Carolina Panthers: All Time Twenty Year Team 2.0
Twenty years in, let’s look at the best Carolina Panthers player at every position updated to reflect the Super Bowl.
When the Carolina Panthers went to the Super Bowl and achieved a number of Pro Bowl berths, it upset my Greatest Panthers of the first twenty years list. Then there was free agency which saw one of the members on that list walk away for bigger money elsewhere. It seemed that I could not in conscience leave the list the way it was at that point.
With the 2016 NFL Draft behind us, the book on 2017 opens and the first twenty years of Panthers football are complete. 1995-6 to 2015-6. With one more look let’s see if any adjustments are to be made to the team that we assembled before the Panthers went on their second close miss at a Super Bowl.
Sure the franchise technically dates back to 1994, but the team did not hit the field until the next year. In that time there have been lots of players who have worn the Panthers jersey.
In the earlier off season Panthers Bracket, we looked at who the biggest Panther in team history has been. Without much surprise it was team owner Jerry Richardson who took home the big award. There were also general managers and coaches in some of those slots. It took some of the focus off the players.
So let’s put full focus on the players. Let’s show who the Ultimate Panthers starting lineup would be. Obviously we will need a starter at every position. That’s twenty-two guys. We will also need a kicker and punter to make twenty-four. Then we will also throw in a fourth linebacker, Nickelback, kick returner and a punt returner to be fair to the fact that the Panthers started off as a 3-4 team. So that is twenty-seven guys to account for.
Will the list favor the nostalgia of the nineties or the players of nowadays? Has the Panthers’ current season caused me to favor those guys?
Because we are talking Panthers football, we will be talking defense first. The most important position on the defense is the punter. So Punters first.
Next: Punter