The roster in 2001 was pretty bad. We lost the last 15 games of the season. Steve Smith was a rookie as was Dan Morgan and Kris Jenkins. So the future did have glimmers of hope.
It would be George Seifert’s last year. The next year would be an improvement to 7-9 in John Fox’s first year.
I think what makes this year more difficult than any of us could’ve imagined are the following:
-Reich may not be the guy. I like him personally but I’ve seen nothing that tells me he’s capable of making this team a winner. -It’s impossible to evaluate Bryce Young. People will jump to say we should’ve taken Stroud, but I don’t know that he would be as good here. The system, playmakers, and HC are simply better in Houston. -We have ZERO playmakers. Miles Sanders has been a bust. Chuba is decent, but not an RB1. Take away Thielen and I’m not sure Bryce gets much over 100 yards a game. -The O-line is suspect to say the least. -Defensive injuries are killing us. Horn. Shaq. Chinn. You name it. I’m pleasantly surprised how well the D has been otherwise thus far. But man…:stay healthy.
No first round pick next year is soul-crushing. It would be awesome to pair Bryce with a top-notch WR. But knowing the team that beat us last night owns our top pick is infuriating, especially since it’s pretty clear we are the worst team in the league.
Not sure what silver linings to point to. We can’t trust Fitterer or Tepper. Reich doesn’t seem to be the guy.
So yeah. This might be the worst Panthers team ever.
I was pretty young in 2001 so I don’t remember much of that season, but I do remember 2010 and this is worse. I think the difference is that roster had no talent and we were turning the page into a new era so bumps were expected. More than 4-5 wins that season would have met expectations and even with our struggles we had the #1 overall pick to look forward to in 2011. This is just different.
The defense I’ll leave out of this as they have been as good as you could ask them to be. This offense might be the worst offense I have ever watched in my life. OL can’t stop a 4 man rush, because they can’t stop a 4 man rush defenses are just dropping everyone back in coverage, WRs across the board are so slow and have to beat defense that have commited completely to stopping the pass, we have no semblance of a run game (probably due to the OL), when our WRs get separation they either drop the ball or Bryce misses, the poor kid has zero time to look down field before he’s crushed by multiple DLmen so he’s starting to just “fuck it chuck it” and it’s hard to blame him, our scheme is down right dog shit (minimal roll outs, minimal play action, minimal up tempo, and stop routes galour like its fucking 1980), and let’s just pile on leading the league in pre snap penalties because it isn’t hard enough for us as it is. Watching this team try to get even a first down is excruciating, forget about points.
Then you have the management of the team. You let a coach that the team believed in walk to hire not Steichen, not Ryans, not Johnson, but Frank fucking Reich. You trade CMC because of his bloated contract to over pay for Miles Sanders when you have cheap young talent at RB on the team already. You extend Ian Thomas (BUM), only to draft Tremble, and then sign Hayden Hurst (BUM) to another bloated contract. You guys remember Justin Houston? Me neither, but he’s on the team making a few million as well. And then the big one, you trade DJ Moore, our best player after CMC, along with pick 9, most likely '24 pick 1, and 25 2nd round to insert Bryce Young into an impossible situation.
And now we’re 1-7, coming off of a loss to a team that holds all of our future assets and is better than us in the present moment, the first round pick we traded them our assets for got out played by their undrafted rookie and a cheap running back that wanted to be in Carolina, and we’ll be lucky to win another game all season as this is the worst team left on our schedule.
TL;DR: The entire context here of the front office management, our future outlook, and the onfield product makes this situation one of the worst in NFL history, let alone franchise history, IMO.