Panthers’ Path to Contending Again Clear If They Can Stop Beating Themselves Up

Despite suffering through a frustrating, disappointing and often puzzling 2016 season, the Panthers can turn things around quickly and return to Super Bowl contention next year. 

They don’t have to trade Cam Newton, re-educate him into becoming a traditional pocket passer or follow him through his life and fashion choices like middle school hall monitors.

They don’t have to completely rebuild the roster, take out a second mortgage in free agency or draft 25 new players (with all the extra picks they get from trading Cam).

They don’t need to fire Ron Rivera, gut the coaching staff or perform some kind of culture transfusion in the locker room.

The Panthers just need to get out of their headspace and go back to playing football.

Last night’s 26-15 victory over Washington was a prime example of what the Panthers must do. It was not a flawless game. There were dropped passes, missed throws, missed field goals, dumb penalties. But the Panthers moved the ball when they had to and got big plays from their defense, on the road, against a good opponent. Best of all, they didn’t let a little misfortune—an obvious roughness foul on Newton that was reinterpreted by referees as a taunting violation against Newton—turn them into the Mighty Moodswings. Not for long, anyway.

But for most of the 2016 calendar year, from the moment Newton stormed out of his Super Bowl presser in a grump, the whole Panthers organization has been too busy battling itself to effectively cope with its opponents. While they had some real problems with injuries and roster inadequacies, the Panthers have performed the impressive feat of psyching themselves out for 11 months.

General manager Dave Gettleman rigidly stuck to his long-term budgetary philosophy, even though a short-term Super Bowl victory was within the team’s grasp. The on-and-off franchise tagging of Josh Norman, with no real Plan B for the Panthers’ suddenly gutted secondary, showed that Gettleman was uncomfortable playing the hare after having so much success as the tortoise. He and the coaches fumbled the offseason evaluation process, bringing back fading regulars (like Mike Tolbert and Ed Dickson, who played well on Monday night but have been liabilities for much of the year) at positions where upgrades should have been cheap and easy to find.

The Panthers were so wary of the Super Bowl hangover from the start of training camp that they essentially wished one upon themselves. In retrospect, tight end Greg Olsen sounded like Nostradamus when he spoke to Bill Voth of Black and Blue Review in July: “This is too hard to come out and just half-assed and find ourselves 1-4 asking, ‘What’s going on?’ We’re not going to allow that to be the problem,” he said.

It became precisely the problem once the Panthers found themselves 1-4.

Rivera should have tried to modulate his team’s mood, but the former Riverboat Ron sounded more subdued and acted more risk averse than he did in prior years. Until he suddenly decided to risk both a loss and a national scandal by benching Newton against the Seahawks, that is.

So the general manager, coaches and veterans were doing a little too much navel gazing from the start. Which brings us to Newton.

Everyone brings a little baggage to any Newton conversation, so …

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