The Carolina Panthers are going to the playoffs despite ending the season with an 8-9 record. It’s a rare but not unprecedented occurrence. It’s happened four times previously—the 2010 Seahawks, 2014 Panthers,
2020 Washington Football Team, and 2022 Buccaneers. As you can see, the Panthers have become the first multi-time entrant into that exclusive club (though former head coach Ron Rivera has led two different franchises there already).
The Panthers made the playoffs in the 2014 season with a 7-8-1 record. They got that fateful tie in Week 6 against the Bengals thanks to a short missed field goal by Bengals kicker Mike Nugent as time expired in the overtime period. That tie helped the Panthers edge the Saints by a half game and claim the NFC South crown.
On the surface, the two seasons look similar. The Panthers scratched and clawed their way to an almost .500 record, which was just enough to steal the division title from a weak group of adversaries. But the way each of those seasons played out was quite a bit different, and the profiles between the teams differed quite a bit as well. The 2014 team was better on offense, but they struggled to keep teams out of the endzone more than their 2025 counterparts. The 2014 team was atrocious on special teams, while this year’s group was passable.
The two teams did share a couple of things, particularly on offense. Both suffered from substandard quarterback play. Cam Newton struggled with a weird smattering of injuries including rehab from offseason ankle surgery, injured ribs from a hit in the preseason, and broken vertebrae suffered in a car crash. Young produced similarly as a passer and also dealt with a bit of an ankle issue. Both quarterbacks were reliant on large, rookie wide receivers that both topped 1,000 yards for the season. Tetairoa McMillan actually just broke Kelvin Benjamin’s record for rookie receiving yards that was set in that 2014 season.
The paths to the playoffs were quite a bit different as well. In 2014, the Panthers started the season 3-2-1 after that tie against the Bengals. The following week, they were thoroughly dismantled by the Packers. That sent the team on a spiral in which they lost six straight games. The last of those six losses was a 31-13 drubbing at the hands of the Vikings. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, they flipped a switch. They annihilated the Saints 41-10 to start a four game winning streak to close the season. They capped it off with another dominant division win, defeating the Atlanta Falcons 34-3. It made for a ton of positive momentum heading into the playoffs, where the 2014 Panthers got about the best break they possibly could have. They matched up with the Arizona Cardinals, who were 11-5 but limping into the playoffs starting their third string quarterback.
This season has been much more rapid with the oscillations. The Panthers looked dead earlier in the season but were able to stabilize the season with a small winning streak against weaker competition. They then alternated wins and losses for the rest of the season. That included losses to bad teams that made you want to pull your hair out and wins over superior teams that made absolutely no sense. They backed into the playoffs with two straight losses thanks to a late season losing streak by the Buccaneers and a late season surge by the Falcons to level all three teams and make for some weird tiebreaker shenanigans. They get to face MVP candidate Matthew Stafford and a Rams team that was in play for the one seed for much of the season.
Everything had to break right for the 2025 Panthers to make the playoffs, but even the crazy luck that got them here doesn’t rival what happened to the 2014 team. That 2014 team built up some really positive momentum with four straight wins heading into the postseason, two of which were thoroughly dominant. They were also matched up with an injury riddled Cardinals team that was way worse than their record. This year, the Panthers were gifted a division title, but they ended the season with two straight losses, and they haven’t exactly been convincing when they have won. Plus they get a full strength opponent that is a legitimate Super Bowl contender. So while it’s nice to look to that 2014 team as a reason to be hopeful for this 2025 team, it’s not an apples to apples comparison as the situation was quite a bit different back then.
