Two promising games from this season give hope for next
The Super Bowl this season will be contested between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles. You’re going to hear a lot this week from pundits about this being a fitting rematch between the two teams that last met in the Super Bowl at the start of the Chiefs current Super Bowl streak in 2022. You’re going to hear a lot from fans of other franchises about how much they hate the idea of a Super Bowl streak, too. Win or lose, Kansas City has officially entered dynasty territory and have earned the wide spread disdain that was formerly reserved for the New England Patriots.
The Eagles, for their part, aren’t much better to the average fan. This will be their third Super Bowl appearance since 2017. They have made the playoffs in seven of the last eight years and fired their Super Bowl winning coach, Doug Pederson, after the one season in that stretch where the team missed them.
These teams are among the class of the NFL. That is worth noting from the perspective of Carolina Panthers fans because our favorite team lost one game to each of these teams by a combined nine points in the midst of a 5-12 season. Both the Eagles and the Chiefs managed to score 14 points in less than four minutes of their respective games last night. The three points that the Chiefs edged the Panthers by and the six that the Eagles won by are basically a coin flip, an odd ball bounce, or a busted coverage away from having gone the other way.
The Panthers probably didn’t get either team’s best shot, to be clear. This was the middle of the season, the playoffs largely locked up for both of them, and the Panthers were a three-win team. This wasn’t the Super Bowl for teams who had actually been to them before. But the Panthers needed to demonstrate the ability to compete against average effort from the best teams in the NFL.
That made these two of the biggest games the Panthers played last season. And, with the benefit of low expectations, the team showed up. Bryce Young showed up. Dave Canales, in his first year as a head coach and second as a play caller, showed up. They met the moments as they came.
That doesn’t mean that 2025 is a Super Bowl or bust year for the Panthers. Let’s not get carried away. We can do that in July when we have nothing better to do.
That does mean that we can have marginally higher expectations for this season than we did for, well, for whatever 2024 was for this team. A new head coach, a benched quarterback, and an absolutely wrecked defense combined to make this past year a hard one to evaluate.
Progress and consistency were always going to be the watchwords of the second season under Canales. Many consider 2025 to be the second year for Young as well, given the morass of incompetence he had to flounder in during his rookie season. Young took a big step forward after returning from his benching this season and largely maintained that progress across the final nine games of the season. Fans are now looking for him to have a strong start and to follow through on that start.
They’ll also be looking at something else after the Super Bowl. The College Football Playoff Selection Committee, who I think spends most of their time trying to stir a pot of boiling ants, turns the heat up on their pot with an emphasis on quality losses. Losing 30-27 to the Chiefs and 22-16 to the Eagles within three weeks in 2024 counts as two quality losses on the Panthers resume going forwards. A better resume means higher expectations.
We’re now expecting this team to find ways to compete against the best teams in the league. I’m not expecting them to win every time, but the Panthers being a doormat once again would be genuinely disappointing. The difference is that now other teams can expect this from the Panthers, too. Consistency and progress aren’t the only items on the Panthers’ plate next season, they have to shoulder the weight of expectations. A stinker of a Super Bowl could help lessen the weight of those expectations, but a great game would similarly elevate them next season. That’s going to be the real measure of this team in 2025 and it’s one we won’t be able to begin to take until the season has begun.