Thirty years ago, a friend’s family let me and my brother tag along on their annual trip to Bethany Beach, Delaware. We crammed into the back of a crew cab and sang Hootie and the Blowfish for three hours.
My parents handed me a $50 bill for expenses before I left. I stuffed it in the pocket of my swim trunks. You know what happened next.
We kids ran straight toward the waves after we parked. I distinctly remember how quickly the joy gave way to dread when I reached into my empty pocket.
A similar feeling came over me on Saturday night in Bank of America Stadium, when Rams receiver Colby Parkinson caught a back-shoulder pass and did a ballerina twirl along the sidelines for a touchdown against the Panthers. The score, with 38 seconds left, handed the Panthers a wild-card loss in their first home playoff game in a decade.
I’d spent eight hours downtown, meandering through the tailgate lots, witnessing Cam Newton’s live podcast and livelier sounding of the “Keep Pounding” drum, ignoring my Apple Watch’s warnings about being in a loud environment, and riding the emotional waves of a fourth quarter that had four lead changes.
Then 73,000 people froze. There was no “audible groan,” as writers tend to say. It was really just uncomfortably quiet. People looked to their neighbors, hoping that their eyes had seen something different. I had the good fortune, thanks to a last-minute ticket gift from a friend, to be sitting in the box next to Newton and his family. He’d spent the evening sending down air high-fives to the fans seated below him. But when I looked over after the touchdown, he gripped the railing and stared out at the field where he once dazzled, and he absorbed the pain like the rest of us.
Hot damn, it was good to feel something again.
And in this day and age, it was good to share the same feeling with tens of thousands of mostly strangers. For a city that sometimes struggles to agree on much, this was a rare moment of shared attention, and shared belief.
Charlotte’s pro sports teams can seem like an amenity. A fun thing to do a couple times a year, like visiting the Whitewater Center. But this weekend, watching the Panthers was an essential part of being a Charlottean.
Neighborhood bars filled up. Babysitters made a small fortune. Steph Curry narrated the official hype video. Tailgaters cooked two or three meals over charcoal to make the most of the day. CMPD officers held pompoms and banged the drum. Kids at Levine Children’s hospital made a personalized banner and handmade cards for the team.
Even my wife, who cares as much about football as I do spam calls, dressed our boys up in Panthers shirts and watched at home, right to the end.
I parked downtown a little after noon, hoping to catch Newton’s 12:30 p.m. live podcast at the Roaring Riot tailgate on Elliott Street. I was way late. The line of people horseshoed around a condo building and back to Frazier Park. Another couple of dozen people watched through a fence behind the stage, and when Newton walked up and screamed “I’m baaaaaack!” people shrieked like they’d seen Beyoncé.
Of course, alcohol loosened the mood. Walking back toward the stadium from Cam’s show, I overheard one guy tell his friends, “I wish I was drinking beer instead of liquor. I’d be more sober than I am,” as if his situation was more atmospheric than personal. The pregame musician on Mint Street, Cooper Alan, a country star from Winston-Salem whose career took off on social media, jammed through songs about drinking and bars. The crowd raised glasses.
Still, plenty of people walked through the gates clear-eyed, wanting to remember.
It’s been 10 years since we’ve hosted a playoff football game. In fact this was only the eighth home playoff game for the Panthers in their 31 years.
I was also at the most recent one, the NFC Championship victory over the Cardinals in January 2016. And as I scanned the parking lots on Saturday I couldn’t help but notice that kids who weren’t born in 2016 were now the ones tossing footballs in the parking lots, and the kids who were just tossing footballs in 2016 were now the ones talking about wishing they’d chosen beer over liquor.
Charlotte can be a fair-weather sports town, but when something truly matters, we know to celebrate the moment.
Inside the stadium, the whole scene bridged generations. Superfan Greg “Catman Jr.” Good brought a picture of his late father, Greg “Catman” Good Sr., in with him. Former wideout Steve Smith got the crowd waving towels in the pregame. At the end of the third quarter, Smith joined other players from the franchise’s first decade — Jake Delhomme, Muhsin Muhammad, and Wesley Walls — in banging the drum as the lights dimmed.
The biggest non-game moment was when Newton walked out of the tunnel for the first time since his playing days, having mended his once-tense relationship with the franchise under David Tepper, and took four swings at the “Keep Pounding” drum. One resident posted a video saying she could hear the roar for Cam a mile away.
In some ways, the day didn’t end as a funeral for this year’s team, but a proper memorial service for that 2015-16 one.
Now we can move forward and get to know this generation of Panthers. Honestly I couldn’t name more than a dozen of them, but maybe next year it’s worth trying. Because — I’m just saying! — the year before the Panthers’ 2016 Super Bowl appearance, they went 7-8-1 and made the playoffs, much like this year’s team went 8-9 and made the playoffs.
Current quarterback Bryce Young, who’s been held to Newton’s standards since he was drafted, shed some of that weight when he scrambled 16 yards for a touchdown at the end of the first half — and shed even more with a beautiful throw to Jalen Coker in the corner for the Panthers’ go-ahead touchdown in the final quarter.
The fans’ eruption after that score made the upper levels of the stadium shake.
“This is the standard now,” defensive lineman Derrick Brown said afterward. “We want to play playoff football here. We want the Bank sold out every weekend.”
Offensive lineman Robert “Big Rob” Hunt posted on social media that the crowd was the “Best I’ve EVER SEEN!!!!”
After the game, Coach Dave Canales, who stuck with Young when fans wanted to drop him, waited for his quarterback. When Young jogged off he put together prayer hands to thank the fans who’d waited behind to say goodbye.
Whether you’re a Young supporter now or not, it seems appropriate that Charlotte’s top football coach wants to prove that if you have faith in people and work with them, they’ll realize their potential. A football lesson, and a life one.
“This season was about straight up grit, and belief, and playing together,” Canales said in the postgame. “I’m so proud to be part of this group, guys. I’m sick that it’s over. I’m sick we can’t go do it one more week.”
Just one more week. Yes, yes. Those were the words we all couldn’t come up with in that moment of silence after the Rams scored the winning touchdown. Not anger. Not disappointment. Just a wish that it was different, that we could all go do it again.
You really can’t call yourself a fan of a sports team until it breaks your heart. I’m not from Charlotte. But I’ve been here 13 years, and last night, I think I crossed that threshold. The fact that the Panthers were 10-point underdogs, to me, made it a Charlotte vs. The World moment, and by golly we were 40 seconds away from winning.
As I got up to leave, I hugged a woman who’d been high-fiving me all night, then walked into the hallway while the sound system played Avicii’s “Wake Me Up”:
“Feeling my way through the darkness / guided by a beating heart,” it begins. “I can’t tell where the journey will end / but I know where to start.”
Just then, an officer in the hallway stopped me and others trying to leave and said he needed to clear a path. Then I heard soft clapping from the people behind me, and here came Cam Newton, leaving after the grandest day, pushing a baby stroller with two children who’d attended their first Panthers game.
