For a good chunk of the 2015 football season, the Carolina Panthers were the dark horses of the NFL.
At first, they were overshadowed by the other undefeated teams. They were good, sure, but were they Green Bay good? Were they New England good? Not likely.
Even after those other teams sputtered and cooled off and the Panthers finished the regular season with a ridiculous 15-1 record, many remained skeptical of their ability to make it all the way. Were they going to topple the red-hot Seahawks? How about the explosive Cardinals? Surely not.
Then the Panthers routed the Seahawks, jumping to a 31-point lead by halftime even Russell Wilson couldn’t overcome. And then they embarrassed the Cardinals a week later, 49-15. And, suddenly, the Panthers are getting the respect they deserve.
That’s appropriate, because the Panthers are going to handily beat the Denver Broncos this weekend in Super Bowl 50.
Simply put, there’s not a team in recent memory that has looked as dominant coming into a title bout as these Panthers. The Patriots, the Packers, the Seahawks: none of them ever looked this unstoppable at this stage in the season.
Cam Newton is playing the best football of his life, carrying his entire offense both physically and emotionally like no one else in the league. Carolina’s suffocating, overwhelming defense led by Luke Kuechly and Josh Norman routinely makes great quarterbacks, from Aaron Rodgers to Carson Palmer, look like parodies of their usual selves.
Of course, the Panthers are not without their flaws. When top wideout Kelvin Benjamin tore his ACL in the preseason, the Panthers were left woefully short-staffed at wide receiver, a problem they have struggled with all season long. While the Panthers have been able to compensate for this weakness through Newton’s scrambling ability and the transcendent play of tight end Greg Olsen, it still presents an opportunity a crafty Broncos team may be able to exploit.
At the same time, the Broncos, though undeniably a flawed team, have strengths that match up well against the Panthers: a destructive defense of their own that threatens to harass Newton in the pocket all game long, taking away his ability to make plays with his legs and forcing them to beat their elite secondary through the air.
And, of course, the Panthers will be going head-to-head with one of the all-time greats: Peyton Manning, the General, the Sheriff, who at 39 years old is still the sharpest quarterback in football, able to read and exploit weaknesses in a defense on a level no one can match.
At the end of the day, however, none of that will matter. The Panthers are too hungry: hungry to prove their doubters wrong once and for all, hungry to shed their upstart status and establish themselves as the NFL’s newest dynasty.
Super Bowl Sunday will witness a changing of the guard. The game will likely be the final game of Manning’s illustrious career. It’s appropriate that he’ll face off against Newton and his Panthers. In the sunset of the Brady vs. Manning era, a Panthers win this Sunday will establish Cam Newton as the quarterback to beat in the NFL of tomorrow.
