Carolina Panthers Aided Surprising League-Wide Trend

Every NFL season, certain stats and situations stand out and surprise fans across the league. This season had many, whether it was a 44-year-old quarterback coming out of retirement to play for the Colts, or how the seven most favored teams to win the Super Bowl in the preseason didn’t even reach their conference title game. 

The Carolina Panthers contributed to one of the most shocking trends of the 2025 NFL season, even helping set an NFL record. 

The Panthers were one of five teams to make the NFL Playoffs, coming off a season in which they had 11 or more losses. 

The other teams in the NFL who achieved this feat were the Jacksonville Jaguars, who won the AFC East title, the Chicago Bears, who won the NFC North title, the San Francisco 49ers, and the AFC East champions and now Super Bowl-bound AFC champions, the New England Patriots. 

An additional aspect of this trend is that four out of the five playoff teams that lost at least 11 games in 2024 hosted games in the wild card as division champions, which hasn’t happened since a few years ago in 2023 when teams like the Houston Texans, Detroit Lions, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers all won their divisions after not making the playoffs

A common theme among these playoff teams is new coaching hires. Panthers head coach Dave Canales just finished his second year with the team and is one of only two coaches on this list who has been with their team for multiple seasons, along with 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan.

The Panthers' sizeable improvement from an 11+ loss team to a division champion is due to multiple factors, starting with Bryce Young’s improvement.

The third-year QB totaled career highs in touchdown passes and passing yards this season, and more than anything, looked confident in his abilities for more than just short spurts. 

Another factor was the added depth on offense, of course, coming from a stud receiver like Tetairoa McMillan and Jalen Coker, who now give Bryce Young a reliable receiving core that has both top-end league talent and a reliable WR2 that can explode for a big game on any given Sunday. 

Then there’s the other side of the ball, the defensive improvement headlined by the corner duo of Jaycee Horn and Mike Jackson, who were able to propel the Panthers to the next level in developing as a team, as they forced turnovers regularly. The duo combined for 10 interceptions on the season, including the postseason.