CHARLOTTE, N.C. — If you had been in the Carolina Panthers’ locker room Monday morning on clean-out day and knew nothing about the team, you would have wildly overestimated one thing.

That one thing would have been the Panthers’ record for the just-concluded 2024 season. Given the positive vibes and the endless questions about how great quarterback Bryce Young was Sunday in the season-ending, 44-38 win over Atlanta, you would have thought this must have been a 12-5 team. They just seemed so doggone happy, in a last-day-of-school kind of way.

But in reality, this was a poor team that went 5-12. A poor team that has substantial hope, yes, but 5-12 is a long way from good. That one final Sunday Funday in Atlanta was joyous and included the Young no-look, fourth-down TD pass that a Charlotte Observer reader cleverly noted was a literal “turning point” for Bryce and that Cam Newton labeled as “Boogie Approved.” Numerous Panther players gleefully pointed out Monday that the team is now “undefeated in 2025,” and so it will be for the next eight months.

That rocking overtime win, though, can’t obscure the fact that the Panther decision-makers have a lot of work to do over the next six months.

First and foremost, the Panthers have a shortage of defensive playmakers, and that first-round draft pick (No. 8 overall) absolutely must be on that side of the ball in April.

Some of what happened to Carolina’s D in 2024 was injury-related, but it’s far too convenient to blame the Panthers giving up an NFL record for most points in a single season — 534 points allowed! 31.4 points given up per game! — on defensive lineman Derrick Brown being hurt all year.

Head coach Dave Canales had a funny line that could have come straight from Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights. Canales remarked Sunday, about the Panthers’ dubious “most points allowed” stat: “I mean, if you’re going to be last, be the ‘first last,’ you know? Be absolutely No. 1 in that regard.”

Well, the 2024 Panthers sure did get to be No. 1 in something, at least. By the end of this season, the Panthers defense was playing a lot of guys no one had ever heard of. But let’s not forget, in Week 1, a defense with nearly all its pieces allowed the New Orleans Saints (a bad team that also would finish 5-12) to score on its first nine possessions.

All of that makes me a little surprised that Canales said with no equivocation Monday that defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero would return in the very same role in 2025 (although a few defensive staff changes at the more granular level are inevitable). But Canales still believes in Evero — even though the guys Evero wanted to upgrade the defense in 2024 largely didn’t work out — and so Evero and his 3-4 scheme will be back, even though a number of Panther fans would wish that to be different.

So that means the Panthers are in a remarkable (for them) era of stability at the moment. Young, who will be in his third season, will return as quarterback. General manager Dan Morgan returns as the primary personnel guy. Canales returns as head coach. Evero returns as defensive coordinator. David Tepper — who has fired three head football coaches in midseason in seven years running the place — has largely stayed out of the headlines the past few months and returns as owner.

It’s like they’re making a sequel to a movie, even though the original movie went 5-12.

Is that a good thing? The movie flopped, after all.

Yet at the top, this does make a certain amount of sense.

Head coaches and quarterbacks grow together, as head coach Ron Rivera did here with quarterback Cam Newton during the 2010s. J.J. Jansen, the Panthers long snapper and longest-tenured player ever, remembered Monday: “Ron said years and years ago he didn’t really think he got the hang of it until about Year 3. There’s a lot on your plate. And it’s the same for a young GM and a young quarterback. So all of those things kind of growing together is a huge advantage for our organization.”

But where the personnel must change is in the middle class of players. Carolina doesn’t have the depth to go 10-7 in 2025 right now. Its middle class has to get better, which is where Morgan and his staff come in.

“Players don’t want to come to a team where they, first of all, don’t feel like there’s stability,” Morgan said Monday, “which I feel like there is here now. And we have a young head coach that brings a lot of energy.”

Morgan, a former Pro Bowl linebacker for the Panthers, took the record number of points the Panthers allowed in 2024 personally. “Ultimately, you know, it lies on my shoulders to bring players in here to help EJ (Evero) and the staff out.”

It was Morgan who said the team needed more “dogs” in 2024. Obviously, the kennel isn’t full, so I asked Morgan how many more he wanted. “I’m not going to put a number on how many dogs we need,” he said, laughing.

As for the specific personnel changes: Wide receiver Adam Thielen, who’s 34, even hinted Monday that he might retire — although I don’t think he will, given that he’d be leaving a $4 million base salary on the table to do so. Players like linebacker Shaq Thompson, quarterback Andy Dalton, offensive lineman Brady Christensen and tight end Tommy Tremble are all free agents. (I don’t foresee Thompson being back, but cornerback Mike Jackson surely will be. I bet Dalton will be, too, as Young’s understudy).

The churn rate in NFL locker rooms is so high that at least a third of the players will be new. As center Austin Corbett (also an impending free agent) put it Monday: “Football is gonna do what it does.”

Yes, it will. Our cruelest sport is also America’s national pastime. Football is gonna do what it does.

But the Panthers don’t have to do what they do. Namely, lose a lot.

They’ve got a chance now. A window has opened. They just need some more of the right players to climb through it — and hopefully they’re all able to tackle somebody.

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