CHARLOTTE — On the bus ride to the Georgia Dome that day, Tre Boston leaned over to Roman Harper and told him about a dream he had the night before in the team hotel.
They were both going to get interceptions off Matt Ryan that day.
“Which is crazy because we both got pick-sixes,” Boston said with a laugh at that particular prophecy.
It was an oddly specific dream, and the fact that it came true was so fitting for the 2014 Panthers.
The last Panthers team to face a win-and-in situation like the current team faces this weekend in Tampa, that one did it with a bunch of kids, and went about it messily, and were fortunate that an entire division did the same. Nothing was ever easy, and even when it ended, critics abounded because the numbers didn’t look like a playoff team.
But the numbers didn’t matter when the dream came true, and they won that final game they needed to win to cap the most improbable playoff run in the unlikeliest of ways.
But through it all, there was a clear-eyed confidence that it was going to happen.
If there were doubters, none of them were in that Panthers locker room.
“I remember going into that last game, is us understanding we’re in our flow, we are who we are, and we’ve got one team in front of us,” Boston said, warming up like a preacher feeling the Holy Ghost as the sermon begins. “And when we go down there, we are going to get the job done, we’re going to play well, we’re going to kick their ass. It was such a belief in us and what we had been doing. That there was no ifs or buts about it. It’s like we are going down there to do this, and that’s absolutely what we did.
“Going into that week, there was a true belief, and I will hound on belief as long as you’ll ever hear about me because I understand the magnitude of when people come together, find their rhythm, and they believe in who they are as a team, they can get the job done.”
That team did, and a dream came true.
But as they all remember it, there was nothing easy about it.