{"id":210789,"date":"2025-07-16T05:21:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T05:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/210789\/"},"modified":"2025-07-16T05:21:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T05:21:08","slug":"2015-panthers-ranked-as-one-of-nfls-top-25-teams-since-2000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/210789\/","title":{"rendered":"2015 Panthers ranked as one of NFL’s top 25 teams since 2000"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2015 Carolina Panthers<\/a> may have fallen one step short of reaching the pinnacle of their sport, but they still made their mark.<\/p>\n

ESPN’s Bill Barnwell has named and ranked<\/a> the best 25 teams from the past 25 years of the NFL. And even despite failing to ultimately hoist the Lombardi Trophy a decade ago, those Panthers came in on the list at No. 19.<\/p>\n

Barnwell wrote the following about Carolina’s surprisingly dominant offense that season:<\/p>\n

The main star on offense\u00a0won MVP:\u00a0Cam Newton\u00a0threw for 3,837 yards with 35 touchdowns and added 636 rushing yards and 10 more scores on the ground. An offense whose leading wide receivers were\u00a0Ted Ginn Jr.\u00a0and\u00a0Jerricho Cotchery\u00a0shouldn’t have scared anyone, but buoyed by\u00a0Greg Olsen\u00a0and a creative run game, the Panthers were remarkably consistent: They scored 27 points in 15 of their 19 games, a mark that tied them with the 2007 Patriots and a handful of other teams in second place over the past 25 years. Only the\u00a02018 Chiefs, with Patrick Mahomes and a handful of other future Hall of Famers on offense, got to 27 more often. The Panthers were 15-0 when they did so.<\/p>\n

2015 was, obviously, a career year for Newton\u2014whose Most Valuable Player and Offensive Player of the Year awards from that campaign remain the only such honors in team history. That squad also produced a whopping 11 Pro Bowlers\u2014including running back Jonathan Stewart, tight end Greg Olsen, center Ryan Kalil, linebackers Luke Kuechly and Thomas Davis and cornerback Josh Norman.<\/p>\n

Carolina went a franchise-best 15-1 in the regular season and ran through the Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals in the playoffs en route to their second-ever NFC title. The magical ride, however, ended in Super Bowl 50\u2014where a suffocating Denver Broncos stopped Newton and the Panthers to claim a 24-10 victory<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Follow\u00a0@ThePanthersWire<\/a>\u00a0on Twitter\/X for more Panthers content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2015 Carolina Panthers may have fallen one step short of reaching the pinnacle of their sport, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2075],"tags":[247,265,1976,7571,235,260,2567,12,388,7,20842,379,248,267,88,2122,6,35196,245,537,236,530,9,266],"class_list":{"0":"post-210789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-carolina-panthers","8":"tag-american","9":"tag-american-football","10":"tag-cam","11":"tag-cam-newton","12":"tag-carolina","13":"tag-carolina-panthers","14":"tag-carolinapanthers","15":"tag-espn","16":"tag-espn-inc","17":"tag-football","18":"tag-hub","19":"tag-inc","20":"tag-national","21":"tag-national-sports","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-newton","24":"tag-nfl","25":"tag-nfl-hub","26":"tag-overall","27":"tag-overall-positive","28":"tag-panthers","29":"tag-positive","30":"tag-sports","31":"tag-sports-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114861236918092854","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}