Monday Morning Optimist: Getting back on the old horse

Welcome back, y’all. The 2024 season is upon us. This space has existed to build hope and community for Carolina Panthers fans since our former editor James Dator started writing the MMO in 2010’s 2-14 season. I took over the column in 2017 and, long story short, it has been all downhill for the Panthers ever since. That downward slump for the team has led to a crisis of faith in the very idea of optimism and has led to me flirting with—and even promising—the death of this column.

It’s not that I think all hope is lost. Bryce Young is still, well, young, and new coaching staffs always bring a whiff of new car smell into the building with them. However that all wears thin when you’re on your seventh new coach in five years. Talking about youth, promising talent, and the mythical time of ‘next year’ by Week 3 of a season wore thin by the fourth season in a row.

All of those things are technically true.

Young, Xavier Legette, a healthy Jaycee Horn, Ian Thomas. . . all of these guys are pieces that still have the potential to be together as a whole puzzle, just like a healthy Cam Newton, D.J. Moore, Curtis Samuel, Christian McCaffrey, Ian Thomas, and Brian Burns once did.

That message, true as it may be, obviously gets a little stale when the hope never grows into success. But even a curmudgeon such as I couldn’t bear the irony of killing this column when Dan Morgan and David Tepper hired “an optimist bully” like Dave Canales to lead the team in 2024 (and technically beyond).

Yes, Canales’s personality is a breath of fresh air. His successes as a position coach and a coordinator with the likes of Geno Smith and Baker Mayfield certainly promises some degree of hope. A bolstered offensive line in front of a former number one overall draft pick at quarterback does the same. There are reasons to hope. I think Panthers fans, among whom I still very much count myself, simply have too much baggage to have faith at this juncture.

So, where do we go from here?

Forward.

Simply put, the only way out is through. Technically, you could also become a fan of a different team or stop watching football altogether. Those are other ways out. But if you haven’t taken those off ramps in the six years since Newton’s throwing shoulder fell apart then I assume you’re just as stuck in this boat as I am.

We’ll chart a new course in this column together. We’ll talk every Monday about what worked and what didn’t, we’ll experiment a little with format, and, above all, we’ll watch some Panthers football and see what happens.

Now I’m throwing it to y’all. Scroll on down to the comments section and tell us what flavor of optimism you want to see this season. Obviously, winning cures all, but we can’t reasonably expect much of that. Let us know how else we can help, because we are all in this together.