Carolina Panthers: Rivera Vs Complacency
The Carolina Panthers must hope that Memorial Day Tuesday performances do not reflect the mindset of the team in general.
The Carolina Panthers returned from Memorial Day weekend to more Organized Team Activities on Tuesday. It turns out that the defensive line was not particularly as organized as it needed to be as Cam Newton was able to draw it offsides with hard counts. That drove the head coach nuts.
There is a deeper issue at stake here and could be the reason that Ron Rivera got angry. None of the past Super Bowl losers have returned to the big game the next season since the Buffalo Bills of the early nineties.
Even the 18-1 New England Patriots failed to return to the Super Bowl the next year. The Panthers have big expectations now and a Super Bowl return may be the only acceptable end.
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For Rivera, it is more personal than that. Complacency is not merely a danger to Super Bowl losers, it is a danger to Super Bowl winners as well. Rivera was on the one loss 1985-6 Chicago Bears that are known as the best defense that the NFL has ever seen. Of course there is a reason no one talks about the 1986-7 Bears, complacency sapped the team and they were no longer able to attain greatness.
“Too many it times it happens too fast, you trade your passion for glory,” is a Survivor lyric from the Rocky 3 song ‘Eye of the Tiger.’ Rivera has to prevent that from settling in. The Panthers must remain passionate to succeed. It is troubling that one of the players who jumped offsides was defensive end Kony Ealy, who played one heck of a Super Bowl.
So Coach Rivera wants to bite that tendency now in OTAs instead of having to fight it the whole season with unnecessary losses. With an improved schedule, the Panthers will have a smaller margin for error than the one that they enjoyed last year.
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If the team responds correctly then perhaps we can to Rocky 2 before Rocky 3, but the Clubber Langs are out there and the Panthers must defeat them in the shadows of the mind before they can do the things they really want to do.