Panthers

The 2015 season stands apart: a 15–1 record, Cam Newton named the league's Most Valuable Player, and a 49–15 rout of the Arizona Cardinals in the NFC Championship Game that sent Carolina to Super Bowl 50. Denver beat them there, 24–10, just as New England had beaten them 32–29 in Super Bowl XXXVIII after the 2003 season.

Six of the club's seven division titles have come in the NFC South, most recently in 2025; the seventh, in 1996, belongs to a stretch when Carolina still played in the NFC West, before realignment moved it south. That 1996 run ended in the NFC Championship Game as well, a 30–13 loss to the Green Bay Packers.

The phrase "Keep Pounding" traces back to Sam Mills, inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2022, and it is still the line the club leans on in tight games. Julius Peppers, the franchise's all-time defensive leader, followed him into the Hall in 2024. Steve Smith holds the club's receiving mark.

David Tepper has owned the Panthers since July 2018, when he bought the team from Jerry Richardson following an investigation into workplace misconduct. Richardson was the one who brought professional football to Charlotte in the first place: the NFL awarded him the franchise on 26 October 1993, its 29th, and the Panthers took the field for the first time two seasons later, in 1995.