Coming off a Week 14 bye week, everything is in front of the Carolina Panthers.
Sitting atop the NFC South in a tie with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Panthers have a December full of important football on the docket.
With a chance to see his Panthers turn in a winning season and earn a playoff berth for the first time since he became the team's majority owner in 2018, David Tepper is excited with what's happening in Charlotte, North Carolina.
"Listen, it's pretty good," Tepper said this week, via The Athletic’s Joe Person. "It's all building process. Look, we'll see where we go. We'll see what happens. But we do think, as I said, [head coach Dave] Canales, [general manager Dan] Morgan, [executive vice president of football operations Brandt] Tilis, and everybody here in the whole organization, I think we're building something special in Carolina. And we've been building it outside in the community. We're building it on the field. This is the total picture. And hopefully we can go on and we have that for many years here. And that's what we hope for."
Sitting at 7-6 prior to an important matchup this Sunday at the New Orleans Saints, the Panthers are staring at the reality of being able to post their first winning season and/or playoff campaign since 2017, the last year before Tepper took ownership.
The seven wins so far equal the combined total of the past two seasons (7-27).
Much of that success can be attributed to Canales and quarterback Bryce Young, the No. 1 overall pick of the 2023 NFL Draft after the franchise traded up to get him.
Young's travails as a rookie and at the dawn of the 2024 season cast plenty of doubt as to whether Carolina struck out in its pursuits of the club's first bona fide franchise QB since Cam Newton.
The 24-year-old is changing that narrative as the Panthers are fighting for the team's first NFC South title since 2015 when Carolina went to Super Bowl 50.
Young has completed a career-high 63.4% of his passes for a career-best 18 touchdowns so far, along with 2,337 yards.
He's proven to be clutch on more than one occasion, including a Week 13 shocker when the Panthers defeated the NFC's top-seeded Los Angeles Rams, 31-28. It was the sixth one-possession victory of the season so far for the Panthers.
The owner has seen nine quarterbacks, including Young, make starts since he became owner and is on his fourth full-time head coach in Canales. It looks like he might have finally found the right combination.
With two massive matchups remaining against the Buccaneers that will likely decide the division, the final stretch of the 2025 campaign might well dictate just how promising a season this is for the franchise.
So far, though, there's been ample reason for optimism from Tepper.
"It's not that shabby," Tepper said of the season through 13 games.
