The Carolina Panthers finished the 2019 NFL season with a 5-11 record, which included eight consecutive losses. The last time the Panthers won was Nov. 3, when they defeated the Tennessee Titans. The Panthers lost four in a row before owner David Tepper made the decision to fire head coach Ron Rivera with only four weeks left in the season. Interim head coach Perry Fewell didn’t fare any better than Rivera, and perhaps it would have been better for team morale if Tepper had waited to separate from the former head coach. Despite such a dismal season, Christian McCaffrey was able to break franchise, career, and all-time records this season and that was with a losing team. Imagine what his numbers could have been with a stronger offense that he didn’t have to carry.
The 23-year-old Stanford University product was selected in 2017 with the No. 8 pick. Originally from Denver, Colo., McCaffrey is the son to football great, Ed McCaffrey, who played for the New York Giants, San Francisco 49ers, and the Denver Broncos. The younger McCaffrey hasn’t missed a game in his three-year professional career and has posted a total of 2,920 rushing yards with 24 rushing touchdowns in addition to 2,523 receiving yards and 15 touchdowns through the air. The 2019 season was McCaffrey’s and of his total career yardage, nearly half were recorded during this season in which he became only the third player in NFL history to record a 1,000-yard receiving and 1,000-yard rushing season.
McCaffrey’s record-breaking season began in the Panthers’ first game of the season against the Los Angeles Rams when he became one of five players with 10 or more receptions and 120 or more rushing yards in a single game in the Super Bowl Era. In October, he tied his single-game franchise record of 237 total yards and became the first player since Jim Brown in 1963 to total at least 175 scrimmage yards in the first four of five regular-season games.
The following week, McCaffrey joined Steve Smith as the only player in Carolina history with multiple games of 150 scrimmage yards and three touchdowns. He also joined Jim Brown and Matt Forte as the only players to have at least 150 scrimmage yards in six of the first eight games and tied Abner Hayes for the second-most games with rushing and receiving touchdowns in a player’s first three career games. If that wasn’t enough, McCaffrey also posted his sixth game with at least one rushing touchdown, which is second behind DeAngelo Williams who has held the lead since 2008.
C-MAC HUNGRY 🍽️#KeepPounding pic.twitter.com/BklB69s4ux
— Carolina Panthers (@Panthers) November 24, 2019
Two weeks later, McCaffrey became the first player in NFL history with over 1,000 rushing yards and 500 receiving yards in the first 10 games of a season, and two weeks after he broke that record, he became the first Carolina player to top 2,000 scrimmage yards in one season.
It was the following week. that he broke his own record for the most catches by a running back in a single season and became the only running back to have two 100-catch seasons and recorded a franchise-high 15 receptions.
Another day.
Another record.
Congrats @run__cmc! pic.twitter.com/Nv7dArliyz
— Carolina Panthers (@Panthers) December 22, 2019
Finally, in the last game of the regular season against the New Orleans Saints at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, McCaffrey joined the coveted 1,000-1,000 club joining Roger Craig and Marshall Faulk as the only three players to record 1,000 receiving and 1,000 rushing yards in one season.
❄️1k/1k❄️ #BlessedByTheBest pic.twitter.com/TEpN2uXqP0
— Christian McCaffrey (@CMC_22) December 30, 2019
Despite all of these accolades, the Panthers had a losing season, ending 5-11. Cam Newton was injured and placed on the injured reserve early in the season while the rearrangement of the roster a couple of times failed to secure more than victory.
It is said that football is a team sport and you can’t win games with just one or two good players on the team, and if any team proved this to be true, it was the Carolina Panthers. In a bleak, season Christian McCaffrey was the Carolina Panthers’ whole offense, and he couldn’t do it alone.
Many of the Panthers’ players’ futures are in question as they become free agents this year, or in the case of Greg Olsen, players who may be turning in their NFL uniforms after being placed on the injured reserved list following a hard hit that led him back to the concussion protocol again.
When Tepper chooses his new staff to lead the Panthers, it will become more clear which players will stay in the organization and which will leave and after the draft, in which the Panthers will have the seventh overall pick, the analysts and fans alike will have a better idea of what direction the team will head next season.
An emotional and record-breaking way to end the 2019 season.
Blue on Black gives you an all-access look.
𝙁𝙐𝙇𝙇 𝙀𝙋𝙄𝙎𝙊𝘿𝙀 » https://t.co/RjAnJB7ynB pic.twitter.com/ltC0EJ3njw
— Carolina Panthers (@Panthers) January 3, 2020
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