Carolina Panthers at Super Bowl 50: The impact five years on
By Dean Jones
How Super Bowl 50 impacted the Carolina Panthers
Recovering from such a devastating loss was never going to be easy. The Carolina Panthers had a bullseye on their backs during the 2016 season and this extra attention and expectation was something they simply weren’t able to handle.
There were some nice moments, but their fall from grace was compounded with a 6-10 record, fourth place in their own division, and a top-10 pick in the NFL Draft.
Not exactly the NFC Championship defense they were hoping for.
There was a silver lining to all this.
A campaign of underachievement enabled them to select Christian McCaffrey at No. 8 overall in 2017, who is now widely regarded as one of the league’s best dual-threat running backs that became only the third player in NFL history to go over 1,000 yards rushing and receiving in the same season in 2019.
They picked things up the following year by going 11-5 for a postseason return, which eventually culminated in defeat to the New Orleans Saints. This was the last time Carolina has been in the postseason discussion and the campaign was the final full year Cam Newton played for the franchise.
The Panthers got off to a positive start before Newton got injured in 2018, which would set off a chain of events that resulted in Carolina parting ways with the signal-caller in controversial fashion late in the free agency period last year.
There are very few members of the roster remaining from Super Bowl 50, which might decrease further with the impending release of defensive tackle Kawann Short in the coming weeks. This golden generation has been replaced by a youth movement and a head coach in Matt Rhule who is looking to lead the organization back to prominence after things became stagnant under Ron Rivera.