About 28 years before he became the Carolina Panthers’ head coach, Frank Reich was part of a rambunctious Panthers team that was doing everything for the first time.
That 1995 Panthers team — the first in Carolina history — was loaded with characters, commoners and cast-offs. Everyone was from somewhere else. Most had been told “No” by at least one NFL team.
“When that 1995 team first got together, we were kind of like the island of misfit toys,” said Dwight Stone, a special teams ace for that squad. “You know those toys that you used to have and no one wants to play with them anymore, but they’re still in pretty good condition? And then one time you pull them out and start playing with them and you remember why you got ‘em in the first place? It was the same thing here.”
It’s true that the toys were in pretty good condition. Carolina would set an NFL record for wins by an expansion team by going 7-9 in 1995 — although Reich was 0-3 in his brief time as a starter before getting benched for rookie Kerry Collins and not returning to Carolina for the Panthers’ playoff season of 1996.
As Carolina’s first starting quarterback, Reich was part of the Buffalo contingent brought in by general manager Bill Polian that also included tight end Pete Metzelaars. Stone was part of the old Pittsburgh group, many of them handpicked by new Carolina coach Dom Capers, who had been the Steelers’ defensive coordinator. (The Panthers had first tried to hire Joe Gibbs, who won three Super Bowls with Washington, but he had turned down the job.)
By 1995, Reich was 33 years old and already known as an early adopter of technology — something that would later serve him well during his coaching career.
“At Buffalo,” Metzelaars said, “Frank was one of the first guys to have an Apple computer. We were in this NBA fantasy league together while we were with the Bills, and Frank kept track of the fantasy league stats on his Apple computer, decades before that became common. And we’d be looking at his Apple like, ‘What is that thing? What’s it do?’ ”
Players from various teams brought memories of previous games and old rivalries into Carolina’s makeshift locker room at the Winthrop Coliseum in Rock Hill that wasn’t quite up to the standards most of the players were used to. And they had to get used to being teammates.
Said Lamar Lathon, a standout linebacker on that 1995 squad who led the Panthers in sacks: “My first impression of Frank Reich? I had some resentment for him. Because I was part of that debacle — I was on that Houston team that Frank had beaten with the NFL’s biggest comeback ever.”
In his re-introductory press conference Tuesday as Carolina’s new head coach, I asked Reich about his memories of that 1995 team.
The new coach recalled the 1995 players’ camaraderie, the “unique showering situation” at Winthrop, the Panthers’ first game and the bus rides to Clemson — 280-mile round trips from Charlotte to Death Valley for every “home” game of the inaugural season since what is now known as Bank of America Stadium wouldn’t open until 1996.
“Those are great memories,” Reich said.
To flesh out some of those recollections, I interviewed five of Reich’s 1995 teammates by phone, asking them about what Reich had been like that season (especially after being benched) and what the season as a whole had felt like.
Metzelaars, Lathon, Stone, running back Derrick Moore and defensive tackle Gerald Williams all recalled different aspects of an unforgettable year. Rather than go game-by-game through a 7-9 season played 28 years ago, though, I asked the half-dozen men about some of the same topics that Reich mentioned, and also about how the new Panthers coach was as a teammate.
Goldberg, LaVar Ball and Sam Mills
The most famous player on the 1995 team was the late linebacker Sam Mills, a future Pro Football Hall of Famer and the originator of the team’s “Keep Pounding” motto many years later when he was an assistant coach for the team.
“I can’t say it enough — Sam was the leader of that defense,” Williams said. “He was our quarterback. Whatever he said, went. Everybody just tried to prepare and play the same way he did.”
As would be the case on many Carolina teams of the future, the defense was better than the offense in 1995. Carolina’s most exceptional win of the season came in November 1995, when the defense keyed a 13-7 road win against the defending Super Bowl champion, the San Francisco 49ers (a 14-point favorite).
Extroverted cornerback Tim McKyer returned an interception 96 yards for a touchdown for Carolina’s only TD in that game and has never let his teammates forget it.
“Tim was already mouthy, but when he intercepted that ball, we could not keep him quiet from that moment on,” Stone said, laughing. “Every time we’d see him, he’d talk about it. Every single time.”
Reich didn’t take a snap in that game, though. By then he was Collins’ backup. For the final 13 games of the year, he had to revert to the second-string role he was familiar with from his years in Buffalo, backing up future Hall of Famer Jim Kelly.
“I’m certain Frank had his own private moments where there was some disappointment after they promoted Kerry to starter after just three games,” said former Panther running back Derrick Moore, who was Carolina’s leading rusher in 1995 with 740 yards and also such a fan of “The Sound of Music” that in the locker room he would occasionally quote the lyrics. “But you didn’t see it. You didn’t see in Frank a guy who wanted to take his ball and go home. He was fully engaged, all the time.”
Two other men who would go on to become well-known in other fields made brief appearances on Carolina’s roster in 1995. The first player the Panthers cut was a linebacker from Georgia named Bill Goldberg, who not only never got into a real game but also didn’t even get to training camp. He dropped his first name, though, and became a celebrity as a pro wrestler.
And a practice squad tight end named LaVar Ball got into the Panthers’ 1995 team picture, by chance standing right behind team owner Jerry Richardson. Ball never played in a real Carolina game, either, but would become famous later as the boastful father of future Charlotte Hornets star LaMelo Ball and his NBA brother, Lonzo.
Bus rides and hitting the showers
To a man, the former Panthers remember those long bus rides nostalgically. The showers at Winthrop? Not so much.
The late Mills explained to me in an interview about 20 years ago the 140-mile bus rides each way to Clemson and back helped that team in several ways.
“We had food, old movies playing, friendships forming — it was just so much fun,” he said.
The Panthers played 10 home games that 1995 season at Clemson — two preseason contests and eight real games. For the very first exhibition, the traffic on Interstate 85 was so terrible that it left permanent scars on every Carolina fan who made that trip. Ask an old-timer about the trips to Clemson and it will likely be the first thing they bring up.
The team buses, though, had a police escort and generally made the trip without issue.
“Those bus rides developed unity,” Williams said.
“People could act the fool and have fun,” Stone said. “There was a lot of laughter.”
“It felt like high school,” Moore said.
Lathon remembered one of the first bus rides as “kind of boring” and that he suggested classic movies as a way to liven them up after that. Watching “Cool Hand Luke” influenced several of the players so much that they occasionally quoted lines from the 1967 Paul Newman movie the rest of the season.
Stone said one of the best part of those bus rides was that smartphones didn’t exist.
“No electronics,” Stone said. “It was great. No social media. It made us hang out together. To actually have a real conversation.”
As for the showers at Winthrop — where the Panthers practiced during the season that first year because they didn’t yet have practice fields in Charlotte — we won’t belabor that point. But the “unique” showering situation Reich spoke of was basically this:
“Small spaces, OK?” Moore said. “Only so many shower heads. A lot of waiting around. The water could be hot one day but might not be the next. It wasn’t exactly pro level. But we all knew the way it was. We just had to rock with it.”
Reich’s on-and-off season
Reich’s best game was his very first one for Carolina. Against Atlanta in the regular-season opener, he threw for 329 yards. On the Panthers’ first drive, he hit his old friend Metzelaars on a corner route for an 8-yard TD.
“The first touchdown in Panther history,” Reich reminisced on Tuesday. “As a career backup quarterback, I don’t have too many highlights. But to have the first touchdown pass in the team’s history is pretty special.”
The Panthers got that game to overtime, but then lost 23-20 on a field goal after Reich was sacked for the ninth(!) time in the game and fumbled the ball away.
It got worse after that. Reich played his old teammates in Buffalo in Week 2. The Bills blitzed Carolina, 31-9, and Reich was 6-for-21 for 44 yards and an interception as the Panthers were limited to three field goals.
In Week 3, Carolina lost 31-10 to the Rams, turning the ball over seven times and playing all three quarterbacks (Reich, Jack Trudeau and Collins). Reich was 8-for-19 for 68 yards, an interception and no TDs, and by then the Panthers had seen enough. If they were going to struggle offensively, they might as well struggle with the rookie.
They put the ball in Collins’ hands as the starter the next week — ironically, he and Reich grew up only a few miles apart in Pennsylvania — and Collins ended up going 7-6 the rest of the season as a starter.
Said Metzelaars, who played with Reich for more than a decade and later teamed with him twice on NFL coaching staffs: “It was disappointing for Frank. ... But it wasn’t a huge surprise, with Kerry sitting there as a No. 1 draft pick and the talent and arm strength he had.”
Reich’s demeanor the final 13 games, however, is fondly remembered by all.
“I never saw any type of jealousy or anything like that,” Stone said.
“Frank’s always going to do the right thing,” Metzelaars said. “And he’s going to be professional about it.”
“Frank was on the back nine of his career by then,” Moore said, “but he poured what he knew into Kerry. Frank was a coach back then, too. He just happened to be wearing a uniform.”
