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.
#63. Ken Lucas
Not that this is relatable to anyone else, but I felt like I had already covered Ken Lucas because I had done so much brushing up on his Panthers tenure while looking at the career of Richard Marshall. If I remember right, there was a bit of apprehension among Panthers fans when the team signed Lucas. He had been a number two corner during his four year career with the Seahawks, but the Panthers still elected to throw a very large (for the time) six year contract at him to make him a starter opposite Chris Gamble. The franchise had had a history of big spending causing big problems, and such a big commitment to a player of Lucas’s stature was pretty shocking.
It worked out though. Lucas didn’t make it through the full six years of his contract because the lengths of NFL contracts are made up, but the Panthers did get four solid seasons out of him. He tallied six interceptions in his first season in Carolina. His second season was a bit marred by injuries, but he was able to bounce back well enough to total another seven interceptions across his last three seasons in Carolina. He held steady as a very good corner opposite Chris Gamble, giving the Panthers a very formidable cornerback duo.
But for all of Lucas’s play in real games, he might be most remembered for what happened to him on the practice field. In training camp before the 2006 season, Ken Lucas and Steve Smith got into an altercation on the sideline in which Smith punched Lucas in the face, breaking his nose. The incident resulted in Smith getting suspended for the first two games of the regular season. Apparently the two didn’t like each other, and it boiled over in practice one day and became a defining moment in the legacies of both players.
The two players later reconciled, but Lucas was released after that 2006 season for salary cap savings. He went back to the Seahawks for one more season before calling it a career.
Lucas was a seemingly rare example of a big splashy free agency signing that was just kind of okay. He did largely what was expected of him. No more, no less. He was a big contributor on some very good Panthers defenses during his tenure, and that makes him number 63 on the list of top 100 Panthers of all time.
