It’s showtime.

Both the ’85 Bears and this team have the propensity to stay true to our personality, Rivera said. We don’t get uptight about the little things. Rivera decided early on that, while he did want to shape his players on the field, he wouldn’t try to turn them into robots. He let them breathe. He let them celebrate.

We don’t care about the outside world looking in, the scrutiny, the trash-talking about our dancing, or how much fun we’re having, Panthers fullback Mike Tolbert said late in the 2015 season. I mean, if you don’t want us to have fun, stop us.

Rivera allows Newton to celebrate every first down like it was the first one ever made and every touchdown as if the quarterback had just learned to fly (and sometimes, it looked like he just had). Rivera learned a lesson early in his head-coaching career that to curb a player’s flamboyant personality too much would often take away some of the bravado that was an essential part of who the player was. In that case, the player was former Carolina cornerback Josh Norman—who left Charlotte for a huge contract with Washington in April 2016—but in Rivera’s mind the application of that lesson was universal. Keep your personality, he would say, but also make sure you do your job.

Of course, sometimes big personalities crash into each other. That’s what happened on one of the most critical days of the last few years for the Panthers. The incident occurred on August 10, 2015, during a heated team practice in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

At that point in their careers, the team’s star quarterback and Norman, the team’s star cornerback, never had a lot to say to each other. But they habitually made it a point to try to outdo each other in practice. On a hot summer day, a pot was about to boil over. In an hour-long interview I conducted exclusively for this book, Norman talked about the fight in detail (recounted in chapter 27) and also remembered his relationship with his quarterback before it occurred.

Cam’s a good guy, but we didn’t really talk, Norman said. We had an admiring respect. A respect, like, a sniffing kind of respect. You know when two dogs sniff and they know what’s good and then they go their different ways? And don’t really play with each other? Like that. I just wanted to one-up him, and he just wanted to one-up me.

So on that day at training camp, Norman intercepted a pass from Newton and then started showboating as he tried to return it for a touchdown. Rather than simply getting out of the way as quarterbacks are taught to do in team drills—this was a controlled team scrimmage where no one was supposed to hit the ground—an irritated Newton chased down Norman and tried to tackle him. Norman stiff-armed the quarterback. Newton’s helmet came off. The two got into each others’ faces and started yelling. Suddenly, Newton threw Norman to the ground and fell on top of him.

All this happened about 15 yards in front of me, as I stood on the Panthers sideline. It was the weirdest, most surreal 30 seconds of practice I had ever seen. It quickly became full-scale chaos, as players piled onto each other, trying to separate the star quarterback and cornerback. Mayhem! as Norman called it.

Fortunately, no one was hurt. But it turned out that those 30 seconds released a pressure valve for the Panthers. And ultimately, after the fight, the team drew closer. Said Norman just before Super Bowl 50 as he looked back on the incident, Both guys are aggressive in their approach and they want to be great. And when you have two guys going at each other like that—one throws a touchdown, the other one comes back and intercepts the ball—it’s hard. They both have a super high level of competition to the point where they get a little heated. Sparks start to fly. And once those sparks start to fly, they released our greatness.

Newton and Norman both had the best years of their careers after that fight. Norman parlayed his season into a $75 million, five-year contract with Washington in 2016 after the Panthers rescinded the franchise tag they placed on him; Newton’s resulted in the first-ever NFL Most Valuable Player award given to a Panther.

And Rivera—who shortly after the fight thought that he was going to have to give a we have to get past this speech to avoid a year-long rift between the offense and defense—instead had to do very little. I’m all set to give this great speech about teamwork and togetherness and family and what we’re trying to build inside the locker room, Rivera said. And then Ryan Kalil, Thomas Davis, Greg Olsen, Charles Johnson, and Luke Kuechly, basically all of the captains [except for Newton, since he was involved in the scuffle], came up and said, ‘Coach, we got this. We’ll take care of it. We’re good.’ So I never talked to the team.

Another Super Bowl? Absolutely

The Panthers have become very good at adapting and overcoming. In 2014 the team started 3–8–1 and didn’t win a game for two months. Then, just as they were being written off, they ran off five straight victories (including the team’s first playoff victory in 10 years—a home win over Arizona). Then, despite losing wide receiver Kelvin Benjamin during the 2015 training camp, Carolina’s offense had the sort of crazy-good season no one could have foreseen.

The Panthers’ defense has ranked in the top 10 every year since 2012—which, not coincidentally, was the year Kuechly got drafted. It is fueled in the middle by linebackers Kuechly and Davis, who played in the Super Bowl despite a broken arm. The Panthers secondary proclaimed its section of the locker room Thieves Avenue in 2015 and led the NFL in interceptions.

What will the future hold for the Panthers? No one truly knows. Injuries are the NFL’s great unknown. But I believe the Panthers have finally transformed themselves into a consistent winner, a team that has taken its seat among the NFL elite and won’t be leaving that table anytime soon.

I wrote this book to explore how that occurred—and to figure out what happens next. Panthers Rising covers the five-year time period between the 2–14 season of 2010 and the rise to the Super Bowl in great depth, as well as casting an eye on what the future holds for Carolina.

To write this book, I conducted a number of new interviews with key current and former Panthers players, as well as lengthy sit-down conversations with Rivera and Gettleman. I asked 16-year veteran Eugene Robinson—the Panthers’ radio analyst since 2002—to write what turned out to be an extremely insightful foreword (thanks, Eugene!) And I threaded together my