CHARLOTTE, N.C. — One of the world’s greatest traveling road shows comes to the Carolinas this week after a stop in Buffalo last weekend. We’re not talking about Taylor Swift.
It’s unclear whether Swift will be in a luxury box Sunday at Bank of America Stadium. The pop icon has a six-day break in her Eras Tour after a Saturday night concert in Toronto, so it’s conceivable she could make it to Charlotte for the 1 p.m. ET kickoff.
But the Carolina Panthers have enough to worry about with who will be on the field when the two-time defending Super Bowl-champion Kansas City Chiefs make their first appearance in Charlotte in eight years.
Though athletes and coaches prefer to lean on the cliche of taking it one game at a time to de-emphasize the importance of a particular matchup, there was a palpable buzz inside the Panthers locker room Wednesday as preparations for Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and the rest of the Chiefs’ name-brand roster began in earnest.
“It’s always fun playing them. You know what to kinda expect from them. They’ve got a great offense usually. Their defense has actually played really well lately,” said Panthers linebacker Josey Jewell, who faced the Chiefs twice a year during his four seasons with the Denver Broncos.
“But with Pat Mahomes and Kelce and all those guys, it’s always gonna be a fun game. And you’ve always gotta be dotting your I’s and crossing your T’s.”
The Chiefs (9-1) hit a little road bump last week in their quest to become the first team to win three consecutive Super Bowls. Josh Allen ran through the Chiefs defense for a 26-yard, fourth-quarter touchdown on fourth-and-2 to seal the Buffalo Bills’ 30-21 victory.
Some have suggested the loss might serve to refocus the Andy Reid-coached Chiefs. But a team that’s played in four of the past five Super Bowls hardly needs recentering.
“Those guys prepare for everybody like it’s the Super Bowl,” Panthers special teams captain Sam Franklin Jr. said. “I don’t think they’re gonna go extra hard because they lost one game. They won nine straight, so it’s not like they’re too worried about having a losing streak. They just don’t wanna get things going bad. They’re just trying to turn it around now.”
The Panthers (3-7) have won two in a row since a five-game skid and are coming off a post-Germany bye week. Their Week 9 home victory over New Orleans prompted the Saints to fire head coach Dennis Allen, and the Panthers overtime win in Munich against the New York Giants cost quarterback Daniel Jones his starting job.
But the Chiefs are on another level.
“When you play against the best, hopefully your best comes out. Hopefully the best comes out of our team this week,” edge rusher Jadeveon Clowney said. “We’re going against one of the best teams in the league, one of the best quarterbacks — if not the best — in the National Football League right now.”
The Chiefs haven’t played in Charlotte since 2016 when the Panthers were amid a post-Super Bowl season malaise. Mahomes was in his final year at Texas Tech in 2016 and made the most of it, leading the nation in passing yards (5,052) and passing touchdowns (41) for the second year in a row.
So this will be the first chance for Panthers fans to see Mahomes play at Bank of America Stadium, which figures to include a sizable number of Chiefs supporters as well. Stadium takeovers by fans of the San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys over the past two years helped seal the fates of Panthers coaches Matt Rhule and Frank Reich.
There have been no indications first-year coach Dave Canales is on shaky ground. Still, Panthers players expect to see a lot of red-and-white jerseys in the crowd Sunday.
“That don’t matter. The fan base has been a little weird all year long. So this game ain’t going to make it no different,” Clowney said, referring to fans who wore brown bags over their heads during a lopsided loss to the Los Angeles Chargers in the first home game of the season.
The Chiefs haven’t had many one-sided games all year. Seven of their nine wins came in one-score games, and their largest margin of victory was a 26-13 win at New Orleans in Week 5. But Kansas City is an 11-point favorite this week.
“They’re not a team that takes people as slouches,” Franklin said. “You can tell that by how they played all year, that they’re not taking no game for granted.”
When Panthers outside linebacker Charles Harris was growing up in Kansas City in the 2000s and early 2010s, the Chiefs had a few good seasons under Dick Vermeil and Herm Edwards. But the franchise took off with the arrival of Reid in 2013, who was joined four years later by Mahomes, the 10th pick in the 2017 NFL Draft, who sat behind Alex Smith as a rookie.
“Since Andy Reid took over, it’s like a top-down thing,” Harris said. “They probably just did some things up top organization-wise, and it kind of trickled down. They got a good quarterback in the 2017 draft, got a diamond in the rough. That’s what you need. You need a quarterback in this game.”
Harris met Mahomes at an all-star event in Dallas after their senior year of high school. Harris only needed to see Mahomes in a skills competition to know he was watching a special athlete.
“They had an obstacle course — like, throw it at the bag. He was hitting the bag,” Harris said. “He went crazy in the obstacle course. I said, ‘He’s going to be good.’”
Canales: Bryce Young will start vs Chiefs. Still weekly decision but Canales mentions Bryce’s progress and growing confidence. pic.twitter.com/ORzZsKVUti
— Joe Person (@josephperson) November 18, 2024
Mahomes passed Hall of Famer Len Dawson in Week 1 to become the Chiefs’ all-time passing leader and needs 173 yards against the Panthers to reach 31,000 yards for his career. A good chunk of those have come via off-platform plays, which have become Mahomes’ trademark.
Clowney, the No. 1 pick in 2014, has played against Mahomes twice: once in the regular season with the Cleveland Browns in 2021 and again with the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Championship Game in January. Clowney’s teams went 0-2 in those games, though he sacked Mahomes in the playoff game.
“I need to get to him, bro, ’cause I’m tired of him. He’s been handling me for a while,” Clowney said. “You’ll have him, and he just throws it when you’ve got him grasped. He’s good at it. He’s like the best in the business.”
Jewell, a former Broncos linebacker, said facing Mahomes is like defending the scramble drill every snap.
“You’ve gotta play coverage for the first two or three seconds and after that make sure you latch on to your guy,” Jewell explained. “Because people like Kelce and other experienced guys are gonna start running crazy, off-the-rim routes that are unexpected. So you’ve gotta latch on to your guy and make sure you can’t have Mahomes run around the whole time.”
Kelce, the All-Pro tight end, likely won’t have his biggest fan in attendance Sunday. Swift, who started dating Kelce last year, did not attend the Chiefs’ game in Buffalo despite being two hours away in Toronto. She reportedly is more comfortable with the routine and security setup at Arrowhead Stadium for Chiefs home games.
Not that Panthers players seem to care. Rookie receiver Jalen Coker laughed when asked if he was curious to see whether Swift would show up.
“Nah,” he said. “I’m not a big Swiftie, so no.”
(Photo of Patrick Mahomes: William Purnell / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
