Here at Cat Scratch Reader we have counted down the final 100 days leading up to the Carolina Panthers season opener by for at least the past ten years. We’ve always done this by highlighting the current player on the roster whose jersey number matches the day on the countdown. This year, we decided to change that up a bit by counting down our own list of the Top 100 Panthers of all time. This does not correspond to jersey number, does not need to be somebody who wore a jersey, and will in no way be controversial.
#86. Nick Goings
There are few players that better embody the Carolina Panthers as a franchise than Nick Goings, especially if you’re talking about the era in which he played. He was tough, gritty, not even a little flashy, and was a random success story when no one was expecting it.
Goings signed with the Panthers as an undrafted free agent in 2001 after some ho-hum seasons at Ohio State and Pitt. Even without a lot of pedigree, he managed to find his way onto the roster as the only undrafted free agent to make the team. He was deep down the running back depth chart but did enough things to earn a spot on special teams and occasionally within the running back rotation. After three years as a role player of sorts, he had a breakout in his fourth year. All of the Panthers running backs got hurt, leaving Nick Goings as the only man standing to receive any backfield touches. And touches he received. He took over as the team’s starting back for the last seven games of the season, and he totaled 182 carries and 25 receptions for a whopping 207 touches. That’s just shy of 30 touches per game. He was by no means efficient with those carries, but efficiency wasn’t a thing people concerned themselves with in the early 2000s. He managed to rush for over 100 yards in five of his seven games as a starter, including four straight to start his run. Thus the legend of Nick Goings was born.
He returned to the bottom of the running back depth chart with the returns of Stephen Davis and DeShaun Foster the following year and reclaimed his role as a special teams guy again. But as fate would have it, Davis and Foster fell like dominos again late in the season, giving Goings another chance at glory in the playoffs after the 2005 season. Unfortunately he befell the same fate and was knocked out of the NFC Championship game after just five carries.
That would essentially be the end of running back Nick Goings as the Panthers transitioned from the Stephen Davis/DeShaun Foster era to the DeAngelo Williams/Jonathan Stewart era. He tallied a career high 12 tackles in what would be his last season in the NFL in 2008.
I don’t know if Goings ever juked a defender in his entire career, but he ran hard. He carved out a nice career for himself based almost entirely on grit, and that’s a great way to endear yourself to fans. Few people outside of Carolina probably have any idea who Goings is, but just about everyone that followed the Panthers in the early 2000s loved him.
