The Carolina Panthers are looking to move forward and leave the past behind. The organization feels that quarterback Bryce Young has turned the corner necessary to be a top-of-the-line starter in the league, but knows that it’ll have to improve things on the other side of the ball if it wants to be competitive.
The poor play of the defense last season is serving as a motivating factor for vast improvement in the 2025 campaign.
“We don’t need to be anything close to that,” cornerback Jaycee Horn said, according to the team’s official website. “You kind of want to throw it out of your mind because it’s a new season, but at the same time, it’s on the back of your mind too, because that should be really all the motivation you need to come back to camp.
“You don’t want nothing like that to happen again. It was a lot of injuries and a lot of stuff of that nature, but at the same time, the stat book is what it is. Like, we weren’t a good defense last year, so this year we just have to go even harder than we did last year.
“It’s out there, yeah. I mean you know it is what it is. You’ve just got to go about handling it the right way, bouncing back.”
Panthers head coach Dave Canales knows that this year’s defense is not last year’s.
“It’s easy. It’s this week. It’s today, so it’s just what can we do today to help the 2025 Panthers?” he said. “No team, as long as the 16 years I’ve been in the NFL, no team is the same. The names can be the same. For example, we brought back all of our offensive linemen from last year. They’re a different group now, and they’re in different stages of their life. Ickey (Ekwonu)’s looking at a big contract, all those things like people change, people start to see the game differently, but they’re growing together. They have a standard for each other.
“And so I think, for the defensive guys, it’s a new year. We’ve got a bunch of new faces, and the guys who were here last year, they take a lot of pride in making sure that we’re the best we can be this year.”
About Qwame Skinner
Qwame Skinner has loved both writing and sports his entire life. In addition to his sports coverage at Comeback Media, Qwame writes novels, and his debut; The First Casualty, an adult fantasy, is out now.