In a rowdy stadium full of life, Carolina Panthers made themselves at home

That is what a home NFL stadium is supposed to feel like.

Too often, through too many opposing team takeovers and home team mistakes, Bank of America Stadium has contributed hardly any homefield advantage over the past decade.

But Sunday was exactly what you want if you’re a Carolina fan. A tremendous crowd watched a tremendous game for the home team, as the Panthers obliterated Atlanta, 30-0.

“It felt great to be in Bank of America Stadium with our fans,” said Panthers head coach Dave Canales, who saw his team improve to 1-2 overall with an upset victory in its 2025 home opener. ”I felt the support. You look around, and it was all Panthers fans.”

All Panthers fans.

That’s a significant line, because so often it isn’t anywhere near all Panthers fans.

And realistically, it won’t be at times again this season, when teams with huge national followings like the Dallas Cowboys and the Buffalo Bills visit Charlotte. But on Sunday, it almost was.

This was the polar opposite of those many games when there are a lot of opposing fans in the stadium already and then the Panthers fall behind by 20 and, by the end, the opposing fans are all that is left. Matt Rhule got fired after a game exactly like that, in 2022, when the San Francisco fan base turned B of A into a red sea during a 22-point San Francisco win.

But this one: Wow. The crowd was Panthers blue and heavily invested in the result.

Panthers legend Steve Smith, in a WFNZ radio appearance last week, claimed Charlotte is a “weak-ass city,” citing its “fair-weather fans.” While this argument can certainly be made, I would counter that fans having blind faith in a team that has missed the playoffs for seven straight years is simply too much to ask, especially given what tickets cost. And you can hear booing in any NFL stadium if it gets bad enough, for long enough, for the home team.

Charlotte, though, hasn’t had enough of a real chance to even try to be good NFL fans recently. It’s been almost all foul weather, and nobody wants to put on a poncho and be a foul-weather fan all the time.

On Sunday, though, the weather was great. We sportswriters usually watch the game from the glassed-in press box, where the sound from the stadium is at least 90% muted for work purposes. But still, I could hear something special going on outside, and so I went outside to sit with one of my sons for most of the third quarter.

Let me tell you: When Chau Smith-Wade had that pick-6, that stadium ERUPTED. It even shook a little. Not quite playoff-caliber loud, but loud all the same. Random fans who didn’t know one another were hugging and high-fiving. The crowd certainly had an effect on the Carolina sideline.

“Electric,” said Panthers quarterback Bryce Young, who threw for a quiet 121 yards but didn’t turn the ball over and also started the scoring with an athletic 4-yard scramble for a touchdown.

“A blessing,” said rookie Tetairoa McMillan.

“I just loved that,” Canales said.

The Panther supporters were responding to a win that symbolically had great importance. If you’re going to win only one of your first three games, as the Panthers have done, at least make the one win come at home. Then you have some hometown credibility, and a fan base that includes close to 70,000 people who actually saw the game live. It buys you some more time.

This win by the Panthers — their first shutout since 2020 and their largest margin of victory since 2015 — was unexpectedly dominant.

Carolina’s defense was the worst in the NFL by all sorts of measures, but this time it played a beautiful game. There were numerous times it looked like Falcons players were about to break free, but the tackling was sure and crisp. The Panthers flummoxed Atlanta quarterback Michael Penix Jr. so completely that the Falcons (1-2) even tried highly-paid backup QB Kirk Cousins in the fourth quarter, to no avail. The Panthers were outgained 333-224 in total yards, but they won the turnover battle 3-1 and their special teams were light years ahead of the Falcons.

All the noise reminded me a little of Carolina’s 2015 season and what tight end Greg Olsen told me a few months ago about the way the fans and the players melded in that Super Bowl year.

“It just felt so big and so special,” Olsen said. “And it wasn’t like that always, right? And I think it just shows if you’re good in this city, like, we have the fans, we have the energy, we have the people — that it could be as loud as anywhere. It could be as exciting as anywhere.”

Exactly. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying one win equates to the magic of 2015.

But for one afternoon, that’s what it felt like in the stadium. The Panthers played a gorgeous game, in gorgeous September weather, and never trailed after never leading in Weeks 1 and 2.

This was a feel-good win for the Panthers’ fan base, and gracious knows this is a fan base that desperately needed something to feel good about.

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This story was originally published September 21, 2025 at 6:21 PM.

Scott Fowler

The Charlotte Observer

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Columnist Scott Fowler has written for The Charlotte Observer since 1994 and has earned 26 APSE awards for his sportswriting. He hosted The Observer’s podcast “Carruth,” which Sports Illustrated once named “Podcast of the Year.” Fowler also conceived and hosted the online series and podcast “Sports Legends of the Carolinas,” which featured 1-on-1 interviews with NC and SC sports icons and was turned into a book. He occasionally writes about non-sports subjects, such as the 5-part series “9/11/74,” which chronicled the forgotten plane crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 in Charlotte on Sept. 11, 1974. Support my work with a digital subscription