People keep re-writing history in this subreddit, so it feels only right to point some things out. This is in no way in defense of Tepper, or minimizing some of the amazing things our team has accomplished in such a short time frame. This is just to put things into perspective.
In our 29 years of existence, we have NEVER had back to back winning seasons. The closest we’ve come was in ‘06 & ‘09 where we went 8-8. But not a single time was our team able to string together winning seasons.
Yes, we saw instant success in ‘96 where we were a game out of the Super Bowl, but we also spent 6 seasons in a row after that without a single winning record season.
In fact we have had 7 winning seasons in our 29 years of existence. Just think about that for a minute. In the 23 years before Tepper purchased the team, we had 7 winning seasons combined through 4 different head coaching programs.
John Fox and Ron Rivera only had 3 winning seasons each as head coaches. Each were here 9 years and only put together a winning season 3 times.
Record aside, our team consistently let big players walk for free in free agency. We had Gettleman who was proud of the fact that he doesn’t play hardball with players and consistently shops in the “bargain bin” for players. He was so proud of it that he destroyed relationships with Panther legends just to get it done.
Many of us are annoyed and upset with how our team has been in the last 6 years, and it’s understandable. But let’s stop pretending like it’s all Teppers fault. Our team has never really done what needs to be done to become a consistent winning organization. Again, im not defending Tepper, im just pointing out that this is a history of being trash. It takes a minute to turn that entire culture around. At the very least, we can say that unlike Jerry, Tepper isn’t afraid to spend the money to make it happen and has done whatever he can to rebuild the relationships with Panther legends.
The no back to back winning seasons is true, but I think that minimizes the success and excitement that this team did generate. Both John Fox and Ron Rivera took us to a super bowl and multiple deep playoff runs within a span of 15 years. That’s a hell of an overall track record that many fanbases would kill for. And if I’m not mistaken under Rivera we were division champions 3 years in a row (though one of those years we were 7-8-1).
It’s not revisionist history to say that OVERALL we had a hell of a good franchise in the pre-Tepper years.