Chris Tabor wasn’t being given an easy job when he took over as the Carolina Panthers’ interim head coach. But his messaging never wavered, from start to finish.
The finish came this afternoon, on a 9-0 loss to the visiting Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And now that the most embarrassing season in franchise history is all wrapped up, what did Tabor have to say to his players this time around?
“I just said that this room will change,” he stated after the game. “This room will now change. And I think the motto of character and compromise will still continue—for those kids, myself included. And I said you’ll probably pass that down to your kids as you become a parent. You can never lose sight of those lessons. Learn from it and move on.”
Not only did the Panthers become the first team in NFL history to go a full season without a fourth-quarter lead, but their 2-15 record made them just the second franchise to amass multiple 15-loss seasons. Ironically enough, Tabor was a part of the first franchise to hit that distinction—when he was the special teams coordinator for the 2016 and 2017 Cleveland Browns.
Those 2017 Browns, of course, finished an all-time worst 0-16 mark. So Tabor was asked about the parallels between then and now.
“I think everything that I’ve said since I’ve taken over—it’s about the tape,” he replied. “What does your tape say? I mean, yeah, 0-16 is horrible. This isn’t much better. How you go from here is obviously gonna talk a lot about how you are as a person.”
