There are few things sports fans like debating and discussing than which teams are the best of all-time. Part of what people love about sports is greatness. That’s why we keep hearing about the ’72 Dolphins and the ’85 Bears and the Niners of the ’90s and the Patriots of the ’00s. The great teams are the ones that stretch across history, that will live on forever.
Not every franchise gets to be great, though. Some teams are condemned to not just mediocrity, not just run-of-the-mill badness, but infamy. By the nature of things, there are teams that have to be the worst of all-time. That’s just a cruel fact of life.
As we gear up for another NFL season, we decided to chronicle some of those teams that are amongst the worst to ever take the field. We are not here to lampoon these teams for their incompetence. No, we are here to try and chronicle how things went so horribly wrong.
Up next, the team quarterbacked by a 29-year-old rookie, the 2001 Carolina Panthers. Previously, the 2008 Detroit Lions.
For only being around for about 20 years, the Carolina Panthers have a pretty impressive history. They’ve already participated in two Super Bowls, including last season.
Expansion teams often struggle. It’s to be expected. But this team hit the ground running from the start. The Panthers went 7-9 their first year. That’s the best season ever for an expansion team in the NFL. In their second season, they went 12-4 and made it all the way to the NFC title game. It was nuts, and a lot of fun. Things did not stay quite so wonderful for the Panthers, though.
In 2001, things got really bad. They went 1-15.
The 2000 Carolina Panthers went 7-9. They had a roster with some notable names, but some of those names were Reggie White (39 years old) and Eugene Robinson (who was 37). Under center was Steve Beuerlein. He threw for 3,730 yards (which in the NFL of 2000 was much more notable than it is now), but he also threw 18 interceptions to 19 touchdowns. He was also sacked 62 times. Clearly, there were some issues. Carolina head coach George Seifert, who once won a Super Bowl with the San Francisco 49ers, decided to move on from Beuerlein, wanting to get younger and more mobile at quarterback. The problem? He didn’t seem to have a plan in place.
The Panthers had a great draft in 2001. First-round pick Dan Morgan was solid. He was quite good when he was healthy, but he had issues staying on the field. In the second-round, they took Kris Jenkins. Jenkins was a beast at defensive tackle, and he made three Pro Bowls and two All-Pro teams with the Panthers. In the third round is when Carolina really hit the jackpot. The Panthers drafted Steve Smith. I don’t need to tell you how awesome Steve Smith has been in his career. This was a steal.
With pick 106 in the fourth round, the Panthers got themselves a Heisman Trophy winner. The player in question was Chris Weinke, former Florida State quarterback. Normally, getting a Heisman-winning signal caller that late in the Draft would be a steal. This was not a normal situation. Weinke had spent years playing minor league baseball. He made it up to Triple-A, but then decided to call it quits, and headed to Florida State to play quarterback. As a junior, he helped lead the Seminoles to a title, and as a senior in 2000, he won the Heisman. He was also 28 when he won the Heisman. That would make him a reasonable NFL backup. A guy who is at the end of his football playing prime, but can spend a few years as a solid backup is a perfectly fine fourth-round pick.
What would be a bad idea, though, is making Chris Weinke – a 29-year-old rookie – your starting quarterback. Especially when your head coach said he wanted to get younger and more agile under center. Weinke may have been technically younger, but he was not super mobile. Maybe he was better than Beuerlein at this point in their respective careers, but Weinke should not have been Carolina’s starting quarterback. So of course Weinke ended up becoming Carolina’s starting quarterback. As you can guess, it went badly.
In an amusing turn of events, the Panthers won the very first game of the season, beating the Minnesota Vikings on the road 24-13.
“I don’t know if it gets any better than this,” said Weinke after the game.
It turns out, it wouldn’t. They then proceeded to lose 15 games in a row. Until the Detroit Lions came around, that was the record for most consecutive losses in a single season. There were some close affairs along the way. They lost two games in overtime. They lost three more games by a field goal or less. They ended the season by getting trounced by the eventual Super Bowl champion New England Patriots.
Weinke was a disaster. He completed 54.3 percent of his passes for 11 touchdowns to 19 interceptions. He did, surprisingly, rush for six touchdowns, but he also fumbled 11 times. Backup Matt Lyte, whose name you’ve likely never heard until just now, got one start and was a disaster. Tim Biakabutuka, who had been the team’s lead rusher the year prior, was limited to five games due to injury. Richard Huntley ended up rushing for 665 yards. Steve Smith was mostly a return man, but he made the Pro Bowl at that position and was a first team All-Pro. So did punter Todd Sauerbrun (hey, when you’re losing almost every game, you’re punting a lot).
But there was light at the end of the tunnel for the Panthers. They fired Seifert. At the time, owner Jerry Richardson said, “The energy has been sucked out of our organization and our fan base. We’ve lost 15 in a row … We were 31st in the league in offense and 31st in defense. It couldn’t continue. I had to make a change.”
In his place they hired John Fox, who has been a very successful NFL head coach. Despite going 1-15, the Panthers didn’t have the top pick in the 2002 NFL Draft, thanks to the expansion Houston Texans holding that pick. Of course, this may have kept the Panthers from taking David Carr. Instead they took Julius Peppers, which worked out very well. They went back to the Beuerlein model by bringing in an old, but serviceable quarterback in Rodney Peete. He wasn’t very good, but the defense was and they managed to win seven games that season. And in 2003, they went all the way to the Super Bowl with Jake Delhomme under center. That certainly qualifies as an unbelievably quick turnaround.
In his entire NFL career, Weinke won two total games as a starter. In 2005, he replaced an injured Jake Delhomme and helped lead the Panthers to a win over the Detroit Lions. Now, he’s the quarterbacks coach for the L.A. Rams, and is featured prominently on the current season of HBO’s Hard Knocks.
The Panthers certainly got unlucky to go 1-15. However, nobody made them release Steve Beuerlein, and nobody made them go into an NFL season with Chris Weinke and Matt Lyte as their two quarterbacks. They were set up to fail, and they did. At least their fans got to enjoy being undefeated for a week.
