Everything is going right for the Panthers this offseason. Somehow that feels wrong.
The Carolina Panthers and their fans have been in an emotionally abusive relationship for many, many years. The team has parlayed the heights of their successes in the Jake Delhomme and Cam Newton eras into lifelong love from innocent Carolinians who just wanted to feel recognized on the national stage. Despite woeful leadership at almost every single step along the way, Panthers fans have raised their hopes year after year.
We finally got out act together near the end of the Matt Rhule era and approached both the Frank Reich and Dave Canales hires with an increasing amount of skepticism. Yes, there was optimism, but few and far between were the fans convinced of the Panthers imminent ascension to the upper echelons of the NFL. Even now, after an offseason of good news days, fans are predicting only a moderate increase over last seasons win total. It’s encouraging to see folks take an emotionally guarded stance towards their favorite franchise.
It is with all of that in mind that I am struggling to analyze the result of last week’s Reacts poll. 93% of fans are confident that the Carolina Panthers are trending in the right direction. It’s not that the team isn’t or that fans lack reasons to believe after a relatively strong season (and, yes, “relatively” is doing an obscene amount of work in this sentence). It’s more that so many people agreeing on the current state of things instead of bickering over UDFAs or sniping at managerial decisions that have only been half made public is a jarring change of pace for us.
Maybe things are all coming up Black and Blue right now. Maybe this is as high as our favorite poverty franchise’s pride gets to rise before its inevitable fall. All I know is that I won’t feel comfortable feeling positive about the direction of the Panthers until this confidence number plummets to the 60s or 40s after the team’s traditional opening day loss. We’ll figure out who the Panthers will be predicted to lose to later this week when the full NFL schedule is released.