Super Bowl curse weighs heavily on Panthers’ 2016 chances

While the Carolina Panthers’ run to the Super Bowl dominated much of the 2015 NFL season’s storylines, it would be an even bigger talking point if they managed to repeat the trick this year.

By going 15-1, the Panthers recorded the franchise’s best ever regular season and became one of just seven teams in the NFL since 1978 to win at least 15 games.

But by losing Super Bowl 50 to Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos, Cam Newton and co made it much harder to get back to the big game this year.

That’s because no team in the last 43 seasons of the NFL have lost the Super Bowl and then recovered to win it 12 months later.

In fact, only five teams in that span have even managed to make it back to the showpiece event at the earliest opportunity, and the last ones to do it were the Buffalo Bills in 1993.

For most of the last 43 Super Bowl losers, making a deep playoff run was even too much to ask. Just four of those scorned sides were able to reach their conference championship match, while 17 won just one post-season outing with a Super Bowl hangover.

That weight of history means the 5/1 about the Panthers winning their NFC Conference this season, as well as the 10/1 about them winning Super Bowl LI, are best avoided.

However, with each of the last seven Super Bowl losers managing to at least make the playoffs the following year it doesn’t look all doom and gloom for Carolina. We go 1/4 that they make the post-season this term.

All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing.