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.
#77. Graham Gano
We are in our “players that we kinda hated but have to acknowledge they were actually pretty good era.” On Saturday, for number 76, it was Ted Ginn Jr., man of many long touchdowns and also many dropped potential long touchdowns. Today, it’s longtime kicker Graham Gano.
Gano’s career has followed the typical trajectory of a kicker. He signed on with the Ravens as an undrafted free agent but couldn’t stick. He played a season in the UFL then had to wait until December of the following season to get a job. He finished out the season with Washington in 2009 then followed that with an inconsistent 2010. He kept surviving kicking competitions before he was eventually released for a kicker with more pedigree. He latched on with the Panthers late in the 2012 season and stuck around for several years thereafter.
Gano’s time with the Panthers was marked by extraordinary long field goals interspersed with head-scratching misses from medium distances. Anecdotally, Gano seemed to miss kicks at some of the most inopportune times, but his ability to score from distance was a big help to a brutally conservative offense under Ron Rivera and Mike Shula. After a bad 2016 season in which Gano made only 78.6% of his field goal attempts and missed three extra points, the Panthers drafted Harrison Butker in the seventh round for competition. That proved to be some sort of kick in the pants for Gano. To the consternation of Panthers fans everywhere, the team stuck with Gano over the promising rookie. He rewarded the team with his most accurate season to date, missing just one of his 30 field goal attempts (though he again missed three extra points). He was solid again in 2018, but injuries cut his season short and then popped up again to rob him of the entire 2019 season.
The Panthers released Gano in 2020, and he’s gone on to be an elite kicker for the Giants when healthy. Meanwhile, the Panthers have had a revolving door through trying to replace him. They’ve had seven kickers attempt a field goal in the seven years since Gano was released (Joey Slye, Ryan Santoso, Lirim Hajrullahu, Zane Gonzalez, Eddy Pineiro, Matthew Wright, and Ryan Fitzgerald). The Panthers really completely mistimed getting out of the Gano business.
For all his ups and downs, in hindsight, he was not the worst kicker to have. He had some memorable moments, like his franchise record 63 yard field goal at the buzzer to beat the Giants in 2018. He’s second in franchise history for field goals made and total points scored (both behind John Kasay), and no one is particularly close behind him. For that, he earns spot number 77 on the Panthers top 100.
