Are you as passionate towards Panthers football as you used to be?

[Teddy2SuperBowlHeartBreaks]

I started watching and following this team since 2002 and was passionate for nearly a decade and a half until I Super Bowl 50 which killed my passion for spectator sports in general. Like what really is the point? That is around the time I stopped watching ESPN and generally finding better things to do with my time on Sundays. I followed during the end of the Cam Era but not nearly as closely.

Tepper coming in and discarding Cam like a bag of trash rubbed me the wrong way, and that is when I just decided I wouldn’t watch the team anymore. Depending on the matchup, I found myself rooting against this team. The Rhule hiring was always going to be a disaster. Teddy Bridgewater was always going to be a disaster (and not fun to watch). The list goes on and on. There is no real reason to be passionate about this team because the decisions are coming from a guy that literally does not understand football, and even if the team wins (which is rare) what do I get out of it? The Panthers are “my team”, sure, but that ultimately means very little to anyone else, and even less to me. 

[Cpt slay a ho]

Naw I’m more fair weather than anything nowadays, this last 5 years there’s been nothing to get excited about and when there is, said player was traded(cmc, dj Moore) 

the reality is we feel what other fans do when they have to deal with billionaire owners who could care less about actually building a respectable football club(Snyder), like some have stated the handling of Cam and I’ll add cmc, dj Moore and burns for now, has doomed several versions of the team, and that abomination Matt rhule and now the current gm looks inept 

[Rags]

lol nah man not even close. And I doubt I ever will be, even if we're successful, the Cam era was just different for me personally. And that's okay.

That being said, I love football and this is my team, so I'm always gonna want the best for them. But I don't think I'm as blind or as impassioned of a homer as I used to be.

[Cdparr7]

17 minutes ago, OneBadCat said:

To be honest it's the officiating that has taken a lot of my passion out of it. It's clear the NFL does not care about making the correct calls. There is just too much bias and incompetence to 100% believe that the best team will win. 

What this guy is saying is a lot of it for me as well. I feel that 9/10 times we get poo on during the close calls I’m sure all fans feel that way but I feel like it’s actually a thing with us.
 

Not to be labeled a conspiracy theorist here but I do feel like the NFL can control the outcome of games just by a few simple calls or no calls throughout the game and it always seems to benefit whatever the storyline may be. You don’t need a script just a few holding calls or DPIs to change momentum or call back a big play. 
 

What is even more frustrating is the NFL mocks this question now. I seen a commercial today pretending they were “scripting” week 1 to make it seem impossible when it could really be a lot simpler than that. 
 

I feel like there is no consequences on refs for bad calls. “Oh we had a call or no call that ended your playoff chances, sorry” 

[LinvilleGorge]

7 minutes ago, lumbeecheraw75 said:

Well hell I guess we should've let Rhule finish his contract too. Cam was busted. Shoulder, and legs/feet in his last year with us (well before coming back after his Single year in NE). People want to blame Rivera's mismanagement of Cam, but that was Cam's game. 

There's no defending cutting Cam to pay Teddy Bridgewater like a legit starter. It's not cutting Cam in a vacuum. It's cutting Cam AND paying Teddy Bridgewater acting like we've upgraded at QB and found our future.

[Brent Gregory]

In the off-season this year yes. I watched every video on Bryce Young on YouTube  and all the analysis.  Coming off missing the playoffs by a game last year then getting the top pick for this year I was pumped . Then the preseason happened.  Then the first game happened and now Im getting back to the familiar feeling I've had the last 7 or so years. This franchise is starting to get the vibe of all the long term bad franchises who had decades long bad football. Hopefully there's a turnaround but looking at today's product I don't see it this year and no draft to help the coming ones. 

[Rags]

Just now, LinvilleGorge said:

There's no defending cutting Cam to pay Teddy Bridgewater like a legit starter. It's not cutting Cam in a vacuum. It's cutting Cam AND paying Teddy Bridgewater acting like we've upgraded at QB and found our future.

God this right? 

Like we're sucking in 2020 no matter what. Let's at least suck with the guy who fugin died for us.

[lumbeecheraw75]

3 minutes ago, NJPanthers12 said:

They used draft picks on shaq thompson and Vernon butler in his prime

This the kind of logic that says that we would have never drafted Cam, because we'd have had Tom Brady  already. I agree that we didn't give him any help..  To paraphrase someone on here earlier, Rivera ran Cam like he was Jerome Bettis.. That's what I perceive as mismanagement of Cam.... You're noting misses on the inexact science that is the NFL draft. That has nothing to do with Cam.

 

[Wolfcop]

There are more important things now, like faith and family. I’ll always be a  Panthers fan, but it doesn’t ruin my day if we lose like it used to.

I do think Bryce will be on some winning teams and bring back some excitement. That’ll start later this season and build from there as they add weapons for him. 

[Teddy2SuperBowlHeartBreaks]

35 minutes ago, OneBadCat said:

To be honest it's the officiating that has taken a lot of my passion out of it. It's clear the NFL does not care about making the correct calls. There is just too much bias and incompetence to 100% believe that the best team will win. 

I think this is a huge factor too. I had the 49ers-Ravens Super Bowl on as background noise the other day and towards the end of the game the 49ers wanted a PI call. Chris Collinsworth says “it’s the end of the game, it’s only human nature for the refs to not throw the flag”. That was what 10 years ago? The last two super bowls have been completely ruined by terrible officiating at the end, not the mention the loads of other regular season and playoff games with “questionable” calls to end the game. Last year I literally turned off like 5 games after abysmal roughing the passer calls. So either the refs are terrible and their incompetence distorts the outcomes of games, or they are rigging games, distorting the outcome of games. Either way, what is the point of investing 3 hours of my life when the product on the field doesn’t reflect the outcome of the games? Also, the majority of those 3 hours are beer and truck commercials, refs huddling with one another, commentary talking amongst themselves, or camera shots of the sideline. There is only like 20 mins of actual NFL Football being played. I think the older I get the more I realize that we the fans are the “product”. 

Edited September 11, 2023 by Teddy2SuperBowlHeartBreaks

[Bear Hands]

Peak fandom for me was 2008. Thought that was our best team and it sobered my perspective on being an extrovert diehard. 

I had grown from a clueless kid fan for Dom/Seifert into a full fledge diehard with the early Fox era teams in HS. Furthest back memory outside of vague images as a kid was tracking that Seifert team’s final week score-a-thon for the playoffs we missed.

Fast forward though..experiencing the Arizona debacle live when we and the entire sports world thought the team would roll through the NFC ruined me. Was just never the same. That nutshot was hard to recover from.

That was one of the last years that I went to basically every home game before wrapping undergrad and moving across country. Feels like light years ago.

I was excited as hell through Cam’s era but there was just a gut feeling after 2015 that something was just never going to be right place/right time for him with Ron. Cowboys Turkey and Patriots Monday night nearly resurrected me but it just never got back to peak double trouble & smitty for me.

These days—just accepting of what we are until we can become something better and consistent. We’ve almost had something twice in our existence but haven’t figured out how to recover in short order as a franchise. 

Edited September 11, 2023 by Bear Hands

[The Natural]

As a teenager (mid 2000's era) the Panthers had a HUGE affect on me emotionally. A loss would ruin my day if not my week. These days pretty much as soon as the game is over win or lose I'm back to my baseline. They are still my team and I watch every game but I think I have a much healthier relationship with them.

[jopie87]

No, but it's really all a matter of perspective and growing up.

In 1995, I was 8. I wasn't watching football players, I was rooting for Super Heros who wore the best shade of blue on the planet. Wins and losses mattered because I was a kid and every week was a battle between good and evil. Losses felt like the end of the world. Wins meant everything.

Now, I'm 36, have a wife, three kids, a job, and a mortgage. I'm not watching Super Heros, I'm watching men a decade younger than me playing a game they love in the few years, on average, that they get to do it at a pro level. I want players to succeed because it can/will/should make a huge impact for their families. But it's different.

When they win, it feels awesome, but a little perspective has dimmed the passion over the years because there is roughly 6,200 things more important in my life than the outcome of a sporting event.

[jopie87]

2 minutes ago, The Natural said:

As a teenager (mid 2000's era) the Panthers had a HUGE affect on me emotionally. A loss would ruin my day if not my week. These days pretty much as soon as the game is over win or lose I'm back to my baseline. They are still my team and I watch every game but I think I have a much healthier relationship with them.

Absolutely this.