When will Shaq Thompson retire? He has a guess. For now, he's happy, healthy with Panthers.

It wasn’t all that long ago when Shaq Thompson found himself in the Carolina Panthers’ locker room without much reason to smile — weighed down by a boot on his right foot, unable to help carry his team as it limped to a 2-15 season.

Today?

His smile’s back.

You could see it on the field during the Panthers’ mandatory minicamp, when his newly minted inside linebacker teammate Josey Jewell took a red zone interception to the house with Thompson and a few other teammates sprinting and screaming behind him. You could see it at the post-practice lectern, where Thompson told reporters he has so many reasons to be happy. The reasons flowed like water running down a hill. He got married in February. His kids are healthy. His trucking business called Run Logistics, which he started earlier this year, is off the ground.

“I still got a job, you know what I mean?” the fast-talking NFL veteran said Wednesday, punctuating his gratuity list with a laugh. “So everything’s good.”

Everything’s so good, in fact, that retirement isn’t at the forefront of the veteran’s mind. When asked on Wednesday, Thompson, 30, offered a guess on how many more years he has in his NFL life — and yes, the guess was accompanied with a smile.

“How many more years?” Thompson said. “I think I got about five in me. Spent four behind (Panthers legends) TD (Thomas Davis) and Luke (Kuechly). Broke my leg last year, so that added an extra year. That’s five right there.”

Five more years, of course, start now.

The 2024 season, Thompson’s 10th in the league, is an important one for the veteran who’s entering the final year of his contract. The linebacker took a substantial pay cut last offseason to stay in Carolina — he’ll be making $1.21 million in base salary plus $1.10 million in per-game bonuses this year — and is now playing for a new head coach in Dave Canales and a new face of the front office in Dan Morgan.

But the reasons for optimism don’t just stop at his off-field pursuits. Thompson is now fully comfortable in the 3-4 scheme defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero orchestrated with aplomb last year, he said — the one that saw Frankie Luvu flourish and the pass-defense dominate even as personnel atrophied and the offense stalled.

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