The Carolina Panthers’ trek to their first-ever Lombardi Trophy obviously won’t be an easy one based on where they’re currently standing. But for new head coach Dave Canales, it begins with winning their first division crown in nearly a decade.
Canales spoke with reporters from the NFL’s Annual League Meeting on Tuesday morning. He’d go into some detail about the recent changes in the NFC South, a division he described as “dangerous.”
“I really just think people are going to be really surprised about this year and the level of football that comes out of it,” he said, via Darin Gantt of Panthers.com. “I think we’re going to be competitive for the division this year. And what I’m saying is if we play good football, if we can get the football right, like we believe we can, and we can take care of the football, that the numbers take care of themselves. We’ll be in the hunt, and we’ll be in every single game, which will give us an opportunity to be in the hunt for the division at the end.”
Carolina’s last NFC South title came in 2015, during the team’s 15-win regular season. Those Panthers would also go on to secure the NFC championship before falling to the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl 50.
For the organization to revisit those heights, they’ll have to start from the very bottom. 2023 saw the Panthers finish with a league-worst 15 losses, which resulted in the worst record ever for a 17-game campaign.
So to climb in the right direction, it simply begins with, well, the simple stuff.
“For me, it starts with the division, so you’re looking to win the division every year,” Canales added. “You’d love to win the championship, but it all starts off by winning the division. How can we do that? And then you work backward from there. We’ve got to get our football right . . .
“Every one of those games is going to be a huge opportunity for us to become us to see what version of football we want to play. We want to walk out of that field saying this is Panthers football. It’s tough, it’s fast. It’s physical, it’s really intelligent.”
