{"id":659954,"date":"2026-01-07T02:18:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T02:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/659954\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T02:18:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T02:18:17","slug":"panthers-in-the-playoffs-spreading-excitement-through-n-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/659954\/","title":{"rendered":"Panthers in the playoffs, spreading excitement through N.C."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CHARLOTTE, N.C. \u2014\u00a0Despite the Carolina Panthers dropping their final regular-season game against Tampa Bay, they clinched the NFC South Division title and locked in the No. 4 seed.<\/p>\n<p>What You Need To Know<\/p>\n<p>The Panthers face off against the Rams on Saturday at 4:30 p.m.\u00a0<br \/>\n<br \/>This is the first time the Panthers have clinched the NFC South title since the 2015 season\u00a0<br \/>\n<br \/>This is also the Panthers first home playoff game since the 2015 season<\/p>\n<p>Ben Harper has been a Panthers fan his whole life.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI mean, I was like 10 years old when we went to our first Super Bowl and lost to the Patriots,\u201d Harper said.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s shopping for some new gear ahead of Saturday\u2019s wild card game against the Los Angeles Rams.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor us loyal Panthers fans that stick and stay in the culture like naturally, you know, the camaraderie is going to be there,\u201d Harper said.<\/p>\n<p>This is the first time the Panthers have clinched the NFC South title since the 2015 season and fans like Robert Dawkins are excited to be in the stands come Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m hoping for an entertaining game. I\u2019m hoping that we can pull off another win against the Rams, but mainly it&#8217;s about being in our section with all of our friends,\u201d Dawkins said.<\/p>\n<p>This will be the Panthers first home playoff game since that 2015 season, and Dawkins is hoping for a win.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou know, the first time we made it to the Super Bowl, and we were Cardiac Cats nobody thought that we could make it. So again, it&#8217;s this same type of situation. I think that we stand as good a chance as anybody else,\u201d Dawkins said.<\/p>\n<p>Follow us on Instagram at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/spectrumnews1nc\/?hl=en\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">spectrumnews1nc<\/a>\u00a0for news and other happenings across North Carolina.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHARLOTTE, N.C. \u2014\u00a0Despite the Carolina Panthers dropping their final regular-season game against Tampa Bay, they clinched the NFC&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2075],"tags":[1615,95529,235,260,2567,9475,7,88,6,941,236,9,95530,3828],"class_list":["post-659954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-carolina-panthers","tag-app-sports","tag-arin-cotel-altman","tag-carolina","tag-carolina-panthers","tag-carolinapanthers","tag-charlotte","tag-football","tag-news","tag-nfl","tag-north-carolina","tag-panthers","tag-sports","tag-this-week-in-sports","tag-vod"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115851421917251548","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659954","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=659954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}